29/06/03 :

• Colombia, often criticized by rights groups for its tough policies, spelled out on Sunday a strategy for beating rebels and drug lords that stressed public participation in "democratic security". The 68-page document, the first detailed security plan published by the government of President Alvaro Uribe, calls for the strengthening of the armed forces and stresses the duty of citizens to aid the authorities. 

  But while the document stresses respect for the rule of law, it glosses over some controversial aspects of Uribe's security policies. "There continues to be a serious gap between what is said is going to be done and then what actually is done," said Robin Kirk of Human Rights Watch. She said the Colombian government was doing little to break links between the military and far-right paramilitary outlaws and said she was worried about attempts to give the security forces extra powers : Colombia explains how it will beat rebels , drugs Reuters AlertNet, UK

28/06/03 :

• In Bogota, a court has ordered the suspension of a U.S.-funded drug eradication program until the effects of the herbicide on human health and the environment can be scientifically established. While U.S. and Colombian officials argue that the weed-killer glyphosate is safe, farmers and indigenous groups on the ground say it has affected their health and has even killed off some livestock. Environmentalists claim that the large-scale spray program is also affecting waters sources and wildlife : Colombia halts drug eradication to do herbicide study Miami Herald, FL

26/06/03 :

• "The Armed Forces are the principal enemy to a peace process with the self-defense groups," says Washington Post. "Opposition exists at the highest ranks to permit demobilization." : Colombian Fighters' Drug Trade Is Detailed - Washington Post  

25/06/03 :

• A former member of Denmark's parliament pleaded guilty on Tuesday to involvement in an attempted $25 million cocaine-for-guns exchange to arm Colombian paramilitary forces. Jensen's lawyer said in November his client claimed he had worked with the CIA and associated with the Drug Enforcement Administration while in Colombia : Danish ex - MP pleads guilty in Colombian arms deal Reuters AlertNet, UK

23/06/03 :

• Colombia will have to shoulder more of the financial burden of fighting its guerrilla and drug wars as Washington directs its resources against terror in other parts of the world, a U.S. envoy said Thursday : US warns of drop in military aid to Colombia Reuters AlertNet, UK 

20/06/03 :

• Colombia suffers 3,000 kidnappings a year, the world's highest rate. But Ruiz's kidnapping highlights an even more disturbing trend -- the abduction of senior citizens. Ruiz is 81 years old. : Running out of victims, Colombian rebels kidnap senior citizens Boston Globe, MA

18/06/03 :

• A fired army general linked by news media to the disappearance of two tons of cocaine blamed the United States Tuesday for his abrupt dismissal from the military. Gen. Gabriel Ramon Diaz was allegedly involved in the disappearance last year of two tons of seized cocaine near the Caribbean coast where the 2nd Brigade he commanded was based. Two of three men who tipped the army about the cocaine shipment were later found murdered. The U.S.-based Human Rights Watch has said that when Diaz was a colonel in southern Colombia's Putumayo state, he had links to right-wing paramilitary death squads : Fired Colombia Army General Blames US Guardian, UK

17/06/03 :

• President Alvaro Uribe helped deploy the nation's latest weapon in a nearly 40-year civil war, sending 10,000 peasant soldiers back to their villages Monday to confront rebels and paramilitary fighters. Human rights groups and foreign diplomats say they are watching whether the government's new strategy will lead to abuses. When Uribe governed Antioquia state in the 1990s, some armed citizens' groups there were accused of serious human rights abuses and were infiltrated by paramilitary death squads : Colombia Deploys 10000 Peasant Soldiers Kansas City Star, MO

16/06/03 :

• Forced displacement has been a part of the Colombian social dynamic for decades. Although intensity and location have varied, the prime motivation for displacement has always been political violence. The first extreme period of forced displacement occurred during the era of bipartisan violence in the 1950s. The civilian population finds itself caught in the crossfire between leftist guerrillas, right-wing paramilitaries, and the armed agents of the state. Furthermore, increasing numbers of today's displaced families are headed by women who receive little aid from the Colombian government : Women as Heads of Displaced Households in Colombia Colombia Report, NY

15/06/03 :

• Colombia's Air Force says it has killed at least 67 members of the rebel Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. Air Force General Hector Fabio Velasco said Saturday his forces conducted two separate air raids against FARCs.  One attack was in Colombia's Pacific coast province Cauca, the other in Meta province, east of Bogota. The incidents have not been independently confirmed; it is not known whether the victims are guerilleros, civilians or hostages detained by the FARCs in these camps : Colombian Commander Says 67 Rebels Killed Yahoo Daily News

14/06/03 :

• The national commission of conciliation and the facilitation commission summoned the Government and the guerrilla to a national encounter to define the possibility in an agreement of humanitarian interchange. The member of the facilitadora commission, father Darío Echeverry, insisted on which the only possible exit to the drama of the kidnapping in Colombia is, to traverse, in an agreement of humanitarian interchange : National encounter for humanitarian interchange Las voces del secuestro

13/06/03 :

• A U.S. Embassy official secretly met with an emissary to the leader of a feared paramilitary group, branded as a terrorist organization by Washington. U.S. Embassy political officer Alexander Lee told the emissary that the paramilitary leaders might receive leniency if they cooperate once in custody. The meeting happened May 3 and lasted for three hours. U.S. Embassy spokesman Jim Foster refused to comment on whether the meeting occurred, but said that if it had, it was not a negotiation : "Our position hasn't changed," Foster said. "We don't negotiate with terrorists. There was no negotiation." : US Official, Colombia Emissary Meet Newsday

• Colombia's main rebel army may be killing deserters, threatening a major government effort to entice guerrillas to lay down their arms and rejoin society. President Alvaro Uribe's government has airdropped leaflets and broadcast TV ads encouraging rebels to leave the guerrilla forces, and promising them fair treatment. Almost 700 rebels have deserted so far this year in exchange for clothing, food, health care and access to education and work training, the government says. But after Sunday's killing, Colombian Defense Minister Martha Lucia Ramirez is concerned that the FARC is infiltrating the government ``reinsertion program'' with active-duty members : Colombia Fears Rebels Killing Deserters Guardian, UK

12/06/03 :

• Press freedom has worsened internationally in the past six months, with an alarming number of journalists killed and repression increasing in a number of countries, the World Association of Newspapers said Saturday in its annual half-year review of press freedom world-wide. In Colombia, five journalists have been murdered since January in the civil conflict that has killed over 30 journalists in the last decade : Press Freedom Deteriorates World-Wide: Wan AllAfrica.com, Africa

11/06/03 :

• Dozens of people who were kidnapped by gunmen in a remote Andean region of Peru are released unharmed. The hostages included three police officers and seven foreigners - six Colombians and one Chilean. Most of them worked for Argentine firm Techint, and were living ion a camp while building a natural gas pipeline in the area. The kidnappers fled when Peruvian security forces approached, and hundreds of soldiers and police were now searching for them in the remote Andean region. : Peru hostages set free BBC News

10/06/03 :

• The International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU), which represents 158 million workers across the globe, denounces an "appalling toll of murder, beatings, disappearances and intimidation" in Colombia, warning that such violations of rights were carried out with "virtually total impunity". There were 206 union-related killings last year across Latin America, with 184 of those murders committed in Colombia : Colombia tops danger list for trade unionists Financial Times /    The ICFTU report 

08/06/03 :

• While Americans are pre-occupied with the Middle East, the U.S. government is furtively stoking a war in South America that has seethed for decades. Since the beginning of "Plan Colombia" the United States has spent more than $2.5 billion on its military and political campaign there and is expected to spend almost $700 million in the coming year. 

  By attempting to protect an oil pipeline and other sites of strategic infrastructure, the United States risks being dragged into a conflict that is more complex and deep-rooted than most policy-makers in the United States and even Colombia fully realize. Despite congressional requests for more transparency, it is unclear how much money will be spent or how many years the mission will take.

  Such a loosely defined mission, however, is exactly what some Colombian government officials prefer, in the hopes that the United States will solve Colombia's historic social and political problems with heavy doses of military aid and eventually, tens of thousands of U.S. soldiers : The Colombian quagmire Baltimore Sun, MD

07/06/03 :

• Two U.S.-backed initiatives have aggravated the decades-old strife in Colombia, "the direst humanitarian crisis in the Western Hemisphere," say Miami Auxiliary Bishop Thomas Wenski, chairman of the U.S. bishops' Migration Committee, and committee member Auxiliary Bishop John Manz of Chicago, who traveled through Colombia and Ecuador to see the plight of Colombians displaced from their homes because of the ongoing conflict : Colombia's Ordeal Called the 'Direst Humanitarian Conflict' Zenit News Agency, Italy

06/06/03 :

• Two kidnapped women -- one French and one Colombian -- narrowly escaped what might have been a lengthy stay in captivity when an army patrol making a routine traffic stop intercepted their rebel captors and set the women free, the army said on Wednesday. : Routine Colombia traffic stop frees abducted women Reuters AlertNet, UK

05/06/03 :

• The United States may have to spend $230 million a year to keep funding drug spraying programs that were supposed to be taken over by the Colombian government, a congressional investigator told a Senate panel Tuesday : Colombia Drug Spray May Cost US $230M Guardian, UK 

04/06/03 :

• Authorities in Colombia say a bomb explosion has killed four people and wounded at least 10 others. Police say the blast took place late Monday in the town of Granada, northwest of the capital, Bogota. : Bomb Explosion Kills 4 in Colombia Voice of America 

03/06/03 :

• Washington's "war on terror" has made the world more dangerous by curbing human rights, undermining international law and shielding governments from scrutiny, Amnesty International said Wednesday. 

  Amnesty's 311-page report said the intense media focus on Afghanistan and Iraq in 2002 meant human rights abuses in Ivory Coast, Colombia, Burundi, Chechnya and Nepal had gone largely unnoticed : War on Terror Makes World More Dangerous -Amnesty Reuters

02/06/03 :  

• The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) "unhurriedly awaits the government's reply to its proposal for a prisoner exchange," the Marxist group said in the statement, dated Saturday and posted on the Internet. The rebels repeated that they were "in a position to guarantee the physical integrity of the prisoners in their charge, but only if the government desists from adventuring an escape by force of weapons." : FARC awaiting Colombian government's reply on prisoner swap Yahoo

• More than ever, Colombia's 39-year-old civil war is spreading beyond its porous borders, bringing to its five neighbors a troubling brew of armed leftist rebels, right-wing death squads, drugs and refugees : Colombia's Long Civil War Spreads Turmoil to Venezuela New York Times

31/05/03 : 

• Reacting to a call by regional leaders for a peaceful end to the decades-long conflict in Colombia, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan today  welcomed “regional leaders’ support for his continuing good offices, which aim to achieve a negotiated solution to Colombia’s conflict.: Annan welcomes regional leaders’ declaration on Colombia UN News Centre

28/05/03 : 

• Colombian drug lord Fabio Ochoa, once part of the notorious Medellin cocaine cartel, was convicted in Miami on Wednesday of two drug conspiracy charges. A federal court jury found Ochoa, 46, guilty of conspiring to possess cocaine with intent to distribute and conspiring to import cocaine to the United States. He faces up to life in prison at a sentencing hearing set for Aug. 19, an aide to U.S. District Judge Michael Moore said : Colombian drug pioneer convicted in Miami - United Press International

27/05/03 : 

• The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) "unhurriedly awaits the government's reply to its proposal for a prisoner exchange," the Marxist group said in the statement, dated Saturday and posted on the Internet. The rebels repeated that they were "in a position to guarantee the physical integrity of the prisoners in their charge, but only if the government desists from adventuring an escape by force of weapons." : FARC awaiting Colombian government's reply on prisoner swap  -  AFP  

26/05/03 : 

• Police searching the house of a suspected hit man found something that terrified human rights lawyer Alirio Uribe - a folder containing his own pictures, his address and maps showing his routes to work.

  Rather than flee the country, Uribe obtained unarmed bodyguards and pressed on helping Colombians whose human rights have been violated in a nearly four-decade war.

  Two years and many death threats later, major international human rights groups have recognized the lawyer's bravery, granting him the prestigious 2003 Martin Ennals Award.

  ``This award recognizes the work of Alirio Uribe in a country ... where the fight for human rights many times amounts to putting your own life on the line,'' government Human Rights Ombudsman Eduardo Cifuentes said Friday night at an event celebrating Uribe's award : Groups Honor Colombia Human Rights Lawyer Guardian, UK  /       The Martin Ennals Award for Human Rights Defenders martinennalsaward.org

25/05/03 : 

• In Cusco, Peru, Latin American leaders urged the United Nations  to do more to stop rebel violence in Colombia, but stopped short of endorsing outside military action in the Andean nation's bloody four-decade war : Latam Urges UN Push, but No Troops, on Colombia - Reuters
• Colombian Vice President Francisco Santos is in Europe attempting to drum up support for his government's apparently never-ending war against FARC Marxist guerillas. He may find his mission difficult in the face of a recently botched hostage rescue mission and the theft of millions of FARC dollars by members of an elite army unit. Both incidents have dented the image of President Alvaro Uribe's hard-line approach, and an end to the bloodshed seems as distant as ever : News of a massacre - Radio Netherlands

24/05/03 : 

• Rigoberta Menchú Tum, Nobel Peace Prize in 1992 at the age of 33, just sent a letter to request the release of Ingrid Betancourt and other abducted people in Colombia : The letter of Rigoberta

• "We are extremely concerned about the impact that the internal conflict in Colombia is having on the indigenous peoples of that country," said Kris Janowski, spokesman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees : UN concerned for Indians in Colombia's civil war CNN / UN News Centre UN News Centre 

23/05/03 : 

• The international delegation of Catholic bishops sent to Colombia last week concluded that a negotiated solution must be found to end the conflict lacerating the country. "We consider Colombia to be an educated and very Christian country, but there are values, such as life, which have been lost. There are many, too many, dead and kidnapped. It pains us enormously," Archbishop Paul Jozef Cordes said, who praised "the work that the Church is doing in the most isolated places, at times at the risk of lives." : International Episcopal Commission Favors Negotiated Solution for ... Zenit News Agency, Italy 

22/05/03 : 

• U.N. Envoy Triggers a Debate in Colombia : Colombia's biggest rebel group says it is fighting on behalf of the poor for "a new Colombia." Authorities say they're just drug-trafficking bandits who kill innocent civilians. So when U.N. special envoy James LeMoyne told a newspaper over the weekend he believes some of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, rebels are ideologically committed, he touched off a storm of controversy.

  LeMoyne, in unusually blunt comments to two Colombian newspapers, suggested the upper classes are not making enough sacrifices in Colombia's war, now in its 39th year. Most of the government soldiers fighting in the jungles and mountains of this South American country are the children of the poor.

  "I have two questions for the upper class of this country to respond to," LeMoyne told the newspaper El Tiempo. "First: Are your sons, nephews or grandsons in the army? ... Who makes the sacrifices in this country when there is combat?" UN Envoy Triggers a Debate in Colombia - Guardian

21/05/03 : 

• Amnesty International expressed dismay at today's vote by the Colombian House of Representatives (lower house of Congress) in favour of reforming the Constitution to grant judicial police powers to the armed forces. The vote is the second of eight required before the bill becomes law.  : Human Rights Seriously Undermined as Judicial Police Powers to ... Amnesty International 

20/05/03 : 

• Colombia on Monday unveiled a massive corruption scandal involving nearly 150 members of its elite counter-guerrilla forces, who allegedly pocketed cash from a suspected rebel war-chest they found on patrol last month : Colombia accuses troops of stealing rebel cash MSNBC  - Colombia army in rebel money scam BBC, UK Colombia Charges 147 Soldiers With Theft Guardian, UK 

19/05/03 : 

• Amnesty International accused the world's wealthiest countries yesterday of arming some of the worst abusers of human rights despite their assurances to the contrary. At least two-thirds of all global arms transfers between 1997 and 2001 came from five of the G8 members - the United States, Russia, France, Britain and Germany. Amnesty said it was calling for an international arms trade treaty to strengthen and harmonise national controls on the flow of arms to countries it describes as human rights abusers such as Israel, Colombia, Afghanistan and Senegal : Richest nations arming rights abusers: Amnesty Sydney Morning Herald, Australia

17/05/03 : 

• According to government figures, Colombia's long-running civil war has uprooted nearly one million people, but human rights organisations put the figure three times higher : UN help for Colombia displaced BBC, UK 

16/05/03 :

• Emerging reports show that while Uribe was prodding the military to mount rescue missions, state officials opened a backchannel communication with the guerrillas and knew roughly where.  Antioquia state Gov. Guillermo Gaviria and 12 other captives were being held. One of the three hostages who survived, Colombian Army Sgt. Pedro Guarnizo, said a helicopter had arrived the previous day to carry away 11 rebels who were suffering from leishmaniasis, an infection caused by sand flies which causes skin ulcers. Gaviria's widow, Yolanda Pinto, told reporters she had sent letters and medicine for her husband and other hostages via the provincial helicopter and that the national government had been informed at the time : Colombia probes report helicopter supplied rebels - Reuters AlertNet - Reuters AlertNet

15/05/03 :

• Colombia, already a major recipient of U.S. military aid, is asking Europe to help it fight leftist rebels and far-right paramilitaries, President Alvaro Uribe said on Tuesday. He specified that requests for aid would be made to individual member countries of the European Union, which has so far been left in the shadow by the United States in its support of the Colombian government in the four-decade-old war : Colombia asks Europe for military aid
  Reuters AlertNet, UK

14/05/03 :

• Little information has emerged since the single-engine Cessna carrying Stansell, Marc Gonsalves, Tom Howes, Tom Janis and Colombian army Sgt. Luis Alcides Cruz developed engine trouble and crash-landed on Feb. 13 near where rebel squad commanders were holding a meeting. The three men were on an intelligence mission in the state of Caqueta, a rebel stronghold and cocaine-producing region : Fears rise for US hostages South Florida Sun-Sentinel, FL 

13/05/03 :

• Raul Reyes, a spokesman for the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, defended the rebel commander who ordered the hostages killed on May 5 after hearing military helicopters approach the camp where the prisoners were held. "Guerrilla units have the moral obligation to save their own lives, and protect, as far as possible, the lives and physical well-being of the prisoners in their command, but in no event can they allow enemy forces to take away the prisoners without a military response." : Rebel group takes responsibility for execution of 10 political ... San Francisco Chronicle, CA

• The U.N. special advisor on Colombia, James LeMoyne, warned FARC rebels on Sunday that he could not meet their demands to negotiate an exchange : U.N. Envoy Warns Colombian Rebels on Prisoner Swap  Reuters

11/05/03 :

• They are being held deep in the wilds of Colombia, guarded by rebels who apparently have orders to shoot them if they hear rescue forces moving in. The three Americans appear no closer to freedom than the day three months ago when they fell out of the sky into rebel hands. The danger is even greater after a botched rescue attempt of other hostages showed the rebels are willing to kill if they are attacked : Colombian Rebels Still Holding Americans - Guardian

10/05/03 :

• We know the facts about Colombia’s tragedy—or we think we do. We’ve been exposed to numbingly repetitive horror stories, inundated by statistics, debates and official statements that use words to say the opposite of what they mean. (How many times have we heard that the billions of dollars in U.S. military aid for the Colombian army are necessary to “preserve that country’s democracy and support human rights”?) By now, we believe we know who is responsible for Colombia’s mayhem: All the havoc is the fault of the FARC guerrillas; or the paramilitaries; or the elites; or the army; or the drug traffickers. It has nothing to do with us...
  The Supply and Demand for Colombia's Misery In These Times

09/05/03 :

• ''Looking at these tragic results, we are going to insist that the government abstain from doing any military operations to rescue Ingrid,'' said Juan Carlos Lecompte, the husband of the former presidential candidate, who was kidnapped at a rebel roadblock 15 months ago : Failed rescue detailed, defended Boston Globe, MA

• "Despite the pain, the president should think with a cold head and make the problem (of an exchange) a priority because the ends don't justify the means," said Yolanda Pulecio, the mother of former presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt, kidnapped in February 2002 : Colombia's Uribe: Rebels Kill 2 Officials ABC News

08/05/03 :

• "What are we waiting for? For some armed squadrons to be sent and more atrocities to ensue? How many more innocent victims must one mourn for a dialogue to take place ? Time has come to negotiate. The conditions can be quickly met. We appeal to each party 's sense of responsibility.We ask them to sit at the negotiating table, the life of each hostage is at stake : A communiqué from Ingrid's family

• ``We would have liked for no one to have died, but there are three people alive,'' Vice President Francisco Santos told journalists. ``The operation was a success in that sense.'' : Colombia Defends Botched Rescue Mission Guardian, UK 

• "I am totally against rescues," said Luis Hernando Dugue, one of the hundreds of mourners gathered in the Antioquia state house waiting for Gaviria's body to be delivered to lie in state. "In this case, they didn't even consult the family." : Medellin mourns loss of governor, peace adviser - CNN

07/05/03 :

• EU Presidency declaration on murders of kidnapped personalities Macedonian Press Agency, Greece

06/05/03 :

• Hostages die in rescue attempt - News24 South Africa 

• Q&A: Colombia's civil conflict - BBC

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