Colombian Troops Kill Farmers, Pass Off Bodies as Rebels’
SAN FRANCISCO, Colombia — All Cruz Elena González saw when the soldiers came past her house was a corpse, wrapped in a tarp and strapped to a mule. A guerrilla killed in combat, soldiers muttered, as they trudged past her meek home in this town in northwestern Colombia.
She soon learned that the body belonged to her 16-year-old son, Robeiro Valencia, and that soldiers had classified him as a guerrilla killed in combat, a claim later discredited by the local government human rights ombudsman. “Imagine what I felt when my other son told me it was Robeiro,” González said in recounting the August killing. “He was my boy.”
Funded in part by the Bush administration, a six-year military offensive has helped the government here wrest back territory once controlled by guerrillas and kill hundreds of rebels in recent months, including two top commanders of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC.
But under intense pressure from Colombian military commanders to register combat kills, the army has in recent years also increasingly been killing poor farmers and passing them off as rebels slain in combat, government officials and human rights groups say. The tactic has touched off a fierce debate in the Defense Ministry between tradition-bound generals who favor an aggressive campaign that centers on body counts and reformers who say the army needs to develop other yardsticks to measure battlefield success.
The killings, carried out by combat units under the orders of regional commanders, have always been a problem in the shadowy, 44-year-old conflict here — one that pits the army against a peasant-based rebel movement.
But with the recent demobilization of thousands of paramilitary fighters, many of whom operated death squads to wipe out rebels, army killings of civilians have grown markedly since 2004, according to rights groups, U.N. investigators and the government’s internal affairs agency. The spike has come during a military buildup that has seen the armed forces nearly double to 270,000 members in the last six years, becoming the second-largest military in Latin America.
There are varying accounts on the number of registered extrajudicial killings, as the civilian deaths are called. But a report by a coalition of 187 human rights groups said there are allegations that between mid-2002 and mid-2007, 955 civilians were killed and classified as guerrillas fallen in combat — a 65 percent increase over the previous five years, when 577 civilians were reported killed by troops.
“We used to see this as isolated, as a military patrol that lost control,” said Bayron Gongora of the Judicial Freedom Corp., a Medellin lawyers group representing the families of 110 people killed in murky circumstances. “But what we’re now seeing is systematic.”
The victims are the marginalized in Colombia’s highly stratified society. Most, like Robeiro Valencia, are subsistence farmers. Others are poor Colombians kidnapped off the streets of bustling Medellin, the capital of this state, Antioquia, which has registered the most killings.
Amparo Bermudez Dávila said her son, Diego Castañeda, 27, disappeared from Medellin in January 2006. Two months later, authorities called to say he had been killed, another battlefield death. They showed her a photograph of his body, dressed in camouflage.
“I said, ‘Guerrilla?’ ” she recalled. “My son was not a guerrilla. And they told me if I didn’t think he was a guerrilla, then I should file a complaint.”
Military prosecutors ordinarily initiate investigations when the army kills someone. In cases that appear criminal, civilian prosecutors take over, as they did in the slayings of Valencia and Castañeda in San Francisco. But human rights groups and government prosecutors say the initial probes have usually been perfunctory, and investigators have been under intense pressure from high-ranking military officers to rule in the army’s favor.
Such challenges have made tabulating the exact number of dead civilians impossible, though officials at the attorney general’s office and the inspector general’s office revealed recent estimates in interviews.
The attorney general’s office is investigating 525 killings of civilians, all but a handful of which occurred since 2002 and in which 706 soldiers and officers are implicated. The office has another 500 cases, involving hundreds more victims, yet to be opened. The inspector general’s office, meanwhile, is investigating 650 cases from 2003 to mid-2007 that could involve as many as 1,000 victims, said Carlos Arturo Gomez, the vice inspector general.
“Last year, the number of complaints shot up,” Gomez said. “Some have said the cause could be unscrupulous military members who want to show results from false operations. Others say it’s the product of pressure from the high command, the push for results.”
The trend has prompted concern among some members of the U.S. Congress. Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), chairman of the Senate Appropriations foreign operations subcommittee, said he is holding up $23 million in military aid until he sees progress in the fight against impunity and state-sponsored violence.
“We’ve had six years, $5 billion in U.S. aid. More than half of it has gone to the Colombian military, and we find the army is killing more civilians, not less,” Leahy said in an interview. “And by all accounts, all independent accounts, we find that civilians are just being taken out, executed and then dressed up in uniforms so they can claim body counts of guerrillas killed.”
President Álvaro Uribe’s government, which has had a string of recent successes against the FARC, has defended itself against the accusations and contends they are part of an international campaign designed to discredit the armed forces. Indeed, some officials say the FARC is prodding the families of rebels killed in combat to claim the dead were civilians.
Still, Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos acknowledges civilian deaths and has initiated steps that include new rules of engagement, assigning inspectors to combat units to advise commanders on the use of force and improving human rights training for soldiers.
The military has also been streamlining its justice system and transferring more cases to the attorney general’s office, which the United Nations says must have a greater role if extrajudicial executions are to be eradicated. The attorney general’s office said more than 200 members of the military have been detained as prosecutors investigate their involvement in the killings of civilians, with 13 convicted last year.
“I have said this very clearly: The soldier who commits a crime becomes a criminal, and he will be treated as a criminal,” Santos said.
Santos also has stressed, in speeches and directives, that the army’s anti-guerrilla policy should be more focused on generating desertions than accumulating combat kills, the traditional method of measuring success. “I’ve told all my soldiers and policemen that I prefer a demobilized guerrilla, or a captured guerrilla, to a dead guerrilla,” Santos said.
But the Defense Ministry’s reformers have been met by influential generals who have defended officers accused of slayings and favor a more traditional strategy for defeating the rebels.
That approach means giving field commanders autonomy and instilling a philosophy that stresses swift engagement with the rebels.
“What’s the result of offensives? Combat,” Gen. Mario Montoya, head of Colombia’s army, said in an interview. “And if there’s combat, there are dead in combat.”
Human rights groups see a disturbing trend, saying the tactics used by some army units are similar to those that death squads used to terrorize civilians. A top U.N. investigator said some army units went as far as to carry “kits,” which included grenades and pistols that could be planted next to bodies.
“The method of killing people perceived as guerrilla collaborators is still seen as legitimate by too many members of the army,” said Lisa Haugaard, director of Latin America Working Group, a Washington-based coalition of humanitarian groups.
After she interviewed a number of families of victims, she determined that in many of the cases soldiers “appeared to be going on missions, not accidentally detaining and killing people,” she said.
The highest-ranking officer implicated in extrajudicial killings is Col. Hernan Mejía.
A former army sergeant who was under Mejía’s command, Edwin Guzman, recounted in an interview how Mejía’s unit would kill peasant farmers, dress them in combat fatigues and call in local newspaper reporters to write about the supposed combat that had taken place.
Guzman, now a government witness against Mejía, said soldiers participated because they knew the army gave incentives — from extra pay to days off — for amassing kills in combat. “This is because the army gives prizes for kills, not for control of territory,” he said.
© 2008 The Washington Post
Diebold needs to send a bunch of their fine voting-machines down to Columbia — so these people can maintain their “democratically-guaranteed Freedoms” from their currently-oppressive Government.
[That’s what helped the landless-peasants in Venezuela and Bolivia/Nicaragua/Brazil…Right?]
Hey, that’s like what US troops do in Iraq and Afghanistan, killing civilians and then planting shovels or weapons on them so they can claim they’re “terrorists.” It’s also like what the US trained the Guatemalan military to do, killing (mostly indigenous) farmers and then planting weapons or false identification on them to deceive. The US also did it in Vietnam. And isn’t the US military supporting and advising the right-wing Colombian government?
Body count as a key metric of success.
After all, it worked so well in ‘Nam.
What? Not a vast left-wing conspiracy funded by Chavez? This piece does not sound like the Washington Post.
It would appear as if “La Violencia” has made a reappearance. Columbia is a case in point of the unequal social structure of Latin America that fatally and consistently cripples its’ progress. The armies of these nations have usually served as hired thugs for the elite and only excel at repression and are deficient in every other military yard stick.
As always, the Bush administration puts special emphasis on designating all peasant-based and/or urban and impoverished-based organizations as terrorists; after successfully designating these groups as terrorist it then directs supplies, training and continual propaganda support for the right-wing govenrment’s suppressive activities.
In Colombia’s case, the Bush regime is supporting a hard-right member of the nation’s narco-oligarchy (his Dad was killed before being extradited to the US to face drug trafficking charges)and who is unconcerned with the plight of the nations’ disposable peoples: the majority.
Uribe represents the sector in Colombia that regularly shops in the urban malls or flies to the US for shopping sprees. These affluent supporters employ a multitude of lowly paid servants whom placate their every whim. Their kids (who are used to ordering their adult servants about) are sent to exclusive (usually English/Spanish bilingual) schools where they cheat, bribe and harrass their way to graduation.
Such less than useless scum are always the recipients of the Bush regime’s largess. And if the lower-orders dare to aggressively push for dignity, survival and a future, they must simply be crushed.
Of course, the Bush clan is full of similar type people.
You must remember, the Bush clan (along with their cronies and other upper-class supporters) look upon themselves as the rightful and righteous accumulators of their wealth. Those members of the lower-orders whom attempt to reverse these arrangements are viewed as ignorant, dangerous upstarts that need to be eliminated as an example to others.
At present, the Bush clan has purchased an approximately 100,000 acres of Paraguayan land in the Chaco region. Their compound is located on top of the Guarani Aquafir which is one of the largest fresh water aguafirs in the world.
Their new family compound is also located near one of South America’s largest waterfalls; already these falls are being harnassed for their hydro-electric potential
A US military base is located near the Bush’s newly acquired property. The political establishment in Paraguay (which operates in a similar way to Colombia’s) has recently passed two laws: 1. non-extradition 2. no US military personnel will be subject to the rulings of any International Courts of Human Rights.
These two laws make way for the future criminal activities, within Paraguay, of US military personnel and the military contractors hired by the Bush’s.
Last, Paraquay’s small farmers are being pushed off their land in order to expand agro-business control over soybean production; soybean: a major component of ethanol.
Also, as an addition, the Rev. Moon organization has acquired almost a million acres of Chaco land nearby the Bush’s future residence.
The Bush family has a history of using their “good name”, status, and position of privilege to further the causes of the German Nazi Party, the Business Plot of 1933, radical Evangelicans, the Moonies and other dangerous and insane
right-wing political groups; in return, the Bush clan received political support and/or transfers of large amounts of money to their secret acoounts.
Only once has this “Family” had to pay for their crimes; that was when the Federal Government confiscated the family’s Conn.-based bank because they ran afoul of the Trading with the Enemy Act.
(Prescott helped organize the funding for the Nazi Party’s political campaigns; he also continued doing business with enemy companies during WWII.)
The American cancer spreads. Death for profit, in the false guise of democratic freedom, is the Bush foreign policy. Death for profit! Eliminate the profit, eliminate the deaths. Stop consuming and help eliminate death.
“Farmers as the enemy” is an evermore common theme in an age of chemically-dependent industrialism. Here, in the USA (”Untied Snakes of Aggression”), we’ve grown to depend on the economics of punishment to prop up rural economies, by imprisoning Cannabis farmers who dare to farm an agricultural resource that competes with the chemical pharmaceuticals, alcohol, chemical agriculture and toxic petroleum products being shoved down our throats by an outlaw regime.
Invade Ecuador? Shoot your peasants? We’re Colombia. We don’t need no stinking badges, we get more from W than the American people do. Nothing will happen to us, we’re Colombianos amigos de arbole.
I say we should give all those Colombian Government bastards American citizenship. They have already proven that they know how to “play the Game”. Hell, the School of the Americas has trained those murdering dictators so well, we don’t even have to use American Soldiers any more. Those foreigners can kill, kill, kill just as good as any patriotic American; and do it for pennies on the dollar. Farm out our military like we did with our manufacturing. Look at all the money we would save to give the likes of Exxon, GE and Bank America even bigger tax breaks.
If you haven’t already read the letter from the Venezuelan Minister of Communication to the Washington Post, I suggest that it further informs this article as to the nature of our south american policies. I hope readers will forward both of these articles together
Andrés Izarra | Letter from Venezuela’s Communications Minister to the Washington Post http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/03/28/7956/
Colombian Troops Kill Farmers, Pass Off Bodies as Rebels’
Washington Post http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/03/30/7973/
Georip your links are just another indication that the Post is becoming something of a rag. Venezuela and it’s wonderful president has been quite an amazing story. The trick is for one to maintain a free marketplace and he done so I suspect in some ways it is freer then ours.
Columbia must be reformed it has been hijacked and terrorized by the criminal Bush anti-American traitors and psycho child-killers administration. What people like Senator Leahy need to do is worry less about people running the full term of the election cycle and worry more about stopping himself from ultimately signing onto every nut extremist fascist thing the Bush administration wants. Why didn’t he realize the reason he was attacked with anthrax was to encourage his support of the criminal and unConstitutional so-called Patriot act. The fact that Bush the idiot opposite of Jesus Christ has gotten any support at all and any real power is in part due to papers like the Washington Post and New York Times who weave into their truthful words the lies of Bush.
I think there is nothing worst than a Liberal or Conservative Liberal although i hate using those terms at all they have come to mean nothing but lies…. there is nothing worse than a Liberal who repackages the lies of the fascist terrorist anti American treasonous traitor George Bush.
And lastly I had just found out American and British troops have also been taking along “kits” of guns and other weaponry to leave on the countless bodies of civilians they have killed. It is also the Bush administration who put forth the notion of using what they called the “Salvadore Option” (Ironic the world Salvadore or El Salvadore means “The Saviour”. ) This refers to using death-squads in Iraq and not long after we had that very thing occur. Also both the US and British forces working under the evil terrorist traitor George Bush have been the ones to foment the discord between the peoples of Iraq(eg divide and conquer) by dressing up as Arabs and using carbombs including bombings of mosques acting as if it is really Iraqis doing it. But the criminal cohorts in the media instead of revealing all of this just retell the filthy lies of the Bush administration.
The Post must change it’s wicked bastard editorial policies.
In IRAQ..if the USA tortures someone and they confess, they are Al Qaeda…if the USA tortures someone and they don’t confess, they are well disiplined Al Qaeda.
We’ve had six years, $5 billion in U.S. aid.
There’s your problem, Columbia. Break your cozy ties with the Beast Capital and your karma will improve tremendously.
balakirev
you certainly explain it quite well
I love Colombia, some of the finest people in the world, in my opinion
the movements there are all about drugs
legalize them all and put the bush’s/clinton’s etc out of business
use the taxes to fund for those less fortunate
IMPEACH and hang in public NOW!
Viva El Frente/Verde
Zoya,
No kidding. How did this slip through the censor at the WP? A rare piece of actually accurate journalism about this region of the world in the WP.
For all you Obama supporters: how do you square your support with a guy who supports this government and repeatedly attacks an actual democracy like Venezuela? The man is not about change, folks. Wake up.
The FARC was a legitimate political Party in Columbia gov’t from 1985-1995 until, after thousands of party members were assassinated, including two senatorial candidates and a presidential candidate, it headed for the hills. Now they are described, including by American media, as rebel, drug-running, kidnapping, communist, terrorists bent on upsetting the democratic government of Columbia-that is a friend of the U.S. Worse yet, FARC is being supported by the anti-american Venezuelan criminal Hugo Chavez. Sound a bit fishy? You bet. Follow the money. Look at multinational and American business interests in Columbia and you will understand why we have troops there guarding oil pipe lines and are giving 600 million/yr. and military equipment to the conservative Uribe gov’t ‘to fight drug lords.’
We haven’t redefined what “American Interests” are since the Halls of Montezuma. The significance of W in the presidency is not lost on Latin America. One must understand that Prescott Bushie’s daddy ran a local development bank in Central America which in less than a generation became a branch of the U.S. government; and that when the importation of African Slaves became illegal, a lot of people with plenty o’ money were out of business and looking for something new, presto — begin a plantation in Latin America and loan money. Sound like the end of Prohibition to anyone? Probably took a century to become part of the government. W doesn’t need to be smart, just in step.
As others have suggested above about identifying people slain by our military, seems to me that when Canada, (on behalf of NATO, on behalf of UNO, in defending USA from attacks by Afghanistan,) kills people in Kandahar province, the slain pretty well always are labelled as Taliban.
fire the photographer and vote for Obama!
The US has been supplying the Columbian Gov’t with weapons for quite some timee. If anyone supportss the govt of Columbia then they aree aanti-communist, right? Ando who would want to be anti-communits thess days…comunists ryle! and aanaarkists love E
Kill farmers call them rebels. Clearly the Israelis are advising the Columbian military on strategy
It’s a method that’s been used, countless times throughout the centuries, whenever the other options fail by both guerrilla armies or national militaries-and true to form, will ultimately fail!
It’s bottom line; a one-size fits all; squaring the circle, fuzzy kind of logic that pleases the dumber-than-a-stick, pinheaded `leaders.’ The absolute squalor, senseless arbitrary rules and bankrupting national treasuries simply to pursue the impossible!
To a good majority of you who commented… Columbia is a university and a river in the Pacific northwest. ColOmbia is the name of the country in South America. All of you writing Columbia demonstrate an ignorance that lessons your credibility.
just a bit of truth…
And who, may I ask, ‘trained’ these troops? The US is a cancer that is spreading all over the world.
Simple and universal enforcement of HUMAN RIGHTS would work!
Here we go again…back to the Reagan years, in more ways than one. Somebody call Ollie North and have him set up his drugs for guns program and renew talks with Iran!
AND I JUST BET THAT NOW SHE AND HER WHOLE FAMILY ARE CLASSIFIED AS ‘TERRORISTS’….GOOD LUCK FOLKS!
THIS IS HOW THE GREEN BERET AND SPECIAL OPS SWINE WILL DO IT IN AMERIKKKA WHEN THE NEW COLD WAR…THE COLD CIVIL WAR…HEATS UP…SO CALLED (IN THE MILITARY COMMISSIONS ACT) “BELIGERENTS” WILL BE ANYBODY THAT SPEAKS OUT, LOOKS LIKE A LEADER..ETC..ETC…AND THEY WILL SUDDENLY BE…”TERRORISTS”
DON’T PAY FOR IT IN APRIL…DO NOT PICK UP THE CHECK FOR THE BUSH DOCTRINE…
Not to forget the stolen “October Surprise” Prez election that let that rat-F^@ker ReaRAY-gun take over this country. Such a clear precedence, almost makes ‘00 & ‘04 selections look “just” (but only to brain-damaged elitist fascist psychopaths)
Ol-LIE was clearly involved with the delays to release the hostages, and deserved being tried as a traitor. But of course, he was just following his re-puke-lican bosses 100-yr plan to demolish America.
My intuition was throwing lightning bolts at me then, but I could hardly comprehend how bad it really was. Singlaub & Sicord and Nam assassinations with “off-the-shelf” wet workers, for plausable deniabilty.
Oh I wish for the days, when we actually had a govt who cared enough of what people thought to attempt to sound plausible - maybe not. Their (previous & current) outright greed and elitist hubris are now well planted to grow to fruition of expanding public consciousness.
What nasty spawn of the devil’s revenge will result, is unlikely to be in any way pleasant.
Namaste.
The Clinton/Gore administration authorized $1.2 billion for the purchase of helicopters manufactured by United Technologies of Conn., home state of Sen. (& good Bush/McCain buddy) Lieberman, and the other half to be built in Texas. The excuse was to eliminate coca fields. Since those helicopters were sent to Colombia, right wing forces with the able assistance of U.S. military/CIA have caused havoc on that country. Thousands dead, crops destroyed, banana plantations killed with pesticides sprayed from those helicopters. Many farmers saw their crops destroyed so they couldn’t feed their families. Why doesn’t anyone ask the witch if she would continue this mayhem if she were president?
If the US wanted to really stop the drug lords of south America, for far less cash than they now spend..they could simply BUY all the produce directly from the farmers.. but that makes too much sense
YES FOLKS YOU THINK SEEING THE WORD COLOMBIA ENOUGH TIMES WOULD MAKE YOU SPELL IT CORRECTLY. OK YOU AMERIKANS.