"In fact, my working with the Association of Indigenous Councils is at
a moment when more indigenous peoples, through this regime of Alvaro
Uribe, have been threatened, killed, disappeared or attacked than
[even] in any other previous [Colombian] regimes, which has a lot to
say about what=92s going on.."
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Amnesty International and the Fellow****p of Reconciliation came out
with a scathing re****t in May=97late April, early May this year,
do***enting how the regiments, the army units that the Colombian army
is receiving the most money of Colombian=97of US sup****t are directly
involved in extrajudicial executions, a story that has been re****ted
in the Los Angeles Times and the Wa****ngton Post but that,
unfortunately, as you know, doesn=92t get the drumbeat that this
dramatic rescue would get.
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Guests:
Mario Murillo, Professor of communications at Hofstra University and
producer at Pacifica radio station WBAI here in New York. He is author
of Colombia and the United States: War, Terrorism and Destabilization
and is completing a book on the indigenous movement in Colombia and
its use of popular media in community organizing.
Michael Evans, Director of the Colombia Do***entation Project at the
National Security Archive.
Manuel Rozental, physician, human rights activist, member of the
Hemispheric Social Alliance and the Association of Indigenous Councils
of Northern Cauca in Colombia. Fled to Canada in 2005 following
several threats on his life.
=2E..
MICHAEL EVANS: Sure. Thanks for having me on the show. General Mario
Montoya is the commander of the Colombian army, and he has a sort of
spotted history with respect to human rights.
And it=92s im****tant to=97for the listeners of this show to realize that
there=92s another side to the coin with the FARC. Few people have
illusions that the FARC are well-intentioned liberals, but the other
side of it are the right-wing paramilitary groups that have operated
virtually unhindered in Colombia for decades.
Mario Montoya, the general that Ingrid hugged=97and I haven=92t seen the
Inter Press story, but I can imagine where it goes=97just last year was
the subject of a CIA re****t leaked to the Los Angeles Times that
implicated him in a joint operation with paramilitary forces in the
city of Medellin just a few years ago, when he was a commander of an
army brigade there. And Montoya, throughout his career, has been
dogged by these kinds of allegations. A unit that he was a member of
in the late 1970s, when he was a young intelligence officer, had
actually formed a supposedly independent spontaneous paramilitary
group known as the Triple A, the American Anticommunist Alliance, that
was responsible for bombings and other kinds of threats and
intimidation, sort of black ops type operations in Colombia. The unit
that he was associated with created it as a completely clandestine
project. So General Montoya has a lot to answer for, as does President
Uribe. You know, many of his political allies have been implicated in
the parapolitical scandal, a scandal touched off by the discovery of a
paramilitary laptop a couple of years ago..
AMY GOODMAN: The Triple A, what is it, Michael Evans?
MICHAEL EVANS: Yeah, the Triple A was a group, again, that in the late
1970s and early 1980s operated as a clandestine unit of a Colombian
military intelligence unit. Essentially, they were formed completely
covertly, behind the scenes, without any attribution to the Colombian
army. They were responsible for bombing the Communist Party
headquarters and some other acts of intimidation around that time.
It=92s really the first do***ented evidence that I=92ve seen, at least in
US government do***ents, declassified do***ents, where a Colombian
army unit is directly tied to a clandestine paramilitary group or
right-wing=97
AMY GOODMAN: And its relation to the United States?
MICHAEL EVANS: Well, its relation to the United States, as far as I
know, ends where=97in a cable re****ted from the US ambassador, Diego
Asencio, in 1979, where he knows of this project and says=97kind of
downplays it and says, well, it=92s not a big deal; you know, these are
kind of dirty tricks being carried out by a desperate military facing
this guerrilla threat from the=97what then was the M-19 guerrillas. But
the US certainly knew about that project, and if they had done a
little digging, would have known that Mario Montoya was a part of it,
the man, of course, who is now the senior Colombian army official that
is considered a great ally of the United States.
AMY GOODMAN: Manuel Rozental, can you return to Colombia today?
MANUEL ROZENTAL: Yeah, actually, I have been returning to Colombia,
and my situation is not unusual, in that many of the people under
threat actually go back to Colombia and have to be very careful and
keep looking for mechanisms to work with social movements. In fact, my
working with the Association of Indigenous Councils is at a moment
when more indigenous peoples, through this regime of Alvaro Uribe,
have been threatened, killed, disappeared or attacked than in any
other previous regimes, which has a lot to say about what=92s going on.
But, Amy, I wanted to point out something. Maybe you saw this, or the
people listening to us. There was a 60 Minutes special on the Chiquita
Brands scandal. The Chiquita is, of course, a banana company. And the
do***entary actually interviewed the CEO of Chiquita that had pleaded
guilty of funding the paramilitary forces. But the argument he
presented was that he was forced to fund the paramilitaries in order
to survive, because he was threatened by them.
The main point here is that the person doing the interview managed to
get through to Mancuso, the paramilitary commander and a close friend
of Uribe=92s, and Mancuso stated clearly in the program that many people
saw in the US that there was never a threat, and it was out of
consideration that there would be any tense relation****p or threat
between three companies=97Dole, Chiquita, and Del Monte=97in Colombia,
because they were actually allies. He actually said clearly, =93They
funded us. They armed us. They trained us,=94 which is very im****tant.
In fact, just a few days after this came out to the US public, Mancuso
and another fourteen paramilitaries were taken, extradited into the
US, so that they would be charged for drug trade and all the crimes
against humanity and all the names he said he was going to name=97
Mancuso said he was going to denounce the direct links between the
multinational US cor****ations, the US government, the Colombian
government and the paramilitaries to the State Department and
Department of Justice. And just after he says that, he is thrown into
jail into darkness in the US, so that all these criminal activities
and the architecture of power in Colombia could not be exposed. All
this stuff is covered up.
And then, the links between cor****ate interest, paramilitary death
squads, the Uribe and the Bush administration have been hidden,
covered up completely. And then, the real problem in Colombia, which
is an experiment from transnational cor****ations through the Uribe
administration with the sup****t of the Bush and the US government, can
be hidden, and further hidden with what just happened.
As was being explained before, the whole paramilitary and death squad
machinery in Colombia has been in existence for a long time with clear
US sup****t, with direct involvement of military and paramilitary
forces in Colombia, and the Uribe regime is directly linked to all
that.
AMY GOODMAN: It seems that the FARC has served the president of
Colombia very well=97Uribe. The US has given billions of dollars to
Colombia. Mario Murillo, let=92s end there.
MARIO MURILLO: Yeah. Well, I would make the argument that the FARC
continue to be a kind of crutch for Uribe,...McCain is touting it as a
success story..without pointing out what already has been said, as
well as the=97it=92s not only a thing of the past, it=92s a thing of the
present.
Amnesty International and the Fellow****p of Reconciliation came out
with a scathing re****t in May=97late April, early May this year,
do***enting how the regiments, the army units that the Colombian army
is receiving the most money of Colombian=97of US sup****t are directly
involved in extrajudicial executions, a story that has been re****ted
in the Los Angeles Times and the Wa****ngton Post but that,
unfortunately, as you know, doesn=92t get the drumbeat that this
dramatic rescue would get. .
=3D =3D =3D
AMY GOODMAN: Let me turn to Manuel Rozental. Your response right now,
as a man who has fled Colombia, a physician, a human rights activist,
now living in Canada, hearing the description of the FARC and also
talking about the Uribe government? It=92s interesting that Ingrid
Betancourt, perhaps the most well-known hostage, who has now returned
to France=97said she may run for president again, in fact ran against
Uribe=97said Colombian President Alvaro Uribe should soften his tone
when dealing with FARC guerrillas. She urged Uribe to break with the
language of hatred. Manuel?
Mario Murillo: We also have to point out that to use the term
=93hostages=94 in their case=97not to justify that they were held for five
years, by no stretch of the imagination=97but to use the term =93hostages=
=94
is very problematic in the context in which they were operating in
southern Colombia. They were there in 2003, two years=97a year and a
half after President Bush already authorized US servicemen and
contractors to conduct counterinsurgency, not counter-drug operations.
That was in the heart of where the FARC were operating, in Caqueta and
in the southern part of the country. So we will never get to the
bottom of what exactly these folks were doing down there=97again, not to
justify, but I think that=92s one of the many questions that are left
unsaid.
MANUEL ROZENTAL: Yes. Hi, Amy. Indeed, it=92s very interesting. I, first
of all, have to say, like I think almost every Colombian, that we were
absolutely elated by the liberation of Ingrid and that her condition
is good, and one cannot downplay that. Regardless of how it was
achieved, it was fantastic that she was released unharmed and that all
the other ones were, as well.
Also, what Mario was saying, they were really fourteen prisoners of
war and one hostage released. The fourteen prisoners of war,
mistreated, abused, and I=92m also glad, as everybody, that they=92re free
[But "1 hostage and 14 prisoners of war" is not the same as "15
hostages"]
Excerpted from
http://www.democracynow.org/2008/7/8/as_freed_us_contractors_speak_out
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STILL FEELING LIKE THE MAINSTREAM U.S. COR****ATE MEDIA
IS GIVING A FULL HONEST PICTURE OF WHAT'S GOING ON?
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