DOCUMENT Bloody 'counterinsurgency' operation MANUEL GUILLERMO BARRANTES is a Colombian journalist based in the city of Cali. He presented a report to the Foro Nacional por el Derecho a la Vida (National Forum for the Right to Life), which was held on the campus of the University of Bogota December 6-8. The purpose of this assembly was to expose the crimes and outrages that the Armed Forces and the parliamentary groups have unleashed recently in Colombia. (1) Barrantes' document describes the assault of the Colombian army on a poor neighborhood, Siloe, in Cali.
The Foro por el Derecho a la Vida was attended by some 1,300 delegates from trade-union, people's and human-rights organizations in 17 departments of the country. One of its organizations recently travelled to Europe to present the conclusions and recommendations of the Foro to international organizations that defend human rights, such as Amnesty International. The following is our slightly shortened
COLOMBIA El Pueblo and Occidente.
Today, the Valley is fighting for the right to life against an extermination ordered by a decrepit and demented ruling class that is trying to survive at the expense of many lives.
Iwo priests were murdered. The first was the curate Irne Garcia, the second, Father Guillard. They were killed because they were friends of the people. In an investigation of a terrorist act by paramilitary groups, leaders of M-19, among others Antonio Navarro Wolf, and trade-unionists and councillors on both sides were also shot.
In another terrorist attack two boys were killed, and more than forty persons were wounded when a grenade exploded in a rally. Thirtyfive homosexuals have been killed this year by a group called MAJIB (Muerte a Maricas y Jibaros - Death to Queens and Butches).
More than 800 presumed antisocial elements have been found dead in remote places, bound and gagged and whipped, and with the names of Kankil, Bandera Negra, and the Vengador Justiciero carved on their bodies.
Students, workers, and trade-union leaders, as well as people's fighters, have been shot and had weapons put in their hands to give the idea that they were killed in clashes. In the case of many "missing persons," their relatives testify that several men came in campers and took their victims from their homes telling them that nothing would happen to them. Today, their whereabouts is unknown.
One night in the Sucre neighborhood, which is known as a red-light distriet of Cali, eight persons were slaughtered in a house, because it was said to be a den of thieves and homosexuals. For this, they used tear gas and finished off the victims with bullets. Night of terror
In the same night of terror, three youths were executed in the Eduardo Santos neighborhood, when they were talking about football. It was later learned that the criminals had got the wrong people. The murderers were recognised as policemen. An accusation has been lodged with the state prosecutor's office.
1. The massacre of the guerrillas who occupied the Palace of Justice in Bogota and the judges and other civilians in the building by the Colombian Armed Forces on November 6 opened the way for a broader rightist terror, some of the episodes of which are described in this document. See the article "The reasons for the bloodbath, " by Rodrigo O' Farrell in 'International Viewpoint, No 88, December 9, 1985.
11 translation of the document. Companeros,
Some of us have come here to tell you what is happening in the Valle del Cauca, what is happening in the mountains, cities, towns, and neighborhoods.
We have come to tell you that in those rich lands of sugar, coffee, and soya beans, in a green land as sweet as sugar syrup, a people is under the shadow of death, prey to hunger and violence. But it is still unbowed, facing bullets, bombing, torture, and the enemies of peace who today are defending the tyrants, the assailants of the workers, the students, the priests, the journalists, the trade-unionists, the white-collar workers, the poets and the poor farmers, who want to obliterate their dreams of freedom.
We have come to tell you that the Valley and its Cauca river are running red with the blood of those who have been taken from their fields, factories, newspaper offices, high schools, universities, or their homes. This year that is about to end has seen two thousand people killed. More than 800 unidentified bodies have been found, and hundreds of people have disappeared.
The jails are full of political prisoners, and hundreds of wounded people are being held in hospitals without medical attention. without medical attention.
Hired killers have murdered many people for blood money. People are being shot down under the eyes of their families, neighbors, and friends. A human "cleanup" program is underway, in response to the demands of an unholy alliance of specialinterest groups, politicians, and the Church hierarchy.
A phrase is being echoed all around the city, "a Clean Christmas for Cali," a slogan that came from someone who was probably sipping a whisky and eating lobsters purchased from the sweat of the oppressed people in Aguablanca on Siloe, who can afford only sugar water and hard bread.
For this "cleanup" in the Valley, there are groups that specialize in massacres - the Comandos Verdes [Green Commandos], the Justiciero Implacable, Kankil, the Bandera Negra [Black Flag], Majib, and other groups that we do not know about.
These are paramilitary groups led by specialists trained in Chile or the US who get promotions and medals with the blood of their subordinates and the defenseless people. And they appear on the front pages of the papers or in set-up interviews on the radio and TV. Their crimes are covered up and the press praises them in its editorials, which talk about peace, while their workers suffer need and poverty, as is the case in the dailies poverty,
International Viewpoint 27 January 1986
A suburb of Bogota (DR)
In the early morning hours, in two luxurious cars, idle rich boys took pot shots at people, shooting for example a woman collecting paper.
The political prisoners had to resort to violent protest to get several jailed ex-policemen accused of belonging to the Comandos Verdes taken from their cell block. They waited three months to talk to the prison warden, who always said that he did not have the time. Finally, they were forced to hold a rally to get these people out of the block assigned to the political prisoners.
On the following day, they met with the national director of prisons, who heard their request. After the latter returned to Bogota, the warden in reprisal banned them from the workshops, the only place they had to work, after everything else had been taken away from them - sports, the right to teach, and medical care.
We should point out the attack on a political prisoner when he was talking with the representative of the state prosecutor. It happened the day of the rally. A furious guard beat him with a stick that had a point at the end, which wounded the prisoner.
There is a case for Ripley in the police. Because of vendettas among them, there was a clash that lett 15 policemen dead, and there have been repeated battles.
In the industrial city of Yumbo, various trade-unionists and popular fighters have been murdered. Simulating an assault on the city, the police killed three youths in a soda fountain. A few months ago, three men were incinerated in a camper in the locality of Vijes; and in main streets in broad daylight in buses, homes, and stores, men, women, elderly people, and children have been mowed down with bullets.
This is what is happening in the Valle del Cauca. Everything is being 12 thoroughly investigated. There is no point in making more complaints to the regional prosecutor's office, which will go no further. Everything is recorded in the newspapers. The facts are published, but we will never know how many cases there are. They do, however.
We have left the case of Siloe aside until now because it is a very special one, and because we offer here eyewitness accounts of what happened in this area in recent days. Planned massacre
With its 20 thousand inhabitants, Siloe has lived a marginal existence for forty years, abandoned by all the oligarchical governments, who show an interest only when they come to hustle votes.
Siloe rises up in the hills that overlook the town, as a witness to the struggle of a people uniting with their brothers and sisters living lower down, in Aguablanca. Of course, for the oligarchs, Siloe is known affectionately as the "shame of Cali," because it is supposed to be the refuge heap for the dregs, the bastards, the thieves, and the guerrillas.
Siloe has always been a blacksheep. How much the enemies wanted to raze this town in order to be able to build their chalets, and they are already doing so. Around the now famous Estrella they are putting up pretentious buildings, and they will not delay in building skyscrapers that can cover up "Cali's black spot." But this year Siloe has written its history in blood. From the moment that the peace encampments went up, which were the start of a new culture, its inhabitants were harassed by the public forces, and since then attacks have become a daily occurance.
Initially, they were small skirmishes, but they intensified with the National Strike on June 20. The day that a noisy army operation killed Ivan Marino Ospina was marked by a government attack on the inhabitants that resulted in eight deaths, most of them among the civilian population.
Later, on October 2, the army entered the zone, and, finding no guerrillas, opened fire on a boy muleteer, later planting on him a gun bigger than he was. This is attested to by pictures that have created a stir nationally and internationally.
To settle scores, paramilitary elements threw a fragmentation grenade into a local assembly on the night of October 7. A child of four and a teenager lost their lives, and more than thirty people were wounded. We will make a complaint later about the attitude of the Cali Red Cross toward this incident.
Later other incidents occurred, such as a surprise attack by the army that left three boys wounded and resulted in the death of a deranged person, who shouted that he was a "subversive."
Later in another operation, a rifle bullet fired by a soldier passed through a humble dwelling, wounding three little girls, aged two, three, and four, who were under a bed, where they were hiding out of fear.
It is not true that an attack on a riot-police patrol that occurred on November 27 provoked an operation such as the one that started on Friday night.
In solidarity with the victims of the tragedy in Armero, the commanding general of M-19, Alvaro Fayad, ordered the militias of this movement to cease hostilities in the urban sector.
The Third Brigade was well aware of this. What is clear is that for more than two months, it was known that the military were going to occupy the locality some time or other, and the troops had started to be mobilized a month before throughout the sector.
The military occupation was not delayed any longer. Whenever the special interest groups speak, the army does not think twice, and that week it did it.
The inhabitants of Siloe, the shanty town Tres de Mayo, San Francisco, and El Cortijo say that the army began the cleanup operation on the night of October 10 and that a lot of strange looking characters in civilian clothes were seen (from the B-2 and F-2 secret services. Eight days before a cultural affair had been held that was massively attended, and clothing was being collected for Armero. A first shipment had been
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sent off, and a second one was being prepared.) The sleeping people of
Siloe were awakened by a veritable wee by veritable hurricane. Nobody knew what was happening when they heard the first shots and the shouts of people who were trying to get out of their houses, while others were taking refuge under the beds.
The first assault on the civilian population came at 3:00 am and the second at 5:00 am. The doors of the houses were kicked open, and the maddened soldiers fired at everything that moved. Shouts and cries of "don't kill me" were heard all around. The children cried while their parents, not knowing what to do, put them under the beds. The guns were pointed even there, and they forced out the terrified children, as if the attack were against them.
At 8:00 am Saturday morning, the streets were full of the dead and wounded. Two elderly people were the first victims, a man and a woman. House by house, the soldiers searched for guerrillas, making the most cowardly raids anyone can remember.
The fragile cardboard dwellings of the Tres de Mayo shantytown and the houses of the people in the Esterilla neighborhood of Siloe were gone through with picks in search of arms and the inhabitants were rounded up. They pulled up the floors looking for tunnels. Even the children's toys were smashed up in the incontrollable fury of the soldiers carrying out the action.
Curiously, the radio stations that have made a commotion over such cases were silent this time. In a meeting with the directors days before in the Third Brigade headquarters, the commanders asked them to put a damper on the news.
However, anxiety and terror increased as the hours went by. The rattling of machine guns and the roar of grenades was stronger after midday. The electricity and water had been inexplicably cut off.
In this demented operation, the victims were women, children, and elderly people. All you have to do is look at the list of casualties.
There were eighty hours of blood, with horrendous scenes, which I will try to relate briefly.
A young man who worked as a guard in a security company had been operated on a few days before and was recovering at his home. When the army arrived, the man came out leaning on a walking stick to see what was happening. The soldiers saw him, seized him, and asked for his papers. The young man was an army reservist. That was his crime. After beating him up under the eyes of his mother and his small children. thev took him and his small children, they took him a block away and shot him.
A mother was preparing breakfast when a soldier shot her in the back through the window. The bullet struck her in the back of the neck. Two elderly and handicapped men were killed because a neighbor said they had helped the guerrillas; he "fingered them'" as is commonly said.
This practice of shooting people on the spot was begun in previous incursions. The objective, as Colonel de La Cruz of the General Staff of the Third Brigade says, was "to give a lesson to those people who want to help the bandits."
The people carried the wounded on planks, carts, on their backs to the hospitals, where soldiers had been stationed to capture any wounded guerrillas that turned up.
Why did the people take the woun ded down, then? When I described what happened the night that a grenade was thrown into a town meeting, killing two children and wounding more than 35 people, I said that I would take up the Red Cross later.
So, what happened then happened again. The Red Cross did not come, not because the rescue workers refused to but because, unlike anywhere else in the world, the Red Cross here is under the authority of the Ministry of Defense, and it is the military that decide when to send the rescue workers in. No help for the wounded
Colombia has not signed a treaty on the question, although the statutes of the Red Cross say "in peace or war." I want to denounce the Red Cross publicly and its office bosses, oligarchs who disguise their wives as nurses. But I also want to denounce the hospitals for their cruel treatment of the wounded. It was nurses and medical assistants placed there by the Third Brigade that looked after the wounded.
On the day of the explosion, several members of this committee appealed to the Red Cross to go to take care of the wounded, most of whom were children. The answer from a starchy type was: "Get an order from General Gomez Barros and we'll see."
But the assault on the people of Siloe did not stop there. On Sunday night there were more shootings, as the army looked for more collaborators of the guerrillas, and all the young people in the area were detained.
Two women were hooded by the army so that they would not be recognized by the local people, and they were saying "this one, yes; this they were saying this one, yes, unis one, no."
or chose orators aid wehe guerrilas with gerrillas were lined up and later taken to a school, near the tanks. A woman who went to look for her daughter managed to see the bodies of ten young girls, completely nude and with their breasts cut off.
A local person heard a noncommissioned officer tell his men to do what they liked with the "female bandits."
Torture exists in Colombia. It has been denounced by the International Red Cross. But what happened that night and was told by the people in this troubled area went beyond all previous limits.
Many complaints have been made about the crimes committed by the soldiers, who stole the local people's belongings. We have all seen them talk about this on the TV. As a journalist, I was in the area and can testify to the destruction of homes.
Television sets were wrecked in the search for arms. Cardboard dwellings were torn apart. Dogs, cats, and parrots in cages were shot by way of target practice. Children's piggy banks were broken and their pennies taken.
All of this is confirmed by pictures that appeared in a paper in Cali. Women were mistreated abominably. In the University Hospital, there is an 75-year-old man who was stomped because he was accused of collaborating with the guerrillas.
Besides the bloody events in Siloe, we want to tell you that in the Aguablanca area there have been isolated incidents that have already resulted in a large number of deaths. Military and police operations in the Petecuy, Marroquin, and Comuneros neighborhoods, and another ten besides, were so extensive that they claimed the lives of about a hundred victims, mostly young workers and students. But the worst thing is that there are signs that a crueller operation than the one that occurred in Siloe is in the offing, and this is terrifying the population.
Today, we appeal to you to use every means to assure respect for the lives of the detainees, who are already more than two hundred. We ask that the life of the fighter Lucio Cifuntes, who was arrested last Thursday in Siloe, be respected. We ask that the safety of the lives of the seventy political prisoners that were taken from Villahermosa to other jails in reprisal for the demands they raised, be assured.
We ask that the lives of the lawyers who are defending the political prisoners be respected.
We ask for respect for the lives of three detainees taken from the Buen Pastor prison and whose whereabouts are unknown.
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International Viewpoint 27 January 1986
PRITAIN