Colombian paramilitary death squads killing protest organizers

Sat, 15 Mar 2008 11:31a.m.

Six organizers of a recent march to protest violence by the Colombian state and paramilitary death squads have been killed and more than two dozen threatened with death, the UN and a human rights group said Friday.

The victims, including union workers and human rights activists, were killed around the time of the March 6 national protest, according to the Movement of Victims of State Crimes and the UN high commissioner for human rights.

"On March 12, organizations connected with the protest received an e-mail with threats made by the 'Black Eagles' (a death squad), which came with a list of 28 human rights defenders saying the group would be implacable with those people who had organized the protest," said Ivan Cepeda, director of the victims' movement.

The UN human rights agency condemned the threats and demanded the killings be investigated.

"This office asks state authorities to guarantee prompt and efficient protection for those human rights defenders and the leaders of social organizations," it said in a statement.

While tens of thousands of far-right paramilitaries have disarmed under a peace deal with the government, new groups such as the Black Eagles have sprung up across Colombia.

The March 6 demonstration - which drew tens of thousands of people, many of them relatives of victims killed by the army or the death squads – was seen as a counterweight to a February protest against the country's largest leftist guerrilla group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC.

In a sign of deep polarization after decades of civil conflict, many Colombians refused to join the March protest, calling it a campaign to smear the government and the armed forces.

President Alvaro Uribe's closest adviser, Jose Obdulio Gaviria, alleged that the march was organized by the FARC.

Activists accuse Uribe's administration of conflating human rights workers and rebels, supposedly giving the death squads a green light to kill activists.

On Friday, Interior Minister Carlos Holguin "categorically" rejected thee-mail threats and called the Black Eagles a "criminal organization."

The paramilitaries were created by landowners and drug lords to battle leftist rebels, and some parts of the armed forces allied themselves with the death squads to fight what was regarded as a common enemy.