Colombia set to elect the world's first Green leader

New and Devastating Evidence on the Criminal Character of the Colombian Regime has been Exposed
By Manuel Rozental
Saturday, May 22, 2010

"The Circle is Closing" is the title of the report just released by Colombian magazine Semana <. It refers to how indeed the circle is closing on the Presidential Palace in Colombia, where the headquarters of a "criminal enterprise" involving Colombia's secret services (DAS), function under the direct orders of President Alvaro Uribe and his advisors. This latest report provides evidence, not only of involvement, but direction, orders and full control from the Presidential Palace and the President's closest friends and advisors of illegal and criminal operations. This criminal machinery has no parallel in history and a lot is to be unveiled yet. The Government and the President initially denied, then expressed concern and finally indignation at the accusations and against the evidence. The testimonies and documents provided and exposed in this report (and added to the already abundant existing proof) are conclusive.

From Colombia's top office and higher post, a criminal state structure has been established (it is still in place and being covered up). This structure is dedicated to spying, defamation, corruption, intimidation, threats, assassinations, disappearances and much more. Those affected by these actions include Supreme Court magistrates, human rights lawyers, members of parliament, political opposition leaders, academics, journalists, union members, indigenous, afro-Colombian, women, peasant leaders and advisors and many civilians and community members. Aurelio Suarez described these criminal activities as a "fraction of what the CIA-Nixon-Watergate scandal involved."< All of this comes under the direction of Colombia's presidential palace and the highest people in power. The evidence against those involved makes it impossible for President Uribe to keep maintaining that he did not know. The circle is indeed closing.

But this is only the DAS scandal. Then there are the thousands of assassinations known as "false positives;" the abuse and the misuse of the judicial system to attack civilians and democratic social and political leaders; the corruption of the largest and most notorious government initiatives, where funds for the poor and social sectors are systematically transferred to drug lords, paramilitaries, wealthy industrialists and entrepreneurs and friends of the President and his ministers; the buying of votes in Congress to obtain constitutional reform; and the approval of many legislative acts, including FTAs, to benefit a few at the expense the many in open violation of the Colombian Constitution and all international treaties, agreements and charters of rights and freedoms. Add to that the assassination of key witnesses; the payback of favours to the Government with land, government posts and jobs and funds; the massive and illegal accumulation of resources; the illegal assignment of contracts to the President's relatives, including his two sons. In all of this, the mainstream media is complicit in these facts by covering them up: the farce of the paramilitary disarmament, whereby massive amounts of capital from the drug trade have been laundered; brutally acquired land legalized; crimes against humanity, including systematic cannibalism, massacres, mass graves and more to be discovered, have been minimally exposed and mostly ignored. When key witnesses and paramilitary commanders have begun to expose their involvement and cooperation with governments and transnational corporations, they have been extradited abroad and silenced. Meanwhile, paramilitary aggression continues and is worsening through threats and assassinations throughout the Colombian territory.

Over the ground laid by previous Governments in coordination with their national and transnational counterparts, during the last 8 years, the Colombian Government has dedicated its every effort to transforming the Colombian State into a criminal enterprise. The structure of the Colombian regime is rotten. It is a State against its obligations, against the Colombian people, against the Colombian economy, against nature, against humanity. All this is known even while those in power maintain control of the State. If "democratic security" and "Investor Trust," the hallmark policies of this government, were to be removed, expelled from the structure of the Colombian regime, and if the required legal proceedings and investigations were allowed to advance as they should, one cannot begin to imagine the horror and perversity revealed to be at the core of this model regime, designed "hand in glove" for -and most likely by- major foreign government and corporate counterparts.

Colombia: Media targeted by intelligence services

2010-05-28 08:22:41

Reporters without Borders Press release
27 May 2010

Three years after an on-the-spot investigation into paramilitaries (“Paramilitary ‘black eagles’ poised to swoop down on press”), a Reporters Without Borders delegation went back to Colombia from 10-16 May 2010 chiefly to probe a witch-hunt carried on during President Alvaro Uribe’s two terms in office against critics of the government and its “national security” project.

Among those targeted, from what is known so far of the official investigation, were 16 journalists working for around a dozen media. It is the results of this investigation that we are releasing today, 27 May 2010, three days before the first round of the presidential election to choose Uribe’s successor.

Chuzadas report

Far from limiting itself to phone-tapping (chuzadas), the scandal extended to tailing individuals, acts of sabotage and intimidation often hatched by those who were supposed to be protecting journalists under threat, combined with “black propaganda” vilifying opposition figures as “enemies of the state”.
The case has thrown into question the future of the country’s top intelligence service, the Administrative Department of Security (DAS), identified as being behind these practices. It also reaches into the presidency, whose incumbent did not hesitate to make public accusations against journalists, even though it made their position even more precarious. The scandal continues to echo today in a tense election campaign played out against the legacy of the Uribe years.

Journalists, media editors, press freedom defenders, and election observers have all pieced together the truth of what happened as witnesses or victims. The organisations involved also managed to get access to the current director general of the DAS, Felipe Muñoz.

Another report will be published tomorrow, 28 May, by the World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters (AMARC), whose president for Latin America and Caribbean accompanied Reporters Without Borders on its visit to Colombia. It is based on information obtained during a visit to the community media on the Atlantic coast and the Andean region of Cauca. The accounts of representatives of these media, legally recognised but getting scant respect from the authorities, underline the difficulties journalists face working in the regions and the press freedom contrasts in Colombia. Indigenous journalists in Cauca, caught in the crossfire between paramilitaries, the army and FARC guerrillas, reminded us that the conflict that has destabilised the country for half a century is not yet over.