Colombia: March against violence
March 7, 2008
The manifestations were held under the slogan «Million votes against «paramilitares». The Colombians are thirsty for peace and demand to put an end to crimes of illegal armed detachments, on whose conscience there are thousands of murdered, abducted, executed without trial, driven from villages and settlements people. Human rights activists put on «paras» the responsibility for disappearance of more than 15 thousand Colombians, for 3 thousand nameless common graves, almost for 4 million of refuges that were forced to leave their native lands, for misappropriation of six million hectares of lands taken by force from peasants by those, who control power in the country.
The Colombian special services and army are accused by their own compatriots that since 2002 till the present day they carried out 950 extrajudicial reprisals; only in January 2008 the paramilitares held two bloody massive bloodsheds, kidnapped 9 persons and 8 of them were killed. During the same period the military carried out 16 extrajudicial executions in the «best» traditions of School of Americas, where they trained specialists in anti-guerilla, in other words, punitive operations.
As stated by the Colombian government, the «self-defence detachments» that counted more than 31 thousand persons, were «disarmed and dismissed» in the middle of 2006. However, in reality, not only according to the human rights activists information, but even according to testimonies of ex-chiefs of «paras», they were rearmed and are still used as auxiliary detachments of the army for beyond the control deterrent actions in the «field conditions»!
The fact that they did not disappear is confirmed by the organisers of the manifestation who started to receive round-the-clock threats to be massacred from the «paras» - by telephone, by post, e-mail, through the wall graffiti and thousands of spread leaflets! Paramilitares declared that they treat demonstrators as a «military object». This statement followed the allegation of the representative of president administration that organisers of the march of March 6 are backed by guerillas of the Armed revolutionary forces of Colombia (FARC).
It is worth mentioning that the Colombian powers still did not dare to ban that march, but the mass media that is controlled by them, represented it exclusively as a «march for peace in Colombia», dropping the issue of violence on behalf of the state, anti-national oligarchy and «paras».
Demonstrations and solidarity acts with people of Colombia were held in more than 150 cities of the world on the 6th of March. A specially powerful support to the brotherly people was demonstrated by Venezuela. Colombian cumbia sounded in unity at her streets on the 6th of March. Meetings and manifestations arranged on the initiative of the Colombians that live in Venezuela were held in different places of Caracas. Ordinary people as per their own wish would come to the platform. Maybe not very smoothly, but they expressed their sincere feelings. Venezuellans were outraged by mendacity and insidiousness of Uribe, who frustrated the third phase of peaceful exchange of hostages, the Colombians would say about hard destiny of their compatriots suffering from the inner conflict in the country, threats, persecutions and punitive visits of «paras». Everybody demanded peace!
http://www.aporrea.org/internacionales/n110380.html
Picture coverage from Caracas on manifestations defending peace in Colombia:
http://www.tiwy.com/gallery/eng.phtml?id=104