The Colombian Government Grows Desperate: The Death Squads' DC Embassy

[Judi Lynn]

May 21 - 23, 2010

The Colombian Government Grows Desperate
The Death Squads' DC Embassy
By DANIEL KOVALIK

On May 13, 2010, staff from the Washington Office on Latin America (“WOLA”), a D.C.-based human rights organization, met with long-time Colombian Ambassador Carolina Barco at the Colombian Embassy in Washington. At this meeting, WOLA staff, including Gimena Sanchez, expressed their concern for the safety of a number of its human rights partners in Colombia who, in the words of WOLA, have been victimized by “threats, sabotage of activities and baseless prosecutions.” WOLA is taking the threats against its partners very seriously as a number of leaders from social groups, particularly from Afro-Colombian and Indigenous groups, have been killed in recent months.

On May 14, the very next day, WOLA received a death threat directed to itself as well as 80 other Colombian human rights, Afro-Colombian, Indigenous, internally displaced and labor rights organizations and individuals. This threat, from the Colombian paramilitary group known as “The Black Eagles,” stated: “as so called human rights defenders don’t think you can hide behind the offices of the Attorney General or other institutions . . . we are watching you and you can consider yourselves dead.” As WOLA noted in an open letter dated May 17, The Black Eagles go “on to falsely accuse the listed organizations of having links to the FARC guerillas and as such declaring themselves military targets.”

WOLA further notes in this letter that “(o)rganizations listed in the death threat are long time partners of WOLA who work on internal displacement, Afro-Colombian and indigenous issues.” In addition, a number of labor unions are also listed, including the SINALTRAINAL union which I have personally worked with over the years in their lawsuit and campaign against The Coca-Cola Company. This threat was sent by e-mail to, among others, Gimena Sanchez herself who had been to the Colombian Embassy the day before.

The very fact that the paramilitary death threat followed the day after the WOLA visit to the Colombian Embassy is enough to give one pause about possible link between the paramilitaries and the Embassy. However, timing is not the only evidence of such a link. Thus, the intimidation of individuals and organizations critical of Colombian policies, by various means, including attempting to publicly link such groups and individuals to the guerillas, is a policy of the Colombian government itself.

More:
http://www.counterpunch.org/kovalik05212010.html

[Judi Lynn]

1. Bloodshed returns to Medellin

Bloodshed returns to Medellin
By Nadja Drost - GlobalPost
Published: May 20, 2010 06:23 ET

http://www.globalpost.com.nyud.net:8090/sites/default/files/imagecache/torso/photos/215/Colombia-Medellin-violence-2010-05-11-2.jpg

Soldiers patrol the violent Comuna 13
neighborhood in Medellin, Sept. 18, 2009.
(Albeiro Lopera/Reuters)

MEDELLIN, Colombia — Even the prescience of 13-year-old Luis Serna Varela couldn't save him.

He worried he would find himself caught in a shootout, or even with his finger pressed to the trigger of a gun, just another teenager unable to escape the gang warfare in his poor neighborhood atop Medellin. He asked his mother one morning: "Why don’t we leave from here?”

Now it's too late for his mother to do more than wonder about what she could have done differently. Luis went to buy eggs and cheese for his family’s breakfast in January when he was killed by a stray bullet.

He is yet another homicide victim in a city where 10 year olds carry guns and where the police's "necro-mobile" patrols the streets nightly, collecting dead bodies.

More:
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/colombia/100331/medellin-violence-part-1