Breaking the Grip? Obstacles to Justice for Paramilitary Mafias in Colombia

This 140-page report assesses Colombia’s progress toward investigating and breaking the influence of paramilitaries’ mafia-like networks. It also describes government actions that pose serious obstacles to continued progress. The report is based on interviews with prosecutors and investigators, case files, witness testimony, and other material collected over the course of more than one year of research in Colombia.

HRW Index No.: 1-56432-385-4
October 16, 2008 Report
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HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH

U.N. says Colombian military executing civilians

- U.N.: Executions of innocent civilians "systematic and widespread"
- U.S.-backed Colombian forces killing civilians in counterinsurgency campaign
- Top U.N. human rights officer: Killings could constitute a "crime against humanity"
- President fired 25 army members after executions of at least 11 young men

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http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/americas/11/01/colombia.UN/index.html#cnnSTCVideo

Colombia: Government Hampers Justice Efforts Investigations of Paramilitary Mafias Need International Support

Colombia's paramilitaries have committed crimes against humanity and other atrocities, including thousands of killings, massacres, threats, enforced disappearances, and forced displacement of civilians. They have amassed enormous wealth and influence, in part through mafia-style alliances with members of the military, politicians, and businesspeople.

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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