Bush touts Colombia trade pact

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Associated Press

Bush touts Colombia trade pact
Congress withholds approval
Ben Feller
Associated Press
May. 3, 2007 12:00 AM

WASHINGTON - President Bush urged a wary Congress on Wednesday to give Colombian President Alvaro Uribe a fair hearing and approve a free-trade deal with his scandal-tainted government.

"The president is here to speak strongly about his record, and it's a good, solid record," Bush said on the White House South Lawn alongside Uribe, his staunchest ally in Latin America.

"I thank the members of Congress for giving him a hearing," Bush said. "We expect them to be open-minded." free-trade deal and maintain a strong military-aid package from the United States.
(snip)

After being signed by the Bush administration in November, the trade agreement is now stalled in Congress, which must approve it, due to Democratic concerns over Colombia's human-rights record and the government's ties to right-wing paramilitary groups.


Read more: http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0503bush-colombia0503.html

[Atman]

1. I saw the headline and thought this was an old story from his college days.

:hi:

.

[Judi Lynn]

2. Victims in Colombia Are Gagged, the Public Misinformed

Victims in Colombia Are Gagged, the Public Misinformed
Interview with Father Javier Giraldo

BOGOTÁ, May 2 (IPS) - When a murder occurs in a Colombian community, the locals know who committed it: far-right paramilitaries, leftwing guerrillas, or the security forces. They also know if fighting really took place, or if the "enemy" bodies displayed on television as "trophies" by army officers were in fact dead civilians.

A large proportion of the casualties in Colombia's decades-long armed conflict are civilians. The violence between leftist rebel groups on one hand and rightwing paramilitary militias and government forces on the other is further fuelled by drug trafficking, corruption and impunity. Amid the chaos and pressure from all sides, local people are in the best position to know precisely what happened.

But the truth seldom makes it into media coverage, says Jesuit priest, sociologist and human rights expert Javier Giraldo, founder of the Inter-Church Justice and Peace Commission, who spends his time with communities in the most violent regions of the country, provides them with legal advice and gives voice to their accusations.

In Colombia, "the people cannot communicate with the people," and the right to information and communication does not exist, except for a small minority, Giraldo said in an interview with IPS ahead of World Press Freedom Day (May 3).

More:
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=37578

[Judi Lynn]

3. Colombia Paramilitary Killings: Caves, Rivers and Farms Yield Up The Dead

Colombia Paramilitary Killings: Caves, Rivers and Farms Yield Up The Dead
by El Tiempo

Caves, the new cemeteries:

El Tiempo, Bogota -- A shoulder blade with the inscription: “Pray for us now and in the hour of our death”. This is the content of one of the graves of the paramilitaries (‘paras’). To arrive at this place, they (the investigators) had to walk two hours across open fields and put up with a sickening stench while descending with ropes more than 10 metres underground.

The ‘paras’ thought nobody was going to come there but on July 21 the authorities found four of their victims. The grave was camouflaged in a natural cave at a place called ‘White Stones’, just ninety minutes from Bogota. This find would have been impossible without the information of a former ‘para’ wanting to reduce his punishment, moral and judicial. The surprise was great when the skeleton of a dog and the remains of a boy and another adult appeared. The investigators are certain that there are other caves that the ‘paras’, acting in Cundinamarca province or its periphery, converted into cemeteries. More than 70 common graves have been found in small settlements. Cundinamarca has borne the actions of bloodthirsty ‘paras’ like the Eagle, the Indian and the Bird.

10.000: The number of people reported as missing in Cundinamarca since 1998.

‘The River Is An Accomplice’:

If the justice system in Colombia could call upon rivers to testify, Sinú, San Jorge, Cauca, Magdalena, Catatumbo, Atrato and San Juan would clear up hundreds of crimes of the paramilitaries.

For years, these armed groups used their waters to dispose of the victims. It was all a military strategy. Ramón Isaza, commander of Magdalena Medio, confessed at the beginning of the year that all his dead ended up in the Magdalena.The paramilitary boss, Salvatore Mancuso, said that the body of the indigenous leader, Kimy Pernía, kidnapped in 2001 was dug up from a grave and thrown into the Sinú. But the strategy did not always work. The Cauca was perhaps the only river that did not swallow up all of the dead. At Beltrán, a small settlement of fishermen, people killed in the North Valley are beached at the bend of the river, between logs and garbage. Narcés Palacio, gravedigger, remembers burying some 500 bodies in common graves. “The bodies came at times in pieces; a foot arrived and later a head. Some had been tortured”. Blood does not stop flowing. The bodies keep coming down but the fishermen, under threat, no longer recover them. “Now one kicks them to keep them moving,” says one of them.

More:
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=9&ItemID=12727

[Judi Lynn]

4. Kick!

:kick: :kick: :kick:



Alvaro Uribe and his American pal.