What
You're Missing in Our Subscriber-only CounterPunch Newsletter
Special Investigation:
Have Journalists Been Deliberately Murdered in Iraq by the US
Military?
Our new
CounterPunch newsletter, just out, Christopher Reed examines
the growing body count of journalists in Iraq and documents numerous
incidents where US troops have deliberately targeted reporters.
Charles Glass offers a
stark comparison of the uprooting of Palestians in the Galilee
during the 1948 war to the lush compensation of Israelis living
on the same land who were displaced by the war on Lebanon. Remember, we are funded
solely by the subscribers to the print edition of CounterPunch. Please support this
website by buying a
subscription to our newsletter, which contains fresh material you
won't find anywhere else, or by making a donation towards the
cost of this online edition. Remember contributions are tax-deductible.Click
here to make a donation. If you find our site useful please:Subscribe
Now
On Thanksgiving Day in the USA, Nov.23,
2006, I traveled to Bogota,Colombia, in order to attend an International
Tribunal on Impunity. My friend Patricia Dahl had agreed to be
one of the judges on this Tribunal, and I decided that this would
be an important event for me to witness.
We took three planes that day
to get there, but we arrived safely and were met at the airport
by persons from the organizing group, Justicia y Vida (Justice
and Life). We were brought to the apartment of the main organizer
of the Tribunal, Prof. Lilia Solano, of the National University
of Colombia in Bogota. The following morning we went as a group
to the Senate of the Republic of Colombia. The other organizer,
Senator Alejandro Lopez, had arranged for use of Senate chambers
for an official hearing on Impunity. Over the course of the next
two days judges from all over Europe and North America heard
testimony by the relatives of victims who had been assassinated
by paramilitaries in two specific neighborhoods of Bogota: Ciudad
Bolivar and Cazuca.
In Colombia, I have been told,
only three out of every one hundred murders lead to governmental
prosecution. It is a country where one can obviously get away
with murder, and many, many do. This is what impunity is all
about. The president of Colombia arranged for members of paramilitary
death squads to be demobilized last year, if only they would
confess to their crimes and get a light sentence. Many of these
paramilitaries have gotten off and have regrouped in new death
squads and continue their murderous activities. In Ciudad Bolivar
and Cazuca, over one hundred and fifty young men have been assassinated
over the past two years. Their offenses? They did not want to
become members of the paramilitaries. They just wanted to be
left alone to go to school or to work. Following the Bush Doctrine:¨You
are either with us or you are against us!¨, the paramilitaries
killed them.
It was painful to watch as
family member after familly testified as to how their son or
their brother was assassinated on the streets of their poor barrios.
In Colombia, if you stand up and denounce the government or the
military or the paramilitaries you stand a chance of being killed
yourself. So it was amazing to see how many brave people came
into the Senate chamber and publicly testified. Some chose not
to speak in public, and spoke from behind a wall into a microphone
so that all of the people in the hall could hear what they had
to say, but could not see them. At the end of the second day,
the judges met and pronounced judgement: the Colombia government
had allowed the existence of paramilitary death squads and had
been complicit in the deaths of these young men. Not only that,
but the US government had also been complicit in aiding and abetting
the Colombian government by providing arms to the Colombian military
which then turned them over to the paramilitaries. The entire
judgement should be available by now on the Colombian website,
which I believe is www.justiciayvida.org. I can provide additional
information regarding this matter at a later date.
The day after the Tribunal
ended a woman from Jusiticia y Vida brought us to the areas where
the murders had taken place, Ciudad Bolivar and Cazuca, the paramilitary
stronghold. In this area the dominant industry is the manufacture
of cement and most of the community life is centered around the
huge area where cement is made on the side of a mountain quarry.
There is housing built by the company in the valley for thousands
of people, and it actually looks decent. There is also a shopping
mall(!!) where families take their children for amusement rides,
food,etc. I was surprised to see how nice the mall was. Far different
from the squallor in the hills surrounding the valley. Thousand
more live in shacks on the side of a mountain where there is
one dirt road in and out. There are no sidestreets. People have
to walk down the side of the mountain to go anywhere, and, of
course, walk or climb back up. Their houses houses are tin shacks
for the most part. There is no running water. I was told by my
guide that the families were allowed a gallon of fresh water
a week!
There was plenty of beer and
Coca Cola. If you live in the ¨Heights,¨ on the side
of the mountain, you do not go outside at night. The paramilitaries
will kill you if you do not obey their curfew. If you look at
them the wrong way they will kill you. I had heard testimony
to that effect over the last two days and they were not kidding.
This is what impunity means in Colombia: the lack of a government
which has respect for law and order; state terrorism.
The remarkable thing is that
women like the one who guided us around worked in that community
and tried to teach the children and educate their parents about
the need for human rights. When I return to Bogota in about ten
days I hope to video this woman and her struggle to empower the
members of this community. Colombia is a country where many people
are struggling to end the violence of the past century, and she
is one of the extraordinary people I have met in my travels there.
The next day, Monday, Nov.27,
2006, my delegation traveled for another hearing under the auspices
of the Senate of the Republic of Colombia. I was flown to the
town of San Onofre, not far from Cartagena, in the northwest
part of the country. I was actually flown in an airplane owned
by the military, out of a military base and into a military base,
and from there by bus for another hour. We were protected by
dozens of soldiers on motorcyles to and from the town of San
Onofre.
This public hearing was attended
by about a thousand local residents in a sports stadium. This
event was co-sponsored by another organization representing the
families of victims of the violence in Colombia. We spent hours
listening to people testify as to how their relatives were either
assassinated on the street or brought to a concentration camp
called Palmar to be tortured and killed.
Over the last ten years the
paramilitaries in this area have killed more than three thousand
people. Over six hundred bodies have been found on the hacienda
of Palmar. There has been so much corruption in this area that
several weeks ago the Supreme Court of Colombia arrested three
of the state Senators from this area. This has been a great scandal
in Colombia, and there have been rumors that many in the Urribe
administration may follow with prosecutions in the coming months.
President Urribe has been implicated in the past for being involved
with not only paramilitaries, but with drug trafficking in Antioquia,
the region where he formerly served as Governor. (The area to
which I will be flying tomorrow, by the way).
So, what do these tribunals
and public showings accomplish? One could be cynical and say
nothing. But, I think not. I think that the issue of impunity
has for a long time been one of a taboo in Colombia, and now
people are finally getting up the nerve to talk about it openly
and trying to end it. People have had enough. ¡Ya Basta!
Enough is enough! Only time will tell what significance these
events will have for Colombia. But, I can tell you that I am
glad to have witnessed the uprising of the poor people in this
country and their cries for justice.
Robert Gold is an activist with the Brooklyn Greens.
CounterPunch
Speakers Bureau Sick of sit-on-the-Fence speakers, tongue-tied and timid?
CounterPunch Editors Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St Clair
are available to speak forcefully on ALL the burning issues,
as are other CounterPunchers seasoned in stump oratory. Call
CounterPunch Speakers Bureau, 1-800-840-3683. Or email beckyg@counterpunch.org.
