"According to the UN, there are up to three million internally displaced people in Colombia, making it the worst humanitarian crisis in the western hemisphere." [BBC News, July 8, 2004]
In Latin America, the report said, cocaine seizures set record highs last year. It praised Colombia, the world's top coca-cultivating nation and source of about 90 percent of cocaine in the United States, for both its seizures and its eradication efforts.
In 2000, the United States started Plan Colombia, a multibillion-dollar effort to fight cocaine production and trafficking in the country.
Anne Patterson, assistant secretary of state for international narcotics and law enforcement, said the plan has been a "dramatic success" because, in addition to reducing drug production, it has helped restore security in the country.
Elise Labott/CNN 01.Mar.06
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A U.S. government report to be released next week raises serious questions about the effectiveness of the multibillion-dollar U.S. anti-drug campaign in Colombia, despite moves by the Bush administration to extend the program.
The 52-page report by the Government Accountability Office, an advance copy of which has been obtained by The Chronicle, challenges administration conclusions that the drug interdiction effort known as Plan Colombia - a five-year program that ends this year - has reduced the amount of cocaine available in the United States.
SFChronicle 07.Dec.05
42% of 2006 enrollees at the appropriately infamous WHISC (formerly School of the Americas) - where death squads learn the tools of their trade - will be from the Columbian military.
stat. source - CIP Online 10.Feb.06
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WHISC at Wikipedia
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- Rank of Colombia among the world's most serious cases of forced displacement: 2nd, after Sudan
- Colombians forcibly displaced from their homes by violence, January 2000-September 2005: 1.8 million
- Increase in number of newly displaced persons, first three quarters of 2004 to first three quarters of 2005: 23%
- Of the displaced population, percentage who are women and children [PDF format]: 72%
A look at the numbers by Democracy Arsenal 18.Jan.06
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While the number of homicides in Colombia has dropped significantly in recent years, it is a decrease in criminal killings that accounts for the huge majority of this reduction. There has been little change in the number of civilian deaths related to the country's civil conflict.
Furthermore, according to the Bogota-based Resource Center for Analysis of the Conflict (CERAC), the Colombian military and its right-wing paramilitary allies have been responsible for 58 percent of Colombia's conflict-related civilian deaths over the past 16 years.
And yet, Washington set its anti-terror sights firmly on the leftist FARC following 9/11.
Garry Leech/Columbia Journal Online 20.Feb.06
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The United Steel Workers Union and the International Labor Rights Fund will file suit tomorrow, July 20 [2001], in US District Court for the Southern District of Florida (Miami) against Coke and Panamerican Beverages, Inc., the primary bottler of Coke products in Latin America. Additional defendants include owners of a bottling plant in Colombia where trade union leaders have been murdered. The case was initiated by SINALTRAINAL, the trade union that represents workers at the Coke facilities in Colombia.
SINALTRAINAL has long maintained that Coke is among the most notorious employers in Colombia and that the company maintains open relations with murderous death squads as part of a program to intimidate trade union leaders. The union is using the filing of this case on July 20, Colombian Independence Day, to renew its campaign to highlight that Colombia holds the terrible distinction of being ranked number one in the world for the number of trade union leaders murdered each year, and that Coke plays a key role in maintaining that distinction.
Other Plaintiffs include the Estate of Isidro Segundo Gil, a trade union leader who was murdered while working at the Coke bottling plant in Carepa, Colombia. The manager of that facility, owned by an American, Richard Kirby, who is also a defendant in this case, specifically threatened to kill the leaders of the union if they continued their union activities. He made good on the threat and ordered the murder of Mr. Gil.
Mindfully.org
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Killer Coke
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At the other end of the political spectrum are right-wing paramilitaries, with roots in vigilante groups set up decades ago by landowners for protection against rebels.
They have since become heavily involved in drug trafficking, and are backed by elements in the army and the police. The main group is the AUC - the United Self-Defence Forces of Colombia.
[...]
Critics point out that the price and purity of the cocaine on sale in America has remained stable - suggesting Plan Colombia is having little effect on supply.
BBCNews 24.May.05
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The Colombian government has failed to protect the basic human rights of millions displaced by the country's armed conflict, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. Displaced families are often denied access to education, emergency healthcare and humanitarian aid.The families interviewed for the 60-page report, Displaced and Discarded: The Plight of Internally Displaced Persons in Bogota and Cartagena, described fleeing their homes after receiving threats, being subjected to torture, or seeing relatives or neighbors killed. When they flee their communities and seek shelter elsewhere, they may wait weeks or even months for emergency aid, are often denied medical care, and may be unable to enroll their children in schools.
-HRW
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The Eloy Alfaro [Ecuador] base is used to rotate U.S. troops in and out of Columbia, and to house an immense network of private corporations who do most of the military's dirty work in Columbia. According to the Miami Herald, U.S. mercenaries armed with M-16s have gotten into fire fights with guerrillas in southern Columbia, and American civilians working for Air Scan International of Florida called in air strikes that killed 19 civilians and wounded 25 others in the town of Santo Domingo.
The base is crawling with U.S. civilians - many of them retired military - working for Military Professional Resources Inc., Virginia Electronics, DynCorp, Lockheed Martin (the world's largest arms maker), Northrop Grumman, TRW, and dozens of others.
It was U.S. intelligence agents working out of Manta who fingered Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia leader Ricardo Palmera last year, and several leaders of the U.S.-supported coup against Haitian President Bertram Aristide spent several months there before launching the 2004 coup that exiled Aristide to South Africa.
Conn Hallinan/FPIF 21.Nov.06
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Leonida Zurita is a cocalera peasant leader, a close ally of Bolivian President Evo Morales, and now an alternate senator in Bolivia's Congress. She has published an op-ed in the New York Times, spoken at Harvard University and several other U.S. schools, and is by far one of the most prominent women in Bolivian politics.
[...]
Senator Zurita was to visit the United States on a ten-year, multiple-entry visa she obtained in 1998 and has used several times. However, when she came to the American Airlines check-in counter in Santa Cruz three days ago, she was told that the U.S. embassy had called specifically to warn them not to honor her visa, which had been revoked.
"At the airport, we were told that we could not travel, by order of the ambassador," Zurita told Bolivia's daily La Razon.
CIPOnline 23.Feb.06
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-Nasa Indians in southwestern Colombian have launched a soft drink made from coca leaves, a staple among indigenous Colombians for centuries and the main ingredient in cocaine. The amber-colored soda, its promoters say, offers a home-grown alternative to Coca-Cola.
"People associate coca with cocaine. We wanted to convince people that coca is not the same as the drug and to allow indigenous people to be proud of the leaf," says David Curtidor, who leads the project.
Sibylla Brodzinsky/CSMonitor 22.Dec.05
Columbia:
Common Sense For Drug Policy
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Refugees International
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Robin Kirk
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Human Rights Watch
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Center for International Policy
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Columbia Journal Online
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Columbia Human Rights Network
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Amnesty International
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Open Democracy
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Pies Descalzos Foundation
