[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 14 (Thursday, February 1, 2001)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E89-E91]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        HUMAN RIGHTS IN COLOMBIA

                                 ______
                                 

                       HON. JANICE D. SCHAKOWSKY

                              of illinois

                    in the house of representatives

                      Wednesday, January 31, 2001

  Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. Mr. Speaker, I submit the following article printed 
on the front page of the January 28, 2001 Washington Post. The article 
demonstrates a fundamental aspect of the growing human rights emergency 
in Colombia. It also details the role of paramilitary organizations in 
human rights violations taking place in Colombia and the complicity of 
the Colombian military and government in allowing human rights abuse, 
such as the Chengue massacre, to continue.
  Despite the thousands of civilian deaths and millions of displaced 
people in Colombia, the United States has moved forward with a 
misguided policy of massive military aid and close involvement in 
Colombia's conflict. I strongly believe that our current policy under 
Plan Colombia is the wrong approach for our nation in dealing with 
Colombia and is certainly the most ineffective and insincere way to 
deal with our domestic drug problem.

                    Chronicle of a Massacre Foretold

                           (By Scott Wilson)

       Chengue, Colombia.--In the cool hours before sunrise on 
     Jan. 17, 50 members of the United Self-Defense Forces of 
     Colombia marched into this village of avocado farmers. Only 
     the barking of dogs, unaccustomed to the blackness brought by 
     a rare power outage, disturbed the mountain silence.
       For an hour, under the direction of a woman known as 
     Comandante Beatriz, the paramilitary troops pulled men from 
     their homes, starting with 37-year-old Jaime Merino and his 
     three field workers. They assembled them into two groups 
     above the main square and across from the rudimentary health 
     center. Then, one by one, they killed the men by crushing 
     their heads with heavy stones and a sledgehammer. When it was 
     over, 24 men lay dead in pools of blood. Two more were found 
     later in shallow graves. As the troops left, they set fire to 
     the village.
       The growing power and brutality of Colombia's paramilitary 
     forces have become the chief concern of international human 
     rights groups and, increasingly, Colombian and U.S. officials 
     who say that 8,000-member private army pose the biggest 
     obstacle to peace in the country's decades-old civil 
     conflict.
       This massacre, the largest of 23 mass killings attributed 
     to the paramilitaries this month, comes as international 
     human rights groups push for the suspension of U.S. aid to 
     the Colombian armed forces until the military shows progress 
     on human rights. The armed forces, the chief beneficiary of 
     the $1.3 billion U.S. anti-drug assistance package known as 
     Plan Colombia, deny using the paramilitaries as a shadow army 
     against leftist guerrillas, turning a blind eye to their 
     crimes or supporting them with equipment, intelligence and 
     troops.
       But in Chengue, more than two dozen residents interviewed 
     in their burned-out homes and temporary shelters said they 
     believe the Colombian military helped carry out the massacre.
       In dozens of interviews, conducted in small groups and 
     individually over three days, survivors said military 
     aircraft undertook surveillance of the village in the days 
     preceding the massacre and in the hour immediately following 
     it. The military, according to these accounts, provided safe 
     passage to the paramilitary column and effectively sealed off 
     the area by conducting what villagers described as a mock 
     daylong battle with leftist guerrillas who dominate the area.
       ``There were no guerrillas,'' said one resident, who has 
     also told his story to two investigators from the Colombian 
     prosecutor general's human rights office. ``There motive was 
     to keep us from leaving and anyone else from coming in until 
     it was all clear. We hadn't seen guerrillas for weeks.''


                            A ``Dirty War''

       The rutted mountain track to Chengue provides a vivid 
     passage into the conflict consuming Colombia. Chengue and 
     hundreds of villages like it are the neglected and forgotten 
     arenas where illegal armed forces of the right and left, 
     driven by a national tradition of settling political 
     differences with violence, conduct what Colombians call their 
     ``dirty war.''
       Despite peace talks between the government and the 
     country's largest guerrilla insurgency, more than 25,600 
     Colombians died violently last year. Of those, 1,226 
     civilians--a third more than the previous year--died in 205 
     mass killings that have come to define the war. Leftist 
     guerrillas killed 164 civilians last year in mass killings, 
     according to government figures, compared with 507 civilians 
     killed in paramilitary massacres. More than 2 million 
     Colombians have fled their homes to escape the violence.
       In this northern coastal mountain range, strategic for its 
     proximity to major transportation routes, all of Colombia's 
     armed actors are present. Two fronts of the Revolutionary 
     Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the country's oldest and 
     largest leftist guerrilla insurgency with about 17,000 armed 
     members, control the lush hills they use to hide stolen 
     cattle and victims of kidnappings-for-profit.
       The privately funded United Self-Defense Forces of 
     Colombia, known by the initials AUC in Spanish, patrols the 
     rolling pastures and menaces the villages that provide the 
     FARC with supplies. Paramilitary groups across Colombia have 
     grown in political popularity and military strength in recent 
     years as a counterweight to the guerrillas, and obtain much 
     of their funding from relations with drug traffickers. Here 
     in Sucre province, ranchers who are the targets of the 
     kidnappings and cattle theft allegedly finance the 
     paramilitary operations. AUC commander Carlos Castano, who 
     has condemned the massacre here and plans his own 
     investigation, lives a few hours away in neighboring Cordoba 
     province.
       The armed forces, who are outnumbered by the leftist 
     guerrillas in a security zone that covers 9,000 square miles 
     and includes more than 200 villages, are responsible for 
     confronting both armed groups. Col. Alejandro Parra, head of 
     the navy's 1st Brigade, with responsibility for much of 
     Colombia's northern coast, said the military would need at 
     least 1,000 more troops to effectively control the zones.
       The military has prepared its own account of the events 
     surrounding the massacre at

[[Page E90]]

     Chengue, which emptied this village of all but 100 of its 
     1,200 residents. Parra confirmed elements of survivor 
     accounts, but denied that military aircraft were in the area 
     before or immediately after the killings. He said his troops' 
     quick response may have averted a broader massacre involving 
     neighboring villages.
       ``They must have been confused about the time'' the first 
     helicopters arrived, Parra said. ``If there were any 
     helicopters there that soon after the massacre, they weren't 
     ours.''


                           Strategic Location

       Three families have flourished in Chengue for generations, 
     tending small orchards of avocados renowned for their size 
     and sweetness. The only residents not related to the Oviedo, 
     Lopez or Merino families are the farm workers who travel the 
     lone dirt road that dips through town. The longest trip most 
     inhabitants ever make is the two-hour drive by jeep to 
     Ovejas, the local government seat.
       But in recent years the village, set in the Montes de Maria 
     range, has become a target on battle maps because of its 
     strategic perch between the Caribbean Sea and the Magdalena 
     River. Whoever controls the mountains also threatens the most 
     important transportation routes in the north.
       Villagers say FARC guerrillas frequently pass through 
     seeking supplies. Any support, many villagers say, is given 
     mostly out of fear. As one 34-year-old farmer who survived 
     the massacre by scrambling out his back window said, ``When a 
     man with a gun knocks on our door at 11 at night wanting food 
     and a place to sleep, he becomes your landlord.''
       The AUC's Heroes of the Montes de Maria Front announced its 
     arrival in Chengue last spring with pamphlets and word-of-
     mouth warnings of a pending strike. The paramilitaries 
     apparently identified Chengue as a guerrilla stronghold--a 
     town to be emptied. The AUC's local commander, Beatriz, was 
     one a member of the FARC's 35th Front, which operates in the 
     zone, military officials said. Ten months ago she quarreled 
     with the FARC leadership for allegedly mishandling the 
     group's finances and defected to the AUC for protection and 
     perhaps a measure of revenge.
       In April, community leaders in Chengue and 20 other 
     villages sent President Andres Pastrana and the regional 
     military command a letter outlining the threat. ``We have 
     nothing to do with this conflict,'' they wrote in asking for 
     protection.
       The letter was sent two months after the massacre of 36 
     civilians in El Salado, a village about 30 miles southeast of 
     here in Bolivar province that is patrolled by the same 
     military command and paramilitary forces. But according to 
     villagers and municipal officials in Ovejas, the request for 
     help brought no response from the central government or the 
     navy's 1st Brigade, which is based in the city of Sincelejo 
     25 miles south of here.
       In October, the villagers repeated their call for help in 
     another letter to Pastrana, regional military leaders, 
     international human rights groups and others. Municipal 
     officials met with members of the 1st Brigade in November, 
     but said no increased military presence materialized. In 
     fact, municipal officials said, the 5th Marine Infantry 
     Battalion seemed to stop patrolling the village.
       Six Chengue residents who signed the letter died in the 
     massacre. Col. Parra said the requests for help were among 
     dozens received at brigade headquarters in the past year, but 
     that manpower shortages made it impossible to respond to 
     every one.
       ``What is clear is that the government and [the military] 
     knew about the evidence of a possible massacre and did 
     nothing,'' said a municipal official in Ovejas, who like many 
     interviewed in the aftermath of the slaughter requested 
     anonymity for fear of reprisal. ``The military seemed to 
     clear out of the zone.''
       After weeks of not seeing any sign of the military, 
     villagers said a small, white propeller plane swooped low 
     over the village on Jan. 14, three days before the massacre. 
     They identified the aircraft as the same plane used to drop 
     anti-guerrilla pamphlets three months earlier--a 
     ``psychological operation,'' Parra confirmed, although he 
     denied knowledge of this particular flight. The low-altitude 
     pass left the farmers uneasy.
       Over the next two nights, the darkness fell on the village, 
     residents said two green military helicopters passed over in 
     slow circles. ``They are the same ones I'd seen pass by 
     before, but just coming and going, not circling,'' said a 
     young mother. ``We didn't know what they were doing.''
       Seven hours after the helicopters left the second time, the 
     power went out in Chengue, Salitral and a series of 
     neighboring villages that had warned of a pending 
     paramilitary attack. Villagers noted the time somewhere 
     between 1:30 and 2 a.m. because, as one woman remembered, 
     ``the dogs started barking when the house lights went out.'' 
     Some villagers lit candles. Most remained asleep.
       In the blackness, the paramilitary column dressed in 
     Colombian army uniforms moved along the dirt
       The column stopped at the gray concrete home of Jaime 
     Merino, the first on the road, and kicked in the door. They 
     seized him and three workers, including Luis Miguel Romero, 
     who picked avocados to pay for medical treatment for his 
     infant daughter.
       They were led down the steep dirt road into the village, 
     past the church and school, and to a small terrace above the 
     square where they waited. Three brothers from the green house 
     on the square, a father and two sons from the sky blue house 
     across the square, and Nestor Merino, a mentally ill man who 
     hadn't left his home in four months, all joined them in the 
     flickering darkness.
       When the men arrived for Rusbel Oviedo Barreto, 23, his 
     father blocked the door.
       ``They pushed me away,'' said Enrique al Alberto Oviedo 
     Merino, 68. ``I was yelling not to take him, and they were 
     saying `we'll check the computer.' There was no computer. 
     They were mocking us. They took my identification card and 
     said they would know me the next time.''
       Cesar Merino awoke on his farm above the village, and 
     peering down, saw the town below lit by candles. His 
     neighbors, 19-year-old Juan Carlos Martinez Oviedo and his 
     younger brother Elkin, were also awake. The three men, who 
     worked the same avocado farm, walked down the hillside into 
     town. Elkin, 15, was the youngest to die.
       On the far side of town, where the road bends up and out 
     toward Ovejas, the paramilitaries gathered Cesar Merino's 
     cousin, Andres Merino, and his 18-year-old son, Cristobal. 
     One of them, father or son, watched the other die before his 
     own execution.
       Human rights workers and survivors speculated that the 
     paramilitaries, who were armed with automatic rifles, used 
     stones to kill the men to heighten the horror of the message 
     to surrounding villages and to maintain a measure of silence 
     in a guerrilla zone.
       The work was over within an hour and a half. As the column 
     prepared to leave, according to several witnesses, one 
     militiaman used a portable radio to make a call. No 
     transmission was intercepted that morning by military 
     officials, although their log of the preceding weeks showed 
     numerous intercepts of FARC radio traffic. Then the men 
     smashed the town's only telephone and set the village on 
     fire.
       The hillside was full of hiding villagers, many of whom say 
     that between 15 and 30 minutes later two military helicopters 
     arrived overhead and circled for several minutes. The sun was 
     beginning to rise.
       ``They would have been able to see [the paramilitaries] 
     clearly at that hour,'' said one survivor, who has fled to 
     Ovejas. ``Why didn't they catch anyone?''
       Human rights officials say the described events resemble 
     those surrounding the massacre last year in El Salado. Gen. 
     Rodrigo Quinones was the officer in charge of the security 
     zone for Chengue and El Salado at that time, and remained in 
     that post in the months leading up to the Chengue massacre. 
     He left the navy's 1st Brigade last month to run a special 
     investigation at the Atlantic Command in Cartagena, from 
     where military flights in the zone are directed.
       In a report issued this month, Amnesty International, Human 
     Rights Watch and the Washington Office on Latin America 
     called specifically for Quinones's removal. As a regional 
     head of naval intelligence in the early 1990s, Quinones was 
     linked to the killings of 57 trade unionists, human rights 
     workers and activists. He was acquitted by a military court. 
     According to the human rights report, a civilian judge who 
     reviewed the case was ``perplexed'' by the verdict, saying he 
     found the evidence of Quinones's guilt ``irrefutable.''
       El Salado survivors said a military plane and helicopter 
     flew over the village the day of the massacre, and that at 
     least one wounded militiaman was transported from the site by 
     military helicopter. Soldiers under Quinones's command sealed 
     the village for days, barring even Red Cross workers from 
     entering.
       ``We are very worried and very suspicious about the 
     coincidences,'' said Anders Kompass, the U.N. High 
     Commissioner for Human Rights representative in Colombia. 
     ``This involves the same officer in charge, the same kind of 
     military activity before and after the massacre, and the same 
     lack of military presence while it was going on.''


                        `There Is a Terror Here'

       During the two hours following the killings, survivors 
     emerged from hiding and into the shambles of their village. 
     Eliecer Lopez Oviedo, a 66-year-old Chengue native, said his 
     son arrived at his small farm at 9 a.m.
       ``He told me they had burned Chengue, killed my brothers, 
     my sister and my niece,'' he said. ``I arrived there to find 
     that they hadn't killed the women. But my three brothers were 
     above the square, dead.''
       What Oviedo and others found were two piles of bodies--17 
     on the dirt terrace above the square, seven in front of the 
     health center. Cristobal Merino's Yankees hat, torn and 
     bloody, lay near his body. The rocks used in the killings 
     remained where they were dropped. The bodies of Videncio 
     Quintana Barreto and Pedro Arias Barreto, killed along with 
     fathers and brothers, were found later in shallow graves.
       Ash from more than 20 burning houses floated in the hot, 
     still air. Graffiti declaring ``Get Out Marxist Communist 
     Guerrillas,'' ``AUC'' and ``Beatriz'' was scrawled across the 
     walls of vacant houses. ``The bodies were all right there for 
     us to see, and I knew all of them,'' said a 56-year Chengue 
     resident whose brother and brother-in-law were

[[Page E91]]

     among the dead. ``Now there is a terror here.''
       Officials at the 1st Brigade said they were alerted at 8:45 
     a.m. when the National Police chief for Sucre reported a 
     possible paramilitary ``incursion'' in Chengue. According to 
     a military log, Parra dispatched two helicopters to the 
     village at 9:30 a.m. and the Dragon company of 80 infantry 
     soldiers based in nearby Pijiguay five minutes later. 
     Villagers said the troops did not arrive for at least another 
     two hours.
       When they did arrive, according to logs and soldiers 
     present that day, a gun battle erupted with guerrillas from 
     the FARC's 35th Front. Parra said he sealed the roads into 
     the zone ``to prevent the paramilitaries from escaping.'' The 
     battle lasted all day--the air force sent in one Arpia and 
     three Black Hawk helicopters at 2:10 p.m., according to the 
     military--and village residents waved homemade white flags 
     urging the military to shop shooting. No casualties were 
     reported on either side. No paramilitary troops were 
     captured.
       Three days later, the 1st Brigade announced the arrest of 
     eight people in connection with the killings. They were 
     apprehended in San Onofre, a town 15 miles from Chengue known 
     for a small paramilitary camp that patrols nearby ranches. 
     Villagers say that, though they didn't see faces that morning 
     because of the darkness, these ``old names'' are scapegoats 
     and not the men who killed their families.
       A steady flow of traffic now moves toward Ovejas, jeeps 
     stuffed with everything from refrigerators to pool cues to 
     family pictures. The marines have set up two base camps in 
     Chengue--one under a large shade tree behind the village, the 
     other in the vacant school. The remaining residents do not 
     mix with the soldiers.
       ``We have taken back this town,'' said Maj. Alvaro Jimenez, 
     standing in the square two days after the massacre. ``We are 
     telling people we are here, that it is time to reclaim their 
     village.''
       No one plans to. Marlena Lopez, 52, lost three brothers, a 
     nephew, a brother-in-law and her pink house. Her brother, 
     Cesar Lopez, was the town telephone operator. He fled, she 
     said, ``with nothing but his pants.''
       In the ashes of her home, she weeps about the pain she 
     can't manage. ``We are humble people,'' she said. ``Why in 
     the world are we paying for this?''

     

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