No arms sanctions in drug blacklist
US sends massive arms shipment to Colombia
By Dara MacNeil
In February of this year, the United States formally announced
its decision to subject Colombia to punitive sanctions for an
alleged failure to prosecute the `war on drugs.'
In official US parlance Colombia (along with a number of other
countries) was officially `decertified'. As a result, the country
lost access to various US aid programmes and was also to be
subjected to trade sanctions.
The decertification process - the subject of enormous resentment
throughout Latin America in particular - casts Uncle Sam in the
guise of an innocent victim in the ongoing war on drugs. It does
so by focusing responsibility on drug-producing countries, rather
than the consumers. The US market consumes the bulk of all
illegal drugs produced in the world today.
Strangely, however, Colombia's presence on the official blacklist
does not appear to have hampered or impeded military links
between the two countries, even less the receipt of military aid.
On 13 July, just four months after Colombia had been officially
designated an `undesirable', 500 tonnes of arms, munitions and
military vehicles arrived at El Dorado airport, in the Colombian
capital of Bogota. The war materiel had been dispatched by the
United States. According to local press reports, a senior
representative of Colombia's notorious National Police met the
arms shipment and thanked the US profusely.
Apparently, the arms are to be used in the ``control and combating
of drug-trafficking.'' How that equates with the US decision to
`decertify' Colombia last February remains a mystery.
It would also appear to be a remarkable coincidence that the arms
supplies should arrive following a period of intense rebel
activity in Colombia, during which time guerrilla opponents of
the regime have scored some notable successes.
In this context it is also worth noting that a variety of human
rights bodies, from Amnesty International to Human Rights Watch,
have condemned Colombia's war on drugs as a farce. Amnesty
International has, in the past, labelled Colombia's war on drugs
``a myth.'' US military aid, they claim, is delivered under the
pretext of the drugs war, but used instead to arm pro-government
paramilitary groupings. In this manner Colombia has acquired what
is perhaps the single worst human rights record in the entire
region, a fact which has never impeded the flow of US military
aid.
Between 1986-1994 there were more than 20,000 political murders
in Colombia, the bulk carried out by the Colombian military or
its proxies. In the early 1980s, an official US investigation
revealed over one third of the membership of Colombia's
pro-government paramilitary groupings were active-duty army
officers.
In recent times, perhaps in response to criticism, Colombia's
National Police have taken over the role of the army, as the
regime's chief official killer of political opponents.
In tandem with this transfer of responsibility was a shift in US
military aid, from the army to the National Police, as evidenced
in the 13 July arms shipment.
investigation carried out four years ago by church groups
concluded that state policy amounted to the ``systematic
elimination of opposition, criminalisation of large sectors of
the population, massive resort to political assassination and
disappearance, general use of torture (and) extreme powers for
the security forces.''
Among those who can expect to bear the brunt of this latest US
arms shipment are: community leaders, human rights and health
workers, union activists, students, members of religious youth
organisations, young people in shanty towns, and peasant farmers.
The security forces also indulge a passion for ``social cleansing''
- the murder of the homeless, the unemployed, street children,
prostitutes and homosexuals.
In response to a compensation claim lodged with the government
after one such murder, Colombia's Ministry of Defence issued the
following, chilling reply: ``There is no case for the payment of
any compensation by the nation, particularly for an individual
who was neither useful nor productive, either to society or to
his family.''
The basis of Washington's justification for this aid - Colombia's
chief source or arms and training according to Americas Watch -
was made public in 1989, by the US State Department. ``Colombia,''
it said, ``has a democratic form of government and does not
exhibit a consistent pattern of gross violations of
internationally recognised human rights.''
The case of Major Luis Felipe Becerra does not appear to have
changed their mind. Charged in the early 1990s with
responsibility for an army massacre, Major Becerra's defence was
aided by the decision of the judge who issued the warrant to flee
Colombia, following numerous death threats. Shortly after, the
judge's father was murdered.
Even then, the warrants remained unserved as Major Becerra was in
the United States at the time, undergoing training for his
elevation up the ranks to Lieutenant-Colonel. Duly promoted,
Becerra returned to Colombia where he was made head of the army's
press and public relations unit. In 1993, the charges were
dropped.
In October of the same year Becerra was again implicated in a
massacre of unarmed civilians. Troops under his command, under
the pretext of a battle with guerrillas, executed 13 civilians.
All were unarmed and the women victims were raped, tortured and
then murdered. Becerra remained at his post. It is for Becerra
and his ilk that the 500 tonnes of arms that arrived in Colombia
on 13 July were intended.
Their function is to maintain a system wherein the top three
percent of Colombia's landed elite own over 70% of all arable
land, while 57% of the poorest farmers subsist on less than three
percent of the land. An estimated 40% of Colombians exist in
conditions of absolute poverty, while economists have praised the
country as one of the ``most flourishing economies in Latin
America.''
d while the US (and Colombia) insists that the country operates
an open, democratic system it is, as one critic tellingly
remarked, a ``democracy without the people.''
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