A Father Waits for Justice as Deadly Accident Reveals Air-Interception Exercises

A tragic air accident on Peru's northern coastline in August of 2001 cost the lives of two exemplary pilots, one Peruvian and one American. It received little notice at the time. But a WW4 REPORT investigation into the incident has exposed a series of blunders, mysterious official silence from both Lima and Washington, and finally a trail of corruption extending from the hand of Peru's former intelligence czar Vladimir Montesinos--now convicted on multiple corruption charges--to the U.S. State Department. The regime of Peru's authoritarian President Alberto Fujimori, ousted in November 2000, is now widely recognized to have allowed drug flights to get through, and the U.S.-coordinated program to shoot the flights down was officially suspended after the embarrassing downing of an innocent missionary plane in April 2001. But training for the program apparently continued at least through 2003 and the State Department won't talk. The father of the Peruvian pilot killed in the 2001 accident wants to know why. And since your tax-dollars may be funding a clandestine military operation in South America that violates official policy--you should too.

from Weekly News Update on the Americas

CAUCA: FARC SEIZE INDIGENOUS TOWNS

Around 5 AM on April 14, hundreds of rebels from the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) simultaneously attacked the neighboring municipalities of Jambalo and Toribio in southern Cauca department and fired homemade rockets and other weapons at police. About 98% of the residents of the two municipalities are Nasa indigenous people; their communities have always been clear in rejecting the presence of armed groups in their territory. Toribio is an important town for the Nasa: the Nasa Project, an autonomous indigenous development program, is based there, and Toribio mayor Arquimedes Vitonas is a respected Nasa leader. Vitonas headed a delegation that was held captive for two weeks by the FARC last year.

from Weekly News Update on the Americas

PUBLIC OUSTS PRESIDENT GUTIERREZ

On April 19, some 50,000 Ecuadorans--including entire families with children--marched peacefully through the capital, Quito, from La Carolina park to Carondelet, the government palace. They carried Ecuadoran flags, sang the national anthem and chanted "Everyone out"--a demand for the removal of all the politicians and government officials, including President Lucio Gutierrez Borbua. (Servicio Informativo "Alai-amlatina," April 20; ALTERCOM, April 20)

Gutierrez had fired the entire Supreme Court on April 15; on April 18, the 100-member Congress voted 89-0 to ratify the court's dismissal and declare a "judicial vacancy" until agreement can be reached on a non-partisan mechanism for electing judges. Congress declined to invalidate the Supreme Court's April 1 decision to annul corruption trials against ex-presidents Abdala Bucaram (1996-1997) and Gustavo Noboa (2000-2003), and ex-vice president Alberto Dahik (1992-1995). The annulling of the trials, and the three fugitives' subsequent return to Ecuador, were the sparks that set off the current round of protests in Quito. (Prensa Ecumenica/Inter Press Service, April 19)

from Weekly News Update on the Americas

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's brief Latin American visit covered five countries: Brazil on April 26, Colombia on April 27, Chile April 28-29 and El Salvador in the evening of April 29; she returned to Washington on April 30. According to unnamed "U.S. officials," the trip was intended to forge a new alliance with the growing number of left-leaning Latin American governments. (New York Times, April 27; BBC News, April 30; Miami Herald, April 28, 29, May 1)

Rice was also trying to isolate Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, who had confirmed on April 24 that Venezuela was ending a longstanding military exchange program with the U.S. "Any exchange of officers...is suspended until who knows when," he said on his weekly television program. "There will be no more joint operations or anything like that." Chavez said some US exchange officers, if not all, had been "carrying on a little campaign" against him "within the Venezuelan military institution." He also revealed that several months earlier a US woman had been arrested and then released when she was spotted secretly photographing a Venezuelan military base; her documents showed she was a US naval officer. (La Jornada, April 25 from AFP, DPA, Reuters]

Kudos to Pacific New Service for picking up our recent commentary on the coordinated propaganda blitz against Venezuela's Hugo Chavez. Readers of WW4 REPORT are aware that within a week of each other, Otto Reich called in a National Review cover story for a "coalition of the willing" to act against the Cuba-Venezuela "Axis of Evil," and the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA) issued a call to drain the terrorist "swamp" in Latin America, starting with Venezuela. Ominously, the media offensive comes at a time of escalating border tensions between Venezuela and Colombia, Washington's militarized South American client state.

by Weekly News Update on the Americas

SOLDIERS KILL MORE CIVILIANS

On March 27, relatives found the bodies of Colombian campesinos Javier Alexander Cubillos, Wilder Cubillos and Heriberto Delgado at the morgue in Fusagasuga, Cundinamarca department. The army had apparently taken their bodies there, claiming they were guerrillas killed in combat. The three men were Communist Party activists from the community of San Juan de Sumapaz, in the federal district of Bogota, just north of Fusagasuga. They had been missing since March 18, when they went to the community of La Hoya del Nevado to inspect some of their family's livestock. Several days later, the media published reports that three guerrillas had been killed in combat in the area. The Neighborhood Association of San Juan de Sumapaz and the Union of Agricultural Workers insist that the three men were not guerrillas and did not die in combat, but were murdered by the Colombian army. (Red de Defensores no Institucionalizados, March 30)

A coalition of community groups and trade unions in the region released a public statement saying that the three men were well-known political and campesino activists in the region who were leading members of both their trade union, the National United Agricultural Union Federation (FENSUAGRO), and the local branch of the Colombian Communist Party. Messages of protest can be sent to Vice President Francisco Santos at fsantos@presidencia.gov.co; Defense Minister Jorge Alberto Uribe at siden@mindefensa.gov.co, infprotocol@mindefensa.gov.co; and Carlos Franco, head of the president's human rights program, at cefranco@presidencia.gov.co. (Justice for Colombia, UK, March 30)

FENSUAGRO's secretary of organization, Luz Perly Cordoba, was released on March 16 after spending more than a year in prison in Bogota. Cordoba, also president of the Campesino Association of Arauca (ACA), was arrested on Feb. 18, 2004, along with another ACA leader, Juan Gutierrez Ardila. Both are now out on bail; they are still facing charges for "rebellion," and their trial has been transferred to Arauca. A "drug trafficking" charge against Cordoba--for her outspoken opposition to the government's policy of aerial spraying of herbicides on farmland--has been dropped. (Prensa Rural, Feb. 18, March 19; Movimiento Social de Catalunya y Valencia, Feb. 1, via Colombia Indymedia)

For more on Luz Perly Cordoba, see WW4 REPORT #97

U.S. SOLDIERS IN DRUG BUST

Five US Army soldiers were detained on March 29 for allegedly using a US military plane to smuggle 35 pounds of cocaine from Colombia into the US, the US Southern Command announced on March 31. The soldiers' identities, hometowns and duties in Colombia were not released. Air Force Lt. Col. Eduardo Villavicencio, a spokesperson for the Southern Command, would not say whether the five had been officially charged or whether they are officers or enlisted personnel. The soldiers had been under surveillance by US and Colombian investigators for "some time," a Colombian defense ministry spokesperson told the Miami Herald. Officials waited for the soldiers to attempt to enter the US with the drugs before arresting them. The US has 500 soldiers in Colombia as part of a multibillion-dollar "anti-drug" and counterinsurgency effort. Many of these soldiers are Special Forces personnel who train Colombian military personnel in anti-narcotics operations. (Miami Herald, April 1)

From Weekly News Update on the Americas, April 3

Weekly News Update on the Americas

See also WW4 REPORT #107

-------------------

Reprinted by WORLD WAR 4 REPORT, April 10, 2005

by Bill Weinberg

"Oilmen are like cats; you can never tell from the sound of them whether they are fighting or making love."

--Calouste Gulbenkian

President Uribe Threatens San Jose de Apartado Following Massacre

by Virginia McGlone

After eight years of existence, the Peace Community of San Jose de Apartado in Antioquia, Colombia, continues to stand strong in the midst of a war that they do not want to be part of. But in the wake of the Feb. 21 massacre of community leader Luis Eduardo Guerra together with his eleven-year-old son and six close friends and relatives, the community faces the gravest crisis of its history.

Guerra and his comrades were massacred on their way to his cocoa grove, near Mulatos, one of the outlying settlements that dot the hills around San Jose de Apartado. An outspoken leader of the community who had traveled to participate in international human rights forums, Guerra had been receiving death threats for a year. In December, he was detained at a local army checkpoint and briefly interrogated by troops of the 11th Brigade. In August, his wife and young daughter were killed by a grenade left behind by the Army's 11th Brigade following a battle with guerillas in their settlement of La Union. Over the summer, two local campesinos at San Jose, Leonel Sánchez Ospina and Joaquin Rodríguez David, were assassinated by paramilitary gunmen who operate on village lands with the connivance of the army.

For months before the massacre, campesinos traveling from San Jose Peace Community settlements towards Apartado, the municipal seat some 20 kilometers away, were routinely harassed by soldiers, held at roadblocks and interrogated about their supposed support of the FARC guerillas. After denying any knowledge, they were accused of covering for the guerrillas, then sent back with a warning to the rest of the Peace Community threatening reprisals for guerilla collaboration.

In the days following the massacre, San Jose's settlements of Bella Vista, Alto Bonito and Buenos Aries came under indiscriminate machine-gun fire and bombardment by military helicopters, forcing some 200 campesinos to abandon their homes and groves.

Things have only deteriorated since then. An April 1 statement from the Peace Community reported a "massive displacement" of residents from various settlements as well as San Jose's central village towards the hamlet of La Holandita, where a refugee camp has been established. The mass flight, both from sporadic aerial bombardments and the military occupation of the villages, has prompted the attention of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, which has sent a team to San Jose.

The Peace Community had planned to celebrate its eighth year on March 22 by officially declaring seven of the settlements as Peace Zones, and demanding recognition by the government, paramilitaries and guerillas alike as communities of conscientious objection. Instead, they are alerting international human rights organizations of the dire emergency they face. The community's March 22 statement said that the government has made clear its "plans to do away with the Peace Community."

On March 15, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, meeting in Costa Rica, issued an urgent statement calling upon the Colombian government to comply with earlier orders to assure the safety of San Jose de Apartado's communities.

Colombian President Alvaro Uribe's response was to accuse the Peace Community of collaborating with guerrilla forces. In a speech delivered March 20, following a meeting of his Security Council in Carepa, Antioquia, Uribe said: "The peace communities have the right to establish themselves in Colombia thanks to our regime of liberties. But they cannot, as is practiced in San Jose de Apartado, obstruct justice, reject the Public Force... In this community of San Jose de Apartado there are good people, but some of their leaders, sponsors and defenders are seriously signaled by people who reside there as auxiliaries of the FARC, and they want to use the community to protect this terrorist organization."

Rights groups protest that Uribe's statement puts the community of San Jose at risk of another massacre by the army or paramilitaries. Uribe also criticized Peace Community members for their unwillingness to collaborate with the military investigation into the massacre. Peace Community leaders counter that they have every reason to mistrust the military. They point to the experience in 2000, when a similar massacre occurred at the settlement of La Union; when residents testified to authorities about the involvement of the military, many were threatened and some others were assassinated.

The Peace Community maintains that the government is working in bad faith as long as their village and settlements remain under military occupation. The community's March 22 statement cited the Colombian constitution's guarantee to self-determination and international law in support of their right to non-involvement in the war.

Meanwhile, human rights organizations within Colombia and around the world are waiting for Uribe to issue a formal reply to the demands of the Inter-American Court for Human Rights. Stateside peace groups which support the community, such as the Fellowship of Reconciliation, are struggling to give a public voice to San Jose de Apartado as the world's attention is elsewhere.

RESOURCES:

Fellowship of Reconciliation on the San Jose massacre