Colombian security forces are murdering civilians and making it look as if they were killed in combat

More than 100 claims of civilian deaths at the hands of the security forces have emerged in recent weeks alone, from nine different parts of Colombia.

Intimidation and murder in Coca-Cola’s Colombian factories

The graffiti that used to read “Death to trade unionists!” has been painted over. Now there is nothing to announce that this ordinary house is home to Sinaltrainal (Sindicato Nacional de Trabajadores de la Industria de Alimentos — the National Union of Food Industry Workers). This is the biggest trade union in the “Coca-Cola system” in Colombia, representing more than half the organised Coke workers — although after more than a decade of attacks and intimidations, the membership is nothing like as big as it once was.

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Written by Trinitny News

Secrets from a macabre chapter of the history of Colombia’s banana growing region.

If in the mid-1990s the Convivir had the go-ahead of the national government, the problem is that Hasbún was not only a banana plantation owner and rancher, but also that he had been for quite a while a commander, alias “Pedro Ponte,” of the paramilitary organization the Autodefensas Campesinas of Córdoba and Urabá (Peasant self defense forces on Córdoba and Urabá).

SEMANA/Nation

Inside Colombia’s Hostage War

by Maureen Orth November 2008

Treasury Designates FARC International Commission Members

Washington, DC-- The U.S. Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) today designated eight international representatives of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), a narco-terrorist organization. Today's action was taken pursuant to the Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Designation Act (Kingpin Act), which applies economic sanctions against significant foreign narcotics traffickers and organizations, like the FARC.

"Today's designation exposes eight `International Commission members' of the FARC," said Adam J. Szubin, Director of OFAC. "Through their service to the FARC as international representatives and negotiators, these persons provide material support to a narco-terrorist organization. OFAC is relentless in its pursuit of exposing those who fuel and support the terrorist activities of the FARC."

The following eight individuals designated today have been identified as the key members of the FARC's International Commission: Jairo Alfonso Lesmes Bulla ("Javier Calderon"), Efrain Pablo Trejo Freire, Orlay Jurado Palomino ( "Commander Hermes"), Ovidio Salinas Perez ("El Embajador"), Jorge Davalos Torres, Francisco Antonio Cadena Collazos ("El Cura Camilo"), Nubia Calderon de Trujillo ("Esperanza"), and Liliana Lopez Palacios ("Olga Lucia Marin"). These International Commission members represent the FARC in Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay, Brazil, Peru, Ecuador, Venezuela, Panama, Mexico, and Canada.

U.S. Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets