Sunday 31st January 2010.
STOP THE HARASSMENT OF POLITICAL PRISONERS & THEIR SUPPORTERS. SILENCE IS NOT AN ALTERNATIVE
Dear friends:
For your information, we have become aware of an incident involving our friend Kevin Neish, a Canadian human rights observer who is currently in Colombia visiting some political prisoners and observing the trial of Liliany Obando. Her public hearing scheduled for 18/19 & 27th January was cancelled because the “Fiscalia” (Prosecution) failed to provide a copy of the prosecution evidence against Liliany to her defense team. The case was adjourned until 15/16th February. Continue reading »
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By Garry Leech, Colombia Journal
Many analysts and sectors of the mainstream media have suggested that the apparent ineffectiveness of the U.S. government to resolve the crisis in Honduras is evidence that the influence wielded by the region’s superpower is waning. They argue that the assertiveness of Brazil in its efforts to have Honduras’ coup regime step down and re-instate the country’s democratically elected president Manuel Zelaya illustrates how the balance of power in the region has shifted. But such conclusions might well be premature. After all, given the stubbornness of the coup regime headed by Roberto Micheletti, it could be argued that it is the United States, and by extension its ally Colombia, that are getting their way in Honduras and not Brazil and its leftist allies Venezuela and Bolivia. Continue reading »
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International Review of Business Research Papers
Vol. 5 No. 4 June 2009. pp. 1-10
Oliver Villar *
*Dr Oliver Villar is a Lecturer in Politics at the School of Social Sciences and Liberal Studies, Charles Sturt University (CSU).
For half a century, the United States and its client state in Colombia have been unsuccessful in eliminating Latin America’s oldest and most powerful Marxist insurgency the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), via the Cold War, the ‘War on Drugs,’ and the ‘War on Terror’ after 9/11. This is an astonishing feat for a so-called ‘terrorist’ organisation in the twenty-first century. This paper will explore an area much eluded in Washington’s ‘Axis of Evil,’ the US ‘War on Narcoterrorism’ in Colombia with a particular focus on the cocaine drug trade and the FARC. Continue reading »
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By Eva Golinger, from Postcards from the Revolution website
The announcement of the US occupation of more than 7 military bases in Colombia comes at a time when a dictatorship – supported, if tacitly by Washington – in Honduras is consolidating after almost a month and a half has passed since the violent coup d’etat forced Honduran President Manuel Zelaya from power. The increased US military presence in Latin America has been perceived by a majority of nations in this hemisphere as a threat to stability and peace in the region. How does the Obama administration justify increasing the Pentagon’s budget and investing almost $1 billion in its Latin American military operations this year? Continue reading »
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Note: as of August 5th, 2009, Uribe´s government refers to 7 miliary bases in Colombia, surpasing the 5 announced when this article was published (note by Peace & Justice for Colombia)
On June 29 US President Barack Obama hosted his Colombian counterpart Alvaro Uribe at the White House and weeks later it was announced that the Pentagon plans to deploy troops to five air and naval bases in Colombia, the largest recipient of American military assistance in Latin America and the third largest in the world, having received over $5 billion from the Pentagon since the launching of Plan Colombia nine years ago.
Six months before the Obama-Uribe meeting outgoing US President George W. Bush bestowed the US’s highest civilian honor, the Medal of Freedom, on Uribe as well as on former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and former Australian Prime Minister John Howard. Continue reading »
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The Colombian government has agreed to grant US forces the use of three Colombian military bases for South Americ
an anti-drug operations. The move has heightened tensions between Colombia, the largest recipient of US military aid in the Americas, and its neighbors, particularly Venezuela and Ecuador. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez warned that the US Army could “invade” his country from Colombia.
See video by Democracy Now here
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By Garry Leech, from Colombia Journal
On August 8, 2008, Colombia’s National Police arrested Liliany Obando and charged her with the crime of rebellion and providing funding to a terrorist group. Ten months later, Obando had yet to have her day in court and remained a prisoner in Bogotá’s Buen Pastor Prison. Her work for the international relations commission of FENSUAGRO (The National Federation of Agricultural Farming Unions) included speaking and fundraising trips to Canada, Europe and Australia during which she openly and repeatedly criticized the Colombian government’s human rights record. Obando was the first person arrested as part of the so-called FARC-politica scandal that resulted from alleged evidence found on the laptop computer of FARC Commander Raúl Reyes, who was killed by the Colombian military in March 2008. I recently interviewed Obando in her prison cell. Continue reading »
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Senator Piedad Cordoba is in Spain seeking support for a negotiated end to the armed conflict in her country. Piedad Cordoba has been recently accused of having links to the FARC. The government of Colombia has stated that it has proof linking her to the FARC Continue reading »
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