Juan Forero
The Washington Post
September 17, 2008

MEDELLIN, Colombia -- Gen. Mario Montoya has for years been a trusted caretaker of the sizable aid package Washington provides Colombia's army, leading helicopter-and-commando teams that eradicated drug crops and helping orchestrate this summer's dramatic rescue of hostage Ingrid Betancourt and three captured U.S. defense contractors from Marxist rebels.

With his cinematic bluster and take-charge nature, he impressed visiting American congressional delegations and military officials as an effective, no-nonsense commander who produced results.

Paradoxically, while The Peaceful Path of Women was presenting a book in Bogota titled “Violence against Women in a Society of War,” one of its members was massacred in Medellin, together with her son, daughter-in-law and grandchild, a minor only five years old.

Bogota, September 25 – Under circumstances which show violence in all its disgrace and society’s degradation, Olga Marina Vergara, a member of the Peaceful Path of Women, was assassinated in Medellín.

She was a feminist and pacficist leader, who was known for her work defending women in the capital of the Antioquia department. She was massacred together with her son, daughter in law and grandson in her own house, in the section of the city center known as el Prado on September 24.

29 August 2008

• Letter from the Field: Flowers and Bananas

• The Army Did It
• Killing Metrics: State Department 'Certifies' Colombian Human Rights
• Seeking the Truth: An Interview with Guillermo Mateus

Letter from the Field: Flowers and Bananas
by Zara Zimbardo
Zara Zimbardo is a member of the National Council of FOR, an independent media producer, and teaches classes on critical media literacy and the politics of representation. She participated in the FOR delegation to Colombia in August that focused on impunity and the struggles to overcome it.

From our August 2008 Newsletter

Ever since the February 2005 massacre, in which members of the Peace Community of San José de Apartadó, including three children were brutally killed, the Peace Community has signaled the Army’s 17th Brigade as responsible. All along, Colombian officials, including President Uribe, then- Defense Minister Jorge Uribe-Echavarria and the head of the Armed Forces General Ospina vehemently denied the army’s responsibility in the massacre and instead said that FARC guerrillas were responsible. To prove such an assertion, the Colombian state produced false witnesses, maps of military operations and slandered the memory of Peace Community leader Luis Eduardo Guerra by accusing him of being a guerrilla who planned to desert. (They presented this as a motive for the guerrillas ordering Luis Eduardo’s killing.)

Thanks to the efforts and hard work of many people in defense of human rights, the culture of secrecy and lack of accountability surrounding Defense Department policies suffered a blow May 22 when the U.S. House of Representatives approved the McGovern-Sestak-Bishop (GA) amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act for FY 2009. The amendment forces the public release of names, rank, country of origin, courses and dates of attendance of graduates and instructors at the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC), formerly known as the School of the Americas. The amendment was approved by a vote of 220-189.

Tens of thousands of Colombians marched on March 6 in Bogota and many other cities to stand with the victims of right-wing paramilitary violence and to protest violence by all armed groups. Solidarity events occurred in New York, Washington, and San Francisco.

Now, in the wake of accusations by a presidential advisor that the activists in Colombia who helped organize these peaceful marches are guerrillas, they are being targeted with paramilitary threats, kidnappings, and even killings.

Lethal attacks on Colombian labor activists also continue. On March 4 in Washington, President Bush called on Congress to approve the Free Trade Agreement with Colombia, although Colombia is the most dangerous nation in the world to be a trade unionist. As if in response, in the four days following his statement, four labor leaders in Colombia were murdered.

Los Angeles Times
March 21, 2008

Soldiers, under pressure to show progress in a U.S.-funded war, allegedly are killing civilians and passing them off as rebels.

Raul Arboleda / AFP/Getty Images
FATALITY: A Colombian soldier in January wraps the body of a person who the army said was a leftist guerrilla. Body counts have been considered an indicator of military success.

By Chris Kraul, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

GRANADA, COLOMBIA -- Street vendor Israel Rodriguez went fishing last month and never came back. Two days later, his family found his body buried in a plastic bag, classified by the Colombian army as a guerrilla fighter killed in battle.

By TATIANA GUERRERO - Associated Press Writer

BOGOTA, COLOMBIA --The U.N. on Friday called for an investigation into the deaths of six organizers of a march protesting the Colombian government and paramilitary death squads.

The victims included union workers and human rights activists. They were killed around the time of the March 6 protest that drew tens of thousands of people.

"This office asks state authorities to guarantee prompt and efficient protection for those human rights defenders and the leaders of social organizations," the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights said in a statement.