AUC

by Garry Leech

Over the past five years Colombia has achieved impressive economic growth as foreign investment has increased dramatically. According to most analysts, it is the policies of President Alvaro Uribe that have created the security conditions required by foreign companies to operate in the country. A significant portion of Colombia's economic growth has resulted from investment in the country's extractive sector, reflecting the confidence of foreign investors in the capacity of the Colombian military to safeguard their operations in the country's rural conflict zones. However, analysts who praise the Uribe government for Colobmia's economic growth often ignore the fact that the enhanced security provided by the Colombian military has been achieved through an increase in human rights abuses perpetrated against the rural population.

The brothers of Colombia's attorney general allowed outlawed paramilitary fighters in 2005 to use the vehicles of a provincial public hospital one of them heads, a former paramilitary leader has told prosecutors. Rodolfo Enrique Guevara Cantillo, former No. 2 in the Northern Bloc of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, made the allegations against Angel Maya and Hernán Maya, both brothers of Attorney General Edgardo Maya.

Reprinted from Workers.org

By Minnie Bruce Pratt
Birmingham, Ala.
Published Aug 2, 2007 1:01 AM

In a blow against transnational exploitation of workers and for North-South worker solidarity, Drummond, an Alabama-based coal company, was put on trial in federal court here, charged with the murder of labor union organizers at its mines in Colombia.

In 2001 Valmore Lacarno Rodríguez and Víctor Hugo Orcasita Amaya were murdered by a group of men, some wearing military uniforms. Lacarno and Orcasita were president and vice-president of the union representing 3,000 miners, SINTRAMIENERGETICA. Shortly thereafter Gustavo Soler was murdered when he became union president.

We recieved this denunciation from FENSUAGRO (the national campesino union).
The Colombia Action Network's delegation last summer was hosted by
FENSUAGRO.

Meredith Aby
Colombia Action Network
www.colombiasolidarity.org

AFTER PRESIDENT ÁLVARO URIBE VÉLEZ MADE UNSUBSTANTIATED CLAIMS AGAINST SOCIAL, POLITICAL AND HUMAN RIGHTS ORGANIZATIONS, THREATS HAVE INCREASED

Two days after President Álvaro Uribe Vélez accused politicians who had
demobilized from M-19 as “terrorists dressed in civilian clothes”, several
social, labor, university and alternative press organizations received an

The Colombian Supreme Court is to rule whether to subpoena legislators involved in a political liaison with the paramilitary AUC (Self-Defense Units of Colombia in July 2001.