[NOTE:
"Turning a blind eye" is an understatement. Powerful circles in the
Colombian establishment, government and military are actually promoting
the death-squads and providing every possible assistance to them. The Fift
Army Brigade has gone as far as to launch an elaborate disinformation campaign
on the internet through front groups disguised as "patriotic Colombian
civilians." -DG]
Human rights groups in Colombia, who have seen 21 of their workers
killed by right-wing militias this year, accuse the Government of turning
a blind eye to the expansion of paramilitary armies, which have grown in
recent years into an independent force made up of some 4,000 gunmen, intent
on dislodging rebels from rural areas that are also drug- producing regions.
THE TIMES [London]
Wednesday, 6 October 1999
Colombia militias murder peasants
By Gabriella Gamini
GUADALUPE, Colombia -- Paramilitary gun men terrorising rural
Colombia dumped the bullet-riddled bodies of ten peasants on the cobbled
central square of this small farming village to convey their message.
"Rebel sympathisers face execution" was scrawled in blood on a brick
wall near the village square. Dozens of hooded gunmen wearing regulation
army uniforms, but also the black armbands that identify them as right-wing
paramilitaries, had taken the village by surprise during the midday siesta.
They raided several homes and dragged out young men, whom they accused
of being supporters of left-wing guerrillas, before beating them, performing
a summary trial and shooting them as other villagers watched.
By the time that Colombian police and a handful of journalists arrived,
the bodies had been in the square for two days.
Villagers had hidden in their homes, frightened that if they attended
to the bodies the paramilitaries would return and accuse them of being
rebel sympathisers. "They said that they would kill all those who were
friends with those executed," said Estella de Guaira, 54, whose 26-year-old
nephew was killed.
Until recently Guadalupe was a sleepy village inhabited by 2,000 banana
growers and campesinos who cultivate the coca leaf, the crop used by drug
barons to produce cocaine. It had been one of the lucky few rural areas
unaffected by Colombia's spiralling violence.
But it happened to be in the path of the growing band of paramilitaries
that has recently expanded control over Colombia's northeastern states,
bordering Venezuela. The militias have emerged as the third force in Colombia's
40-year civil war between the military and left-wing guerrillas.
Human rights groups in Colombia, who have seen 21 of their workers killed
by right-wing militias this year, accuse the Government of turning a blind
eye to the expansion of paramilitary armies, which have grown in recent
years into an independent force made up of some 4,000 gunmen, intent on
dislodging rebels from rural areas that are also drug-producing regions.
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