New Colombia Law Grants Concessions to Paramilitaries

[struggle4progress]

By JUAN FORERO
Published: June 23, 2005
BOGOTÁ, Colombia, June 22 - Colombia's Congress on Wednesday approved a law governing the disarmament of the country's death squads, which permits the demobilization of thousands of fighters but grants generous concessions to paramilitary commanders accused of atrocities and cocaine trafficking.

The Justice and Peace Law, an underpinning of President Álvaro Uribe's goal of pacifying Colombia, was hailed by government officials as a way to lay the groundwork for removing one of the three illegal armed groups battling in Colombia. "We are proud of this instrument," said Luis Carlos Restrepo, the country's peace commissioner.

But congressional leaders say that in exchange for disarming up to 20,000 fighters, paramilitary commanders are shielded from serious punishment or extradition on drug charges to the United States. The law, passed by Congress on Tuesday and by bicameral committees on Wednesday, will be signed into law by Mr. Uribe within days.

"This is a law that brings no justice, no peace," said Senator Jimmy Chamorro. "It should be called what it really is, a law of impunity and immunity." <snip>

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/23/international/americas/23colombia.html?

More protection for Death Squad Johnny's crowd ...

[Say_What]

1. "law of impunity and immunity"

that's an understatement. Meanwhile, El Tiempo reported that Uribe sent a letter to the embassies strongly suggesting eliminating the words guerrilla, paramilitares, war, etc, etc.
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<clips>
President Uribe’s Hidden Past

Colombia’s President Alvaro Uribe is, by his own admission, a man of the right. Unlike most recent Colombian presidents, Uribe is from the land-owning class. He inherited huge swathes of cattle ranching land from his father Alberto Uribe, who was subject to an extradition warrant to face drug trafficking charges in the United States until he was killed in 1983, allegedly by leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) guerrillas. Alvaro Uribe grew up with the children of Fabio Ochoa, three of who became leading players in Pablo Escobar’s Medellín cocaine cartel.

President Uribe’s credentials are impeccable. He was educated at Harvard and Oxford, is as sharp as a tack, and a very able bureaucrat. At the tender age of 26 he was elected mayor of Medellín, the second-largest city of Colombia. The city’s elite in the 1980s was rich, corrupt and nepotistic, and they loved the young Uribe. But the new mayor was removed from office after only three months by a central government embarrassed by his public ties to the drug mafia. Uribe was then made Director of Civil Aviation, where he used his mandate to issue pilots’ licenses to Pablo Escobar’s fleet of light aircraft, which routinely flew cocaine to the United States.

In 1995, Uribe became governor of the Antioquia department, of which Medellín is the capital. The region became the testing ground for the institutionalization of paramilitary forces that he has now made a key plank of his presidency. Government-sponsored peasant associations called Convivir’s were “special private security and vigilance services, designed to group the civilian population alongside the Armed Forces.”

Security forces and paramilitary groups enjoyed immunity from prosecution under Governor Uribe, and they used this immunity to launch a campaign of terror in Antioquia. Thousands of people were murdered, “disappeared,” detained and driven out of the region. In the town of San Jose de Apartadó for example, three of the Convivir leaders were well-known paramilitaries and had been trained by the Colombian Army’s 17th Brigade. In 1998, representatives of more than 200 Convivir associations announced that they would unite with the paramilitary organization, the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), under its murderous leader Carlos Castaño.

http://www.colombiajournal.org/colombia185.htm