Colombia Paramilitaries Step Up Massacres

by Yadira Ferrer

The most serious incident occurred yesterday in a rural area of Buga municipality in the southwest department of Valle del Cauca, where at least 24 people were massacred. Residents of the area say there are more bodies to be found.

Nelson Pulgarin, one of the survivors of the massacre, told local broadcaster Radionet that men wearing military clothing who identified themselves as members of the paramilitary United Self-Defense Units of Colombia (AUC) had detained and boarded the bus in which he was travelling.

According to Pulgarin, the paramilitaries forced the passengers, most of whom were ranch workers from the area, to get off the bus, then released the women and children. The paramilitaries shot one group of men and took others with them.

"The last thing I remember is that they shot me and I pretended to be dead until a car passed by and took me to the hospital in Buga," he said.

While they fired their weapons on the group, the perpetrators shouted that they were executing "guerrilla collaborators."

The mayor of Buga, John Bohorquez, said that the authorities had found 24 bodies so far, but residents report that there are at least six others to be found between the towns of Alaska and La Magdalena.

Bohorquez commented that this massacre (the killing of four or more people at the same time and place) "is the worst attack perpetrated by the AUC so far this year."

But Camilo Montenegro, spokesman for the departmental government, said that this time the assassins' methods were different from the usual modus operandi of the AUC, "who generally carry lists of the people they are going to execute."

Meanwhile, in the northern department of Magdalena, the bodies of six fishermen were found October 10. They had been part of the group of 13 people kidnapped a day earlier by another AUC commando.

Two of the people kidnapped were able to escape and alert the authorities.

In the western town of Carmen de Viboral, six farmers were found assassinated, another massacre apparently committed by the right-wing paramilitaries.

Carlos de Roux, former presidential adviser on human rights, called the massacres "a deplorable breach of the silence of weapons" that the Colombian armed groups had maintained for a week.

De Roux said in comments to IPS that the AUC attacks indicate that within the right-wing organization there must be "some disagreements in factions that are acting like loose cannons."

On another front, the government and the leftist insurgent Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) have agreed to study a bilateral ceasefire proposed two weeks ago by an advisory commission.

The commission, which advises the two sides in the peace talks underway, also recommended the passage of a law that encourages the right-wing paramilitaries to voluntarily turn themselves in, in exchange for reduced sentences.

The law would be similar to the deals that the Cesar Gaviria government (1990-1994) offered drug traffickers, including the notorious Pablo Escobar, head of the Medellin Cartel. Escobar was shot and killed in 1993 by an elite police squad after he escaped from prison.

The right-wing paramilitaries, who are blamed for 80 percent of the approximately 300 massacres recorded in Colombia last year, were declared illegal in 1998 due to their ties with drug traffickers and their extermination campaigns against unionists and human rights activists.

Fabio Cardozo, peace commissioner for the mayor of Cali, capital of Valle del Cauca department, said he believes the paramilitaries committed the massacres to pressure the government to include them in peace negotiations.