According to the US-based Colombia Support Network (CSN), the Northern Block of the Black Eagles, a rightwing paramilitary group, has threatened three activists in Tiquisio, a community in the northern Colombian department of Bolivar. The threat names Father Rafael Gallegos, Marta Lucia Torres and Said Echevez, members of Citizens Process for Tiquisio, and mentions their opposition to the "democratic security" policies of Colombian president Alvaro Uribe Velez. The government is promoting development of the area around Tiquisio by AngloGold Ashanti [2], a South African-based multinational gold mining company. CSN charges that the paramilitaries are seeking to force campesino communities off their lands "to make them available for the multinationals to extract gold."
CSN is asking for letters to tell US Congress members to oppose US support for these actions by the Colombian government; to AngloGold Ashanti's South American exploration manager, Chris Lodder (e-mail: slenahan@anglogoldashanti.com), telling him to stop the company's collaboration with paramilitary forces; and to President Uribe (e-mail: auribe@presidencia.gov.co, fax: +57 1 566 2071) demanding protection for the activists, an investigation of the threats, and punishment for those responsible. (CSN [3] alert, April 14)
On April 15 a group of 63 Congress members sent a letter to Uribe asking him to reject publicly comments by his adviser, José Obdulio Gaviria [4], who had said that a March 6 march for the victims of paramilitary violence was organized by "allied members" of the rebel Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). The letter said six grassroots leaders had been murdered since Obdulio Gaviria's comments, which specifically mentioned National State Crime Victims Movement leader Ivan Cepeda Castro. Cepeda Castro attended a meeting on April 15 at the Capitol in Washington, DC, coordinated by AFL-CIO president John Sweeney. Speakers cited the violence in Colombia as a reason to oppose the US-Colombia Free Trade Agreement (FTA), which Uribe and US president George W. Bush are seeking to have the US Congress approve. (Prensa Latina, April 16; El Tiempo, Bogota, April 17)
From Weekly News Update on the Americas [5], April 20
See our last posts on Colombia [6], paramilitary terror [7] and the mineral cartel in Latin America [8].
