Uribe asks US not to punish Colombia

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Financial Times

Uribe asks US not to punish Colombia
By Benedict Mander in Bogotá

Published: May 29 2007 17:33 | Last updated: May 29 2007 17:33

President Alvaro Uribe has urged the US not to punish Colombia by denying it a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) or reducing military aid because of a deepening political scandal that is engulfing his government.

The so-called “para-politics” scandal, in which members of Mr Uribe’s government are accused of co-operating with rightwing militia groups, is undermining attempts to secure a FTA, which Democrats now dominating the US Congress are threatening to block over human rights concerns.

“It would be incomprehensible if Colombia were to be treated like a pariah, and denied a FTA with the US,” said Mr Uribe in an interview with the Financial Times, insisting that Colombia has been a “loyal ally” of the US and that failure to secure a FTA would be “very serious”.

A recent deal between the Bush administration and Congress to move ahead with bilateral trade deals with Peru and Panama, while leaving Colombia on hold, has angered Mr Uribe.



Read more: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/77e60242-0df9-11dc-8219-000b5df10621,dwp_uuid=8fa2c9cc-2f77-11da-8b51-00000e2511c8,_i_rssPage=8fa2c9cc-2f77-11da-8b51-00000e2511c8.html

[Judi Lynn]

1. Labor violence blocks a U.S.-Colombia trade deal

Labor violence blocks a U.S.-Colombia trade deal
Published: May 29, 2007

Free trade agreements with Peru and Panama now seem headed toward approval in the U.S. Congress, after the Bush administration agreed to incorporate the basic labor standards long insisted upon by House Democrats. But a separate trade pact with Colombia rightly remains in legislative limbo over a much starker labor problem.

Colombia leads the world in the killing of labor activists.

Under pressure from Congress, President Álvaro Uribe's government has finally begun acknowledging the problem. But it has yet to demonstrate that it means to take effective steps to protect endangered workers and punish those who terrorize them. While the number of killings has declined somewhat over the past few years, it is still unacceptably high.

Last year, an average of six union activists were murdered per month. And until now, far too few of these crimes have been energetically prosecuted. Of the 2,100 labor murders recorded since 1991, there have been convictions in only 37 cases.

More:
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/05/29/opinion/edtrade.php

[acmavm]

2. Uribe is bush**s bud. In a world where he has few heads of state

that can stand the guy and don't see through his shit, he'll help his bud.

Thugs of a feather
Stick together

[0rganism]

3. All Uribe has to do is mention Hugo Chavez and all will be forgiven

Cos, after all, Colombia would be the natural staging area for any military operations against Chavez and the Bolivarian Revolution. It's the new Honduras, and our government has historically been more than willing to offer indulgences for all sorts of atrocities in the name of anti-communism.

It's a mixed blessing that Bush seems willing to compromise on this one. On the upside, the agreement to delay Colombian FTA approval indicates that any plans for anti-Venezuela operations, including special forces "training" and possibly even covert intelligence contacts in Colombia, are seen as expendable. Exclusion from the FTA would be a potential win for a new & improved Colombian government that was willing to pursue an independent economy for the benefit of its people and normalize relations with Venezuela. On the downside, it indicates one or both of (a) Bush doesn't see Chavez or a potential Venezuela-Colombia alliance as a serious threat to the power structure of the Capitalists, or (b) the US military is stretched too thin to carry out any serious second-front operations in South America. So it speaks to either a perceived ineffectiveness of Chavez's regime long-term or a real national security crisis at home. I tend to think the second reason is obvious; I'm a bit troubled by the possibility that the elites may be regarding Venezuela as the next China or Vietnam, though. :shrug:



Anyhow, if Colombia drops from the latest FTA and diplomatic relations with the US go to shit over this, it's a huge win for President Chavez and possibly the Colombians.

[Judi Lynn]

4. Murder Training: Colombian Death Squad Used Live Hostages

Murder Training: Colombian Death Squad Used Live Hostages
by El Tiempo
April 29, 2007

El Tiempo, Bogota -- “Proof of courage”: that is how the how the paramilitaries would term the training they imparted to their recruits so that they learnt how to carve up people while they were still alive.

Initially, the authorities rejected this version of the farmers who reported the practice… but when the combatants themselves started to admit to it in their testimonies before the prosecutors, the myth became a harsh crime against humanity.

Francisco Enrique Villalba Hernández (alias Cristian Barreto), one of the perpetrators of the massacre at El Aro in Ituango, Antioquia, received this type of training in the same place where he learnt to handle arms and manufacture home-made bombs. Today, a prisoner at La Picota in Bogota, Villalba has described in details during lengthy testimonies how he applied the learning.

“Towards the middle of 1994, I was ordered to a course… in El Tomate, Antioquia, where the training camp was located,” he says in his testimony. There, his working day started at 5 in the morning and the instructions were received directly from the top commanders such as ‘Double Zero’ (Carlos Garcia, since assassinated by another paramilitary group).

Villalba claims that in order to learn how to dismember people they would use farmers they gathered together in the course of taking neighbouring settlements. As he describes it, “they were aged people whom we brought in trucks, alive and bound up”. The victims arrived at the ranch in covered trucks. They were lowered from the vehicle with their hands tied and taken to a room. There they were locked up for days in the hope that the training would start.

More:
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=12697

The source is the large Colombian newspaper, El Tiempo.

[Judi Lynn]

5. US aid exacerbates abuse in Colombia

US aid exacerbates abuse in Colombia
Published Date: May 30, 2007
By Marselha Goncalves Margerinand Gimena Sanchez-Garzoli

Congress is rightly putting the brakes on the unconditional US support that Colombia has been getting from the Bush administration. The administration wants to rush into a free-trade deal with Colombia, even though that country has allegedly been using "systemic, persistent violence against trade unionists and other human rights defenders," according to a joint letter by Rep Charles Rangel, and Rep Sander Levin, the top two House Democrats on international trade.

Members of President Alvaro Uribe's administration are accused of aiding right-wing paramilitary squads that have massacred thousands of civilians. At least eight Colombian government officials and politicians have been arrested for having ties with the paramilitary, and investigations into collusion of many others are pendingSince Uribe took office in 2002, the paramilitary forces have assassinated 400 union leaders and their supporters, according to the AFL-CIOOnly a dozen of their killers have been convicted.

Berenice Celeyta, winner of the 1998 RFK Human Rights Award, earned a spot at the top of a hit list for speaking out against the sale of a public utility company in 2004. Investigations alleged that a decorated Colombian officer, former Lt Col Julian Villate, had mapped out vulnerabilities of 175 opponents, including classified intelligence from a US-funded project to protect human rights defenders, as part of a covert paramilitary collaboration dubbed "Operation Dragon." Despite overwhelming evidence, no charges have been brought to date.

Impunity in this case sends a strong message that those behind "Operation Dragon" can continue to act at will. In April, the Colombian attorney general's office learned of a witness who testified that Villate was not only behind Operation Dragon but also involved in a scheme to assassinate Uribe's leading critic in Colombia, Sen. Gustavo Petro. According to The New York Times, Petro himself said he had uncovered a plot to kill him led by Villate, a security official for the Drummond Co., an American coal producer with operations in Colombia.

More:
http://www.kuwaittimes.net/read_news.php?newsid=OTkxMzQ2MTc4