IPS-English COLOMBIA: Death Threats for Tracing Paramilitary Expansion
 
Date: Mon, 10 Sep 2007 14:48:16 -0700

 
Constanza Vieira

BOGOTA, Sep 10   (IPS)  - Death threats have been received by 
members of a think tank in the Colombian capital that published a 
new book describing the expansion of ultra-rightwing paramilitary 
militias in several provinces of Colombia and their alliance with 
local politicians.

”I never threw stones. I'm no good at that at all,” said Laura 
Bonilla, director of the Armed Conflict Observatory of the 
Corporación Nuevo Arco Iris, which published the study in 
Spanish, titled ”Parapolitics: The Route of Paramilitary 
Expansion and Political Accords”.

”Your writings are very deep, you piece of scum,” says the latest 
death threat received at Bonilla's work email address, which also 
accuses her of having been a rebellious ”stone-throwing” student. 
The message is dated Sept. 6, the day the book was released.

The return address is: auc_bloque_capital@hotmail.com. The AUC 
(United Self-Defence Forces of Colombia) is the paramilitary 
umbrella group that completed a partial demobilisation process 
last year, as a result of controversial negotiations with the 
rightwing government of Álvaro Uribe. But the ”Bloque Capital” 
faction continues to operate in Bogotá.

The AUC, many of whose leaders are drug lords, supports the armed 
forces, with which it has well-documented ties. 

Bonilla, 25, who holds a political science degree from Colombia's 
public National University, believes ”the threats are personal; 
they are directed to me as an individual.”

Around 10 days earlier, she received another threat over her 
mother's cell-phone, which followed several previous ones.

She told IPS that the threats were in response to ”several public 
statements I made, in which I talked about the ties between the 
paramilitaries and candidates” running in the Oct. 28 local and 
regional elections.

With regard to the proximity of the elections, she said, ”We do 
not see this as a coincidence. The book's focus is going to raise 
a lot of hackles.”

The 396-page study was carried out between late 2004 and mid-2006 
with the support of the Swedish International Development 
Cooperation Agency.

The book ”describes the paramilitary territorial expansion in 
several selected regions, and how that expansion gave rise to an 
alliance between the paramilitaries and politicians at the 
regional level,” said Bonilla.

The researchers taking part in the study produced papers showing 
how the different AUC fronts achieved ”dominance and influence” 
in Medellín, Colombia's second-biggest city; Bogotá; the central 
provinces of Cundinamarca and Meta; the northern coastal 
provinces of Córdoba, Sucre and Magdalena Grande; the eastern 
provinces of Casanare and Norte de Santander; and the western 
province of Valle del Cauca.

The study also has a special chapter on the effects of AUC 
violence on indigenous people.

The ombudsman's office's early warning system sent out an alert 
in July that 42 percent of the country's municipalities are at 
”electoral risk” and that nearly two-thirds of these are at ”high 
electoral risk”.

”Electoral risk” refers to factors that affect the elections and 
lead to exceptionally strong performance by a specific party; an 
unusually large number of blank ballots; unusually high or low 
turn-out; political violence; threats; or murders of candidates.

Supporters of the AUC -- 25 percent of the population of this 
South American country of 43 million, according to a survey 
published by Semana magazine -- argue that the militias emerged 
to protect landowners and others from the leftist guerrilla 
groups that took up arms in the 1960s, given the state's 
inability to provide protection.

But the so-called ”parapolitics” scandal that broke out last year 
has revealed an intricate web of relations between powerful 
politicians and drug lords, involving the forced displacement of 
rural populations and occupation of property throughout the 
country.

During the paramilitary expansion that has occurred since the 
1980s, 4.5 million hectares of prime land in Colombia has 
violently changed hands, leading to the displacement of between 
three and four million people.

This was not ”a conspiracy among a group of criminals It was a 
social and political mobilisation of the country in 12 
departments (provinces), which changed the political map,” León 
Valencia, director of the Corporación Nuevo Arco Iris, said at 
the book launch.

”And they had a decisive influence in many other departments as 
well. They contributed 1.75 million votes in the 2002 
presidential elections, and 1.85 million in 2006,” he said.

The paramilitary militias back Uribe and in certain regions 
forced entire communities to vote for him, although the president 
would probably have been elected in 2002 and re-elected in 2006 
without that support.

The Nuevo Arco Iris study began to be conducted long before the 
”parapolitics” scandal triggered an investigation and the arrest 
of a number of politicians.

The attorney-general's office and the Supreme Court have 
investigated 113 regional and national politicians. Of that 
total, 51 parliamentarians are in prison, have been called to 
testify, or are mentioned in court documents relating to the 
scandal.

”We documented 83: 33 senators and 50 members of the lower house 
of Congress,” said Valencia, who believes that even more might 
actually be involved.

Paramilitary chiefs who have demobilised have stated that their 
representatives held 35 percent of the seats in Congress in the 
2002-2006 legislative term.

”It was an alliance of convenience,” said Valencia, who added 
that the study shows ”how and why it was in the interest of the 
regional elites to become allies of the paramilitaries.”

But ”despite everything, I believe that we should not lose hope,” 
National Registrar Juan Carlos Galindo said at the book's 
presentation.

”Colombian society is in danger, and each and every one of us is 
called on to fulfil a series of duties and commitments to the 
country that we will leave to our children,” he said.

The registrar, who is in charge of the national registry and the 
administration of electoral processes, said he saw the Nuevo Arco 
Iris study as ”essential, because it helps us realistically 
assess what is occurring, to be able to take measures.”

The attempts to intimidate Bonilla and other members of Nuevo 
Arco Iris come from ”those who are opposed to the free exercise 
of democracy, critical thinking, and social research,” said a 
statement released by the think tank last Friday.

Nuevo Arco Iris ”urges the state security bodies to take the 
necessary measures to guarantee the free exercise” of democracy 
in the elections.

It also told those responsible for the pressure that they are 
”repudiated by all of us who firmly believe in the route of 
democracy and peace as the only way to achieve national 
reconciliation.”


***** + ”Parapolítica: La ruta de la expansión paramilitar y los 
acuerdos políticos” in PDF - in Spanish 
(http://www.nuevoarcoiris.org.co/local/Libro_parapolitica.pdf) + 
COLOMBIA: The Limits of Paramilitary Repentance 
(http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=36512) + ELECTIONS-COLOMBIA: 
Paramilitaries Aggressively Campaign for Votes - 2006 
(http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=32464) + Colombia: A Nation 
Torn - More IPS News 
(http://www.ipsnews.net/new_focus/colombia/index.asp)


(END/IPS/LA IP HD BO CS MX/TRASP-SW/CV/DCL/07)


 
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