<html>
<body>
<font size=3>
<a href="http://www.colombiajournal.org/colombia279.htm" eudora="autourl">
http://www.colombiajournal.org/colombia279.htm<br>
</a>March 17, 2008<br><br>
Bush Administration Fails to Acknowledge Existence of New Paramilitary
Groups in Colombia<br><br>
by Garry Leech<br><br>
The US State Department released its annual human rights report last week
and one of its implications with regard to Colombia is particularly
startling: There are no new paramilitary groups in Colombia! The
politicization of the latest edition of the report is most apparent in
its de-politicization of Colombia’s new armed groups by denying that they
are actually “paramilitary groups.” This is a political strategy on the
part of the Bush administration that allows it to blame virtually all of
Colombia’s political violence on the guerrillas and makes it easier to
refute allegations of links between the Colombian military and
paramilitariesafter all, there can be no such links if the
paramilitaries do not exist. <br><br>
The US State Department’s annual human rights report does not refer to
Colombia’s new paramilitary groups as “paramilitaries,” but rather as
“illegal” or “criminal” groups. The report states that the last United
Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) bloc demobilized in August 2006 and
suggests that the only remaining paramilitaries in Colombia are those
individual members of the AUC that refused to demobilize. This strategy
seeks to legitimize the Colombian government’s demobilization process by
implying that, besides a handful of AUC holdouts, there are no longer any
paramilitaries in Colombia.<br><br>
In reality, there is a wealth of evidence showing that there are dozens
of new paramilitary groups waging a dirty war in Colombia. Numerous human
rights groups have shown that new paramilitary groups operating under
names such as the New Generation or the Black Eagles do indeed exist and
that they are responsible for a significant percentage of the country’s
political violence. In 2006, the Colombian NGO Indepaz reported that 43
new paramilitary groups totaling almost 4,000 fighters had been formed in
23 of the country’s 32 departments. Last year, the OAS estimated that
there were 20 new paramilitary groups with 3,000 fighters operating in
Colombia. According to Alirio Uribe, a leading Colombian human rights
lawyer with the José Alvear Restrepo Lawyers’ Collective:<br>
There are forty-three new paramilitary groups but, according to the
Ministry of Defense, these new paramilitary groups have nothing to do
with the old ones. But the truth is, they are the same. Before they were
the AUC, now they are called the New Generation AUC. They have the same
collusion with the army and the police. It is a farce.<br><br>
The Belgium-based International Crisis Group (ICG) claims “there is
growing evidence that new armed groups are emerging that are more than
the simple ‘criminal gangs’ that the government describes. Some of them
are increasingly acting as the next generation of paramilitaries.” The
ICG goes on to note, “Some of these groups, such as the New Generation
Organization (Organización Nueva Generación, ONG) in Nariño have started
to operate much like the old AUC bloc in the region, including
counter-insurgency operations.” Even the title of an article published
last week by Colombia’s leading daily, <i>El Tiempo</i>, called the new
groups “paramilitaries.” The headline declared: “The New Generation of
Paramilitaries Already Exists in at Least Eight Departments of the
Country.”<br><br>
Despite all this evidence showing that the new armed groups are indeed
paramilitaries, the State Department insistsas does the Colombian
governmenton referring to them as “illegal” or “criminal” groups. The
Uribe administration illustrated its attitude towards the new
paramilitary groups last week after they killed six organizers of the
March 6 protests against State and paramilitary violence. Ivan Cepeda,
director of the human rights organization called Movement of Victims of
State Crimes, recently reported that the Black Eagles paramilitary group
had emailed a death threat to those organizations involved in planning
the protest. However, Colombia’s Interior Minister Carlos Holguin
publicly dismissed the political nature of the threat, claiming that the
Black Eagles are a “criminal organization.”<br><br>
The State Department’s annual human rights offerring makes clear that the
Bush administration is using the same playbook as the Colombian
government. In the report, the term “illegal groups” appears 35 times to
describe the new organizations and the State Department never once refers
to them as paramilitaries. The report claims that the new armed groups
are not focused on fighting Colombia’s leftist guerrillas, stating, “The
new illegal groups, which the government also described as new criminal
groups, … focused primarily on narcotics trafficking and extortion rather
than fighting the FARC or ELN. In these circumstances, it was often
difficult to determine responsibility for abuses committed.”<br><br>
This description of the new groups suggests in no uncertain terms that,
from the perspective of the State Department, they are primarily engaged
in criminal, rather than political, activities. Therefore, by
implication, they could not be waging a dirty war against suspected
guerrilla sympathizers nor could they be engaged in the country’s armed
conflict. Furthermore, the last sentence in the quote seeks to mask the
human rights abuses perpetrated by the new paramilitary groups. However,
by referring to the new “illegal groups” 35 times in its human rights
reportoften in reference to their having committed killings, forced
displacement and numerous other atrocitiesthe State Department makes
evident that these groups are responsible for a significant portion of
the country’s human rights violations.<br><br>
Because the new armed groups are in fact involved in Colombia’s civil
conflict, the report is inevitably riddled with contradictions. On the
one hand it seeks to portray the new groups as nothing more than criminal
organizations, and yet it states that the “country’s 43-year-long
internal armed conflict, involving government forces, two terrorist
groups (FARC and ELN), and new illegal groups, continued.” Thus, the
State Department contradicts its overall portrayal of the new groups by
acknowledging that they are indeed fighting the FARC and ELN. The report
also admits that the new armed groups are waging a dirty war against the
civilian population by noting that “new illegal groups killed
journalists, local politicians, human rights activists, indigenous
leaders, labor leaders, and others who threatened to interfere with their
criminal activities, showed leftist sympathies, or were suspected of
collaboration with the FARC.” <br><br>
The report goes on to point out, “New illegal groups also prevented or
limited the delivery of food and medicines to towns and regions
considered sympathetic to guerrillas, straining local economies and
increasing forced displacement.” Consequently, the State Department’s
report clearly illustrates that the new groups are
ideologically-motivated and engaged in the armed conflict in the same
manner that the paramilitaries of the AUC were in the past. <br><br>
The report also points out that the new groups collaborate with the
Colombian military, whose primary mission is to fight the guerrillas.
According to the report, “Some members of government security forces,
including enlisted personnel, noncommissioned officers, and senior
officials … collaborated with or tolerated the activities of new illegal
groups or paramilitary members who refused to demobilize. Such
collaboration often facilitated unlawful killings and may have involved
direct participation in paramilitary atrocities.”<br><br>
This quote also illustrates the manner in which the report repeatedly
refers to “paramilitaries who refused to demobilize” and the “new illegal
groups” as separate entities, thereby suggesting that the new groups are
not paramilitaries. For example, by deliberately using the word “or” when
referring to both (i.e. “tolerated the activities of new illegal groups
<i>or</i> paramilitary members who refused to demobilize”), the State
Department is clearly differentiating between the two armed actors even
though they are engaged in exactly the same military activities. And
despite the fact that the State Department admits that the new “illegal
groups” are collaborating with the Colombian military and are waging a
dirty war against those Colombians with “leftist sympathies,” it
mysteriously refuses to refer to them as “paramilitaries.” <br><br>
Undoubtedly, the State Department’s decision not to label the new groups
as “paramilitaries” is politically-motivated. It allows the Bush
administration to portray the Colombian government’s human rights
performance in a more favorable light by dismissing the violence
perpetrated by the new groups as common crimes rather than political
violence conducted in defense of the State. It also makes it easier to
blame the guerrillas for a majority of the conflict-related human rights
abuses since, according to the State Department, there are no new
paramilitaries to work hand-in-glove the Colombian military. And,
finally, the mislabeling of the new groups implies that paramilitary
violence is a thing of the past and helps cover up the fact that the
Uribe government’s demobilization process represented more of a
restructuring than a disbandment of the right-wing militias.<br><br>
<br><br>
</font><x-sigsep><p></x-sigsep>
<font size=3 color="#FF0000">Freedom Archives<br>
522 Valencia Street<br>
San Francisco, CA 94110<br><br>
</font><font size=3 color="#008000">415 863-9977<br><br>
</font><font size=3 color="#0000FF">
<a href="http://www.freedomarchives.org/" eudora="autourl">
www.Freedomarchives.org</a></font><font size=3> </font></body>
</html>