In the small town of La Macarena, Meta, 200 kilometers south of Bogota, one of the hottest areas of the Colombian conflict is the largest mass grave discovered in the recent history of Latin America, with a number of bodies “NN” buried without identification, which could reach 2,000, according to various sources and the residents themselves. Since 2005,the Army whose elite forces are deployed in the vicinity has been burying behind the local cemetery hundreds of bodies with the order that they would be buried without any name.
This is the largest burial of victims of a conflict known until now in the continent. We should have to move to the Nazi Holocaust or the barbarity of Pol Pot in Cambodia to find something of this dimension.
Behind the cemetery of La Macarena, 200 km. Bogota, thousands of bodies were buried without name.
The lawyer Jairo Ramirez is the secretary of the Permanent Committee for the Defense of Human Rights in Colombia and accompanied a delegation of British parliamentarians to the site, when a few weeks ago,he began to discover the magnitude of the grave of La Macarena. “What we saw was terrifying,” he told public. “Countless bodies, and hundreds of plates of white wood on the surface with NN and registration dates from 2005 until today.”
Missing
Ramirez adds, “Army Commander told us they were guerrillas killed in combat, but the people of the region speak of many community leaders, farmers and community advocates who disappeared without a trace.”
While prosecutors announced investigations “from March” after the parliamentary and presidential elections, a parliamentary delegation composed by Jordi Pedret Spanish (PSOE), Inés Sabanés (UI), Francesc Canet (ERC), Joan-Josep Nuet (IC - EU), Carles Campuzano (CiU), Mikel Basabe (Aralar) and Marian Suarez (Eivissa pel Canvi) arrived yesterday in Colombia to study the case and make a report to the Congress and the Parliament. The situation of women as the first victims of conflict and union leaders (only in 2009 were killed 41) also focus their work in different areas of the country.
More than a thousand graves in the country
The horror of La Macarena has been topical since the existence of over a thousand mass graves of unidentified bodies in Colombia. Until late last year, forensic had registered some 2,500 corpses and nearly 600 of them could have been identified and the bodies returned to relatives.
The location of these graves has been possible because of the statements in free version of the middle-rank of the allegedly demobilized paramilitaries and the benefiting from the controversial Justice and Peace Law that guarantees a symbolic sentence in exchange for the confession of their crimes.
The last of these statements was that of John Jairo Renteria, also known as Betún, who has just revealed to the prosecutor and the victim’s relatives that he and his supporters buried “at least 800 people” in the Villa Sandra farm in Puerto Asis, Putumayo. “We had to dismember people. All in the AUC had to learn it and was often made with people alive,” the paramilitary leader has confessed to the prosecutor for Justice and Peace.
“The government does not want to investigate”
Alfredo Molano
Sociologist and author
Alfredo Molano, one of Colombia’s most influential columnists, has toured the country as a chronicler of violence, which earned him exile to escape threats of military and paramilitary.
What is the situation of the graves in Colombia?
The general attorney of the nation speaks about 25,000 “disappeared”, must be in a site somewhereThere are huge mass graves in Colombia. Some people eliminated. It is also possible that they have made disappear some remains as did the Nazi in crematoria.
Do these graves have to do with the so called ’false positives?
Yes, this may be related to false positives [Colombian civilians killed and presented as people “killed in action”]. The army buried clandestinely. Many of them will be found in these mass graves.
What might be the magnitude of the findings in these graves?
Terrible. Neither in the fifties there was much brutality in Colombia as shown in the actions of the paramilitaries, but the government has no willingness to investigate thoroughly, and will let appear some tombsThe delays are very long and technical difficulties for identification, chemical and DNA testing are enormous.
ANTONIO ALBIÑANA - Bogotá - 26/01/2010 00:05
* Source: Comité Permanente:
http://www.comitepermanente.org/english/in_colombia_appears_a_mass_grave_containing_2000_b.html
Colombia’s new death squads exposed; Army’s Mass Grave Found in Macerena
New death squads have arisen to replace Colombia’s notorious right-wing paramilitary groups - and they are committing the same acts of terrorism against trade unionists as their predecessors, a prominent US-based rights organisation has warned.
Under pressure from human rights groups and Washington, Bogota has overseen the demobilisation of over 31,000 fighters from the so-called United Self-Defence Forces of Colombia, or AUC, in recent years.
But dozens of groups have emerged as successors, engaging in activities ranging from mass murder to extortion, according to New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW).
The death squads were organised by rural landowners, ostensibly to counter leftwing guerilla groups. They soon became a powerful, lawless force in much of the country, with links to senior rightwing politicians and drugs cartels.
The US government has declared the AUC a terrorist organisation, and government pressure eventually forced the paramilitaries to disband between 2003 and 2006.
The 113-page Paramilitaries’ Heirs: The New Face of Violence in Colombia report, based on nearly two years of research, documents widespread and serious abuses by the new groups.
According to the report, the groups regularly commit massacres, killings, forced displacement, rape, and extortion, and “create a threatening atmosphere in the communities they control.”
Often, they target trade unionists, human rights defenders, victims of the paramilitaries who are seeking justice and community members who do not follow their orders.
HRW Americas director Jose Miguel Vivanco said: “Whatever you call these groups - whether paramilitaries, gangs, or some other name - their impact on human rights in Colombia today should not be minimised.”Like the paramilitaries, these successor groups are committing horrific atrocities, and they need to be stopped."
The HRW report also warned that some government officials and state security forces ignore militia violence. The rights group said that massacres have increased, with nearly 170 people killed in 37 mass killings in 2008 compared to 128 victims killed a year earlier.
Mr Vivanco said that President Alvaro Uribe’s US-backed administration has “failed to treat the rise of the successor groups with the seriousness the problem requires.”
Colombia’s Defence Minister Gabriel Silva said that HRW “has an ideological position that does not accept our objective information - it has misguided and slanted opinions.”
By Tom Mellen
Morning Star (UK)
Friday, Feb 5, 2010
Army mass grave in La Macarena
February 4, 2010
Center for International Policy’s Colombia Program
Miami’s El Nuevo Herald and Spain’s Público have run stories in the past two days about a shocking find in La Macarena, about 200 miles south of Bogotá.
Residents say that after it entered the strongly guerrilla-controlled zone in the mid-2000s, Colombia’s Army began dumping unidentified bodies in a mass grave near a local cemetery. The grave may contain as many as 2,000 bodies.
Públicor eports:
Since 2005 the Army, whose elite units are deployed in the surrounding area, has been depositing behind the local cemetery hundreds of cadavers with the order that they be buried without names. …
Jurist Jairo Ramírez, the secretary of the Permanent Committee for the Defense of Human Rights in Colombia, accompanied a delegation of British legislators to the site several weeks ago, when the magnitude of the La Macarena grave began to be discovered. “What we saw was chilling,” he told Público. “An infinity of bodies, and on the surface hundreds of white wooden plaques with the inscription NN [name unknown] and dates from 2005 until today.”
Ramírez adds: “The Army commander told us that they were guerrillas killed in combat, but the people in the region told us of a multitude of social leaders, campesinos and community human rights defenders who disappeared without a trace.”
El Nuevo Herald reports:
A spokesman of the Prosecutor-General’s Office (Fiscalía) in Bogotá revealed to El Nuevo Herald that a mission from that institution’s Technical Investigations Corps (CTI) has already gone to the cemetery and confirmed the existence of “a large number” of cadavers in the grave, though it only made a few excavations.
“We became the site for the depositing of the war dead,” declared Eliécer Vargas Moreno, mayor of the municipality. …
Residents of La Macarena interviewed over the phone by El Nuevo Herald, under the promise that their identities would not be revealed, expressed their suspicion that among the bodies are relatives who disappeared during the last four years. They denied that the bodies are those of guerrillas and asked for the chance to prove it.
Colombia’s Prosecutor-General’s Office will make its first excavations at the site in mid-March. While we are not jumping to conclusions, we will be watching this case closely.
La Macarena, the site of the grave, has been a very important site of U.S.-aided military operations since the mid-2000s. In this area, the U.S. government supported and advised the Colombian Army’s 2004-2006 “Plan Patriota” military offensive, and since 2007 has supported the “Plan for the Integral Consolidation of La Macarena” or PCIM, part of the new “Integrated Action” framework that is now guiding much U.S. assistance.
The Center for International Policy’s Colombia Program