[A-List] News from Colombia

["bon moun" <sherrynstan@xxxxxxx>]

Ferocious persecution of Colombian oil workers

OPEN LETTER

27.10.2002 (By Hernando Hernandez, USO) As a consequence of our nationalist position in defence of oil as the driving force behind national development, the Colombian State has unleashed a ferocious persecution of the Oil Workers Union (USO).

It was our struggle that gave birth to the state oil company. ECOPETROL.

Today we are still fighting to prevent the privatisation of this company, which belongs to all Colombians. This persecution grew worse with the arrival of the neoliberal government of
Alvaro Uribe, slave to the multinationals, which, piece by piece, is dismatling the political, labour and fundamental rights that were achieved through the dignity and sacrifice of workers during their history of struggle.

In the last 14 years, around a hundred valient USO leaders and activists have been assassinated by State security forces and paramilitary groups; two have been detained and disappeared; ten have been kidnapped; more than two hundred have suffered the rigours of displacement from their places of work so as not to meet the same fate as those before them; and several live in exile abroad.

31 affiliates have been imprisoned for the crimes of rebellion, terrorism, kidnapping, homicide and damage to property, among other things. In spite of the bad intentions and manipulation of the Public Prosecutor's Office and the State security bodies, the courts passed a verdict of not guilty in favour of our USO comrades.

Currently, Ramon Rangel G, Alonso Martines, Luis E Viana and Jairo Calderon are being deprived of their freedom, charged with rebellion by the Public Prosecutor before a judge in Barrancabermeja.

The persecution against USO has reached such a point that our lawyers have also been the victims of threats, harassment and assassination. Doctor Eduardo Umana Mendoza was assassinated by hitmen in May 1998 when he was defending Pedro Chaparro and Cesar Carrillo, among others.

My family has been a victim of this outrageous persecution, orchestrated in particular by the DAS (secret police) and the 5th Brigade, who through various forms of intelligence have made statements designed to link us with members of the insurgency.

My father, Humberto Hernandez Gavanzo, who also belonged to the USO, the National Association of Campesino Land Users (ANUC) and was a member of the Regional Committee for Human Rights in Barrancabermeja, was assassinated on 19 March 1991. My brothers, Hector and Humberto, were criminally charged and investigated by the Public Prosecutor for rebellion.

As if all that were not enough, in recent months the security bodies have devoted themselves to fabricating evidence and paying witnesses in order to try my widowed mother, Elvia Pardo, my brother Fabio Hernandez and myself, for rebellion.

Because of my trade union activities, I have been the victim during the last 15 years of attacks, trade union persecution and threats on my life and those of my family.

Convinced of my innocence, yesterday (23 October) I made a statement to a lawyer acting for the National Centre for Human Rights, certain that there is no evidence against me except what state security bodies have been able to fabricate. As there was no evidence against me and I demonstrated that all the accusations were false, the Public Prosecutor's Office deferred my trial and decided not to detain me for the moment.

From the date mentioned, the Public Prosecutor has ten days to resolve my legal situation which he can do in one of two ways: archive the case or take security measures, in
which case I would be detained.

My call continues to be for unity, organisation and struggle in the defence of the interests of the people, of ECOPETROL, our convention and the USO, and if a strike is necessary to defend this, we will decide to organise one and carry it out.

I want to thank all of you, my trade union organisation and other trade unions, for your solidarity on the day of my statement.

NATIONAL EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE
HERNANDO HERNANDEZ
Secretary for International Relations

FREEDOM FOR OUR UNJUSTLY IMPRISONED COMRADES

LONG LIVE THE OIL WORKERS' UNION, THE ORGANISATION THAT MADE POSSIBLE THE
CREATION OF ECOPETROL FOR THE GOOD OF ALL COLOMBIANS AND WHICH WE WILL
CONTINUE TO DEFEND

OUR RESPONSE TO LABOUR, PENSION AND TAX REFORM IS UNITY, ORGANISATION AND
STRUGGLE

DOWN WITH URIBE VELEZ'S ANTI-WORKER REFORMS
(Translated by Liz Atherton, Colombia Peace Association)

[This next one needs more fact-checking.  It is interesting, but references to "Marine jungle troops" make me skeptical.  Marines are Marines.  There is no special "jungle Marine."  And the Powell Doctrine, which still holds sway with regard to decisive ground operations against real opposition, is not consistent with putting untested Marines in combat against a veteran combat force on its own turf, in support of a corrupt and incompetent foreign army, without a massive bombing campaign (a la Afghanistan) in advance. The "left" doesn't have a lot of resources, so it seems to me that preservation of our credibility is essential.  Using any rumor to beat one's opposition over the head is a good way to hand the stick to that opposition to beat us. -SG]

Marines Ordered into Colombia

February 2003 is Target Date

By Peter Gorman
Special to the Narco News Bulletin

October 25, 2002

IQUITOS, PERÚ—Two battalions of US Marine Jungle Expeditionary Forces have recently received deployment orders for insertion into Colombia this coming February, 2003.

According to reliable sources, the battalions, which with support will total roughly 1,100 men, will rotate in and out of southern Colombia, with orders to eliminate all high officers of the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia), scattering those who escape to the remote corners of the Amazon. The FARC hierarchy has been the subject of intensive US intelligence scrutiny for several years. The offensive will mean that the US is fighting wars on three fronts simultaneously: Afghanistan, Iraq and Colombia.

While this reporter did not see a battle plan, according to our sources the offensive will be led by the Colombian military, which will push the FARC south toward the waiting Marines. A similar but much smaller operation involving former US-SEALS was called off at the last minute two years ago. The Bush Administration is supposedly prepared to take the heat for as many innocent Indigenous peoples and Colombian campesinos — a number that could reach the thousands — as might be killed in the offensive.

The presence of US troops in battle in Colombia will be in direct contravention of the Congressional parameters of both Clinton’s Plan Colombia and Bush’s expanded Andean Initiative. But with the propaganda that has been churned out in the US media during the past year regarding terrorism—including Assistant Secretary of State Rand Beers’ claim that the FARC were training with Al Qaida (a statement he has recently and quietly rescinded) (see Narco News, September 10, 2002, “Beers ‘Corrects’ Falsehood Under Oath in DynCorp Case”)—the administration feels the American public’s outrage will be controllable.

The plan was sealed at a late September lunch between Colombia’s new right wing US puppet president Alvaro Uribe and Bush in Washington. The orders for the insertion were cut shortly afterwards.

The luncheon took place at the tail end of a UNITAS exercise between US Marine Expeditionary Forces and the Peruvian military, during which, for the first time ever, 600 Marines aboard the USS Portland, made their way up the international waters of the Amazon river to Peruvian territory on the Nanay river just outside of Iquitos.

Peruvian President Alejandro Toledo denied that the US presence indicated any future involvement of US troops on Peruvian soil, or the presence of a US base in Peru—which is not permissible under Peruvian law unless specifically authorized by the Peruvian Congress. But insiders saw the arrival of the USS Portland as a message to both the FARC and Peru. To the FARC the message was that the US can show up any time and cut off their southern river escape routes to Brazil, Peru and Ecuador in the face of a Colombian military offensive push to the south. To the Peruvians, and to Toledo personally, the arrival of the Portland with 600 Marine jungle troops was a reminder that he had crossed the line when he abruptly cancelled a joint Peruvian-US military training exercise called New Horizons in April, after a year of planning and less than a month before it was set to begin.

Planning for the Portland’s arrival on the Nanay river as part of the UNITAS exercise began at almost the same time Toledo cancelled the New Horizons program.

The US troops will probably operate out of both the US base at Manta on the coast of Ecuador as well as at a base built deep in the Peruvian jungle near the Putumayo river—Peru’s border with Colombia—in 1998-1999. That secret base was intended for joint use by both Peru and the US in the event of a Colombian military offensive that would push the FARC south to the Putumayo, but on its completion, then-president Alberto Fujimori ordered the US to leave it. That slap in the face of the US by the US-bought-and-paid-for Fujimori led directly to the coup arranged by the US which forced him into exile.

According to our sources, the administration will try to keep the presence of the Marines in Colombia secret for as long as possible, claiming casualties to be the result of training exercises or legal assistance to the Colombian military. But in the event that the American public discovers that we are actively engaging in an offensive war, the administration is said to be prepared to deal with that as it comes.

Bush has allegedly become a zealot in his drive to eliminate terrorism worldwide, and sees the FARC in that light. Reliable sources say that to ensure that the rest of the US sees them similarly, US government operatives at work in Colombia have been responsible for many of the bombings that have been laid at the feet of the FARC in recent months.

It is the hope of this reporter that the release of this information stops the operation before it begins and American men and women are put in a position where they will not only shed the blood of the peoples of Colombia, but will likely see their own shed as well.

No zealotry, no quest for Colombia’s oil riches, no Andean trade pact or any other excuse can justify our deepening involvement in the Colombian war.

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