Paramilitary Leader Killed?
Human Rights Watch Reports on Colombia
Paramilitaries Use Aircraft
Rightwing paramilitaries from the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) have been using a helicopter and a small airplane in recent assaults on and around the northeastern municipality of El Tarra, in Norte de Santander Province, according to a January 9 report from the Association for Alternative Social Advancement, MINGA. Local residents of the area, known as Catatumbo, told MINGA that the aircraft had overflown the area numerous times since December 22, in support of some 300 paramilitary troops in the area. According to MINGA, AUC members massacred 14 people on December 22 in the hamlet of Marquetalia, in the village of Angalia, in Tibú Municipality. (In a communiqué dated January 5 and sent via e-mail from the “mountains of Colombia,” the Central Command of the National Liberation Army (ELN) said soldiers from the army’s Fifth Brigade had helped the paramilitaries massacre 17 villagers on December 22 in Remolinos, Tibú, and seven more the next day in La Angalia.)
How do we not expect the people of Colombia to look for alternatives to provide for their own safety when the government' military is taking the roll of a bystander when massacres are being carried out? Would we not do the same after seeing our families raped, tortured, and killed by forces that work in conjuction with the government? Would we not protest after our most human basic rights are being denied? The answer that the majority of people in Colombia have given to these questions is a resounding and total INDIFERENCE. After all, it is not happening to us, right?