Colombia's Uribe and coup President Lobo sign an agreement on safety and education in Bogotá

The United Nations denounced on October last year that Colombian ultra-right paramilitaries of the AUC had entered Honduras since the June 28th coup d'état against the people of Honduras.

Photo: Latin American Tribune

*Although Lobo and Uribe had already signed a Security Pact a few days after Lobo took office (almost immediately), it seems they had to sign another one to assure the world that their relations and cooperation regarding "security" are superb.

*Porfirio Lobo thanked on Monday his Colombian counterpart Álvaro Uribe for the cooperation he has given to his country, particularly regarding security, while on his official visit to Bogotá. 

   "You have a lot of experience to give to the world. And in Honduras we feel very happy that there has been since a very long time the relationship of cooperation that we have received from your part, " said Lobo in a press Conference offered at Casa de Narino. 

Bogotá, May 23 (EFE) .- The president of Colombia, Alvaro Uribe, and the Honduran coup supporter, Porfirio Lobo, who made an official visit to Colombia on Monday, will sign in Bogota safety and education conventions, diplomatic sources said .

Lobo will meet with Uribe at Casa de Narino, Colombia's Executive headquarters and also plans to visit the Mayor of Bogota, Samuel Moreno, the president of the Senate, Javier Cáceres, and the judges of the Supreme Court of Justice.

The Honduran coup supporter participated in a meeting with the business sector at the headquarters of the Colombian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Lobo pointed out in various statements that one of the reasons for his trip to Colombia is to thank Uribe's solidarity with Honduras, and further expressed "great admiration" for the Colombian president and his strategy of "democratic security", combating violence and drug trafficking.

On Tuesday, Lobo will  travel to Lima for an official visit to Peru and to meet with the ruler of that country, Alan Garcia.

Colombia and Peru are the only South American countries that recognize Lobo, who took office on 27 January after winning elections in November 2009 five months after the coup that overthrew President Manuel Zelaya.

Many nations believe that democratic institutions have not been completely restored in Honduras after the inauguration of the coup supporter Lobo, and also demand that former President Zelaya returns to his country, where he was charged with several crimes after being ousted from power on 28 June. EFE

Source: 

http://noticias.terra.com/articulos/act2343056/uribe_y_lobo_suscribiran_en_bogota_convenios_en_seguridad_y_educacion/

Army mass grave in La Macarena

Picture from the El Nuevo Herald coverage of the mass grave.

Miami’s El Nuevo Herald and Spain’s Público have run stories in the past two days about a shocking find in La Macarena, about 200 miles south of Bogotá.

Residents say that after it entered the strongly guerrilla-controlled zone in the mid-2000s, Colombia’s Army began dumping unidentified bodies in a mass grave near a local cemetery. The grave may contain as many as 2,000 bodies.

Público reports:

Since 2005 the Army, whose elite units are deployed in the surrounding area, has been depositing behind the local cemetery hundreds of cadavers with the order that they be buried without names. …

Jurist Jairo Ramírez, the secretary of the Permanent Committee for the Defense of Human Rights in Colombia, accompanied a delegation of British legislators to the site several weeks ago, when the magnitude of the La Macarena grave began to be discovered. “What we saw was chilling,” he told Público. “An infinity of bodies, and on the surface hundreds of white wooden plaques with the inscription NN [name unknown] and dates from 2005 until today.”

Ramírez adds: “The Army commander told us that they were guerrillas killed in combat, but the people in the region told us of a multitude of social leaders, campesinos and community human rights defenders who disappeared without a trace.”

El Nuevo Herald reports:

A spokesman of the Prosecutor-General’s Office (Fiscalía) in Bogotá revealed to El Nuevo Herald that a mission from that institution’s Technical Investigations Corps (CTI) has already gone to the cemetery and confirmed the existence of “a large number” of cadavers in the grave, though it only made a few excavations.

“We became the site for the depositing of the war dead,” declared Eliécer Vargas Moreno, mayor of the municipality. …

Residents of La Macarena interviewed over the phone by El Nuevo Herald, under the promise that their identities would not be revealed, expressed their suspicion that among the bodies are relatives who disappeared during the last four years. They denied that the bodies are those of guerrillas and asked for the chance to prove it.

Colombia’s Prosecutor-General’s Office will make its first excavations at the site in mid-March. While we are not jumping to conclusions, we will be watching this case closely.

La Macarena, the site of the grave, has been a very important site of U.S.-aided military operations since the mid-2000s. In this area, the U.S. government supported and advised the Colombian Army’s 2004-2006 “Plan Patriota” military offensive, and since 2007 has supported the “Plan for the Integral Consolidation of La Macarena” or PCIM, part of the new “Integrated Action” framework that is now guiding much U.S. assistance.

http://www.cipcol.org/?p=1303

Mass Graves Used to Cover-Up Atrocities in Colombia

The Bodies of the Innocent

by Daniel Kovalic

Global Research, April 3, 2010

Counterpunch - 2010-04-01 The biggest human rights scandal in years is developing in Colombia, though you wouldn’t notice it from the total lack of media coverage here. A mass grave – one of a number suspected by human rights groups in Colombia – was discovered by accident last year just outside a Colombian Army base in La Macarena, a rural municipality located in the Department of Meta just south of Bogota. The grave was discovered when children drank from a nearby stream and started to become seriously ill. These illnesses were traced to runoff from what was discovered to be a mass grave – a grave marked only with small flags showing the dates (between 2002 and 2009) on which the bodies were buried. According to a February 10, 2010 letter issued by Alexandra Valencia Molina, Director of the regional office of Colombia’s own Procuraduria General de la Nacion – a government agency tasked to investigate government corruption – approximately 2,000 bodies are buried in this grave. The Colombian Army has admitted responsibility for the grave, claiming to have killed and buried alleged guerillas there. However, the bodies in the grave have yet to be identified. Instead, against all protocol for handling the remains of anyone killed by the military, especially the bodies of guerillas, the bodies contained in the mass grave were buried there secretly without the requisite process of having the Colombian government certify that the deceased were indeed the armed combatants the Army claims. And, given the current "false positive" scandal which has enveloped the government of President Alvaro Uribe and his Defense Minister, Juan Manuel Santos, who is now running to succeed Uribe as President, the Colombian Army’s claim about the mass grave is especially suspect. This scandal revolves around the Colombian military, recently under the direction of Juan Manuel Santos, knowingly murdering civilians in cold blood and then dressing them up to look like armed guerillas in order to justify more aid from the United States. According to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pilay, this practice has been so "systematic and widespread" as to amount to a "crime against humanity." To date, not factoring in the mass grave, it has been confirmed by Colombian government sources that there have been 2,000 civilians falling victim to the "false positive" scheme since President Uribe took office in 2002. If, as suspected by Colombian human rights groups, such as the "Comision de Derechos Humanos del Bajo Ariari" and the "Colectivo Orlando Fals Borda," the mass grave in La Macarena contains 2,000 more civilian victims of this scheme, then this would bring the total of those victimized by the "false positive" scandal to at least 4,000 --much worse than originally believed. That this grave was discovered just outside a Colombian military base overseen by U.S. military advisers -- the U.S. having around 600 military advisers in that country -- is especially troubling, and raises serious questions about the U.S.’s own conduct in that country. In addition, this calls into even greater question the propriety of President Obama’s agreement with President Alvaro Uribe last summer pursuant to which the U.S. will have access to 7 military bases in that country. The Colombian government and military are scrambling to contain this most recent scandal, and possibly through violence. Thus, on March 15, 2010, Jhonny Hurtado, a former union leader and President of the Human Rights Committee of La Cantina, and an individual who was key in revealing the truth about this mass grave, was assassinated as soldiers from Colombia’s 7th Mobile Brigade patrolled the area. Just prior to his murder, Jhonny Hurtado told a delegation of British MPs visiting Colombia that he believed the mass grave at La Macarena contained the bodies of innocent people who had been "disappeared." Daniel Kovalik is a labor and human rights lawyer working in Pittsburgh, Pa.  Global Research Articles by Daniel Kovalic Mass graves uncovered in Colombia Over 200 bodies have been found over the past 10 days Colombian authorities have uncovered the mass graves of more than 100 people believed to have been killed during the country's long-running civil conflict.Interior Minister Carlos Holguin said he was horrified by the discoveries near the town of La Hormiga, in the southern province of Putumayo. The government was told of the graves after a peace deal with the United Self-Defence Forces of Colombia (AUC). The right-wing paramilitary group has been blamed for many massacres. Described by the UN as one of the world's worst humanitarian crises, the conflict between the army, right-wing groups such as the AUC, and left-wing rebel groups, such as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc), has left tens of thousands of Colombians dead. 'Horrified' The 105 people discovered in 65 mass graves late on Friday near La Hormiga, the largest so far found, are believed to have been killed during the war. This small town near the border with Ecuador was an AUC stronghold dominating an area known for its coca crops, the raw material for cocaine, through which the group financed itself. Colombia's attorney-general, Mario Iguran, told reporters that most of the victims had been local peasants killed by both the AUC and Farc. Both sides have been accused of killing civilians they believe to be aiding their enemies. "We are horrified at this cruelty driven by the insatiable lust for land," Interior Minister Carlos Holguin said. Judicial authorities have now exhumed a total of 211 bodies near La Hormiga over the past 10 days. A further 10,000 victims are believed to be buried across the country.However, a lack of resources has hampered efforts to exhume mass graves and it may take years before the bodies are exhumed and the true number of victims is known.  http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/6629217.stm Colombia's new death squads exposed; Army's Mass Grave Found in Macerena New death squads have arisen to replace Colombia's notorious right-wing paramilitary groups - and they are committing the same acts of terrorism against trade unionists as their predecessors, a prominent US-based rights organisation has warned. http://axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/Article_58397.shtml Colombia: Mass Grave Discovered in La Macarena 30. April 2010The ITUC has expressed grave concern over the discovery of a mass grave in the town of La Macarena, in Colombia, as well as condemning the assassination of Johnny Hurtado, a human rights activist who denounced the mass grave’s existence. According to the information received by the ITUC, Hurtado, a former trade union activist, had already been forced to move away from his home after receiving death threats. The Attorney General’s office estimates at 2000 the number of unidentified bodies in the mass grave. The figure is particularly worrying given that well over a hundred Colombian trade unionists have disappeared in recent years. Recent revelations regarding extrajudicial executions, including from the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and her Special Rapporteur, have uncovered the Colombian army’s involvement in what the UN has described as the "systematic" killing of Colombian civilians. The mass grave is located next to the largest military base in the region. http://www.ituc-csi.org/colombia-mass-grave-discovered-in.html?lang=de