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Tough measures against rebels please Colombians, upset U.S. liberals


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By Claudio Campuzano
SPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COM

August 23, 2002

Installed on Aug. 7 with a mandate to be tough on the self-described Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC)-the now drug-financed terrorist bandits that 38 years ago started out as Marxist rebels-and spurred on by their mortar shelling of a site near Congress, where he was being inaugurated, president Alvaro Uribe hit the ground running.

He immediately declared a 90-day state of emergency and announced the wealthiest individuals and corporations will pay a new asset tax to provide the means of doubling the military budget and hiring 10,000 additional police officers.

Ironically, even as the FARC kept up their long tradition of welcoming new presidents with a bloody show of force, Uribe's inauguration speech had a conciliatory tone, and he repeated his call for United Nations assistance in Colombia's conflict, which was immediately rejected by the terrorist guerrilla.

The mortars used in the attack, fired from one mile away, were sold to the FARC by their fellow terrorists of the Irish Republican Army, who also trained them in their use, though not too well, it seems. Two of the mortar shells hit the palace, while another fell on a middle-class neighborhood and a fourth hit a shantytown, called Cartucho, a few blocks from the Congress.

Fourteen homeless people were killed in Cartucho. Five others were killed in the middle-class neighborhood, a perverse symbolism of a war in which 3,500 Colombians-mostly innocent bystanders-end up dead every year.

The state of emergency allows the government to impose widely extended curfews and bar the access to certain areas without approval by the courts; to restrict information provided to the media, and to command lands, equipment and the professional experience of private citizens. It also allows the government to suspend elected officials who contribute to unrest.

Showing he is prepared to fight against violence and corruption on all fronts, Uribe ordered government troops to go after the right-wing paramilitary groups organized by wealthy landowners to fight against the FARC, which often were responsible for the death of innocent people. Former president AndrŽs Pastrana, never did anything about this, but Uribe said he will fight with equal determination against both the paramilitary and the rebels. In the past, several human rights organizations have accused the army with cooperating with the paramilitaries, but new Defense Minister Marta Luc’a Ram’rez vowed that the military would attack "guerrillas and paramilitaries that are sowing terrorism in our country".

Attacking corruption that has often weakened the fight against terrorists, Uribe got the resignation of the top police chief, Gen. Luis Ernesto Gilibert, whose force was shaken by scandals, including the disappearance of about two million dollars from U.S. funds for the fight against drugs Even though the measures announced by Uribe impose financial sacrifice upon some Colombians and may affect civil rights, the response from both the population and political leaders was encouraging.

More than 72 percent of Colombians favor the action, according to a poll by Caracol TV. And an informal poll carried out by leading Bogota daily El Tiempo showed 91 percent agreed with the new measures.

"There's no doubt the measures are justified," former Defense Minister Rafael Pardo wrote in a column in El Tiempo. "Democracy at all levels is being threatened, not by the new government, but by leftist rebels". However, the growing political isolation of the guerrilla was better reflected in the strong support expressed by left-wing politicians for the new measures.

"This is exactly what the Constitution visualizes for a situation such as this." said Carlos Gaviria, a senator and former president of the Constitutional Court, who backed the leftist candidate in the presidential election last May. "This will give the government extraordinary powers that it would not need nor would be allowed at a time of peace."

Even political opponents like Horacio Serpa, a challenger in the May presidential elections, supported Uribe's hard line.

Under the special powers, 10,000 more police officers and 6,000 soldiers will be recruited. To pay for that, a 1.2 percent tax will be imposed on people and companies with assets over $60,000, which is expected to raise $800 million. Even those who must pay a huge share of the new tax say they are behind Uribe.

"The government needs this money," said Ricardo Obreg—n, the president of brewing giant Bavaria. He estimated Bavaria, one of Colombia's largest publicly traded companies, will have to pay about $13.2 million in the new tax.

"The United States stands with the people of Colombia in their struggle against terror, and we support President Uribe's efforts to bring the murderers to justice," Bush said. But U.S. liberals, who have no idea what Colombians have been through in the last three decades, find President Uribe's unpalatable.

"I think that any time the government takes measures they call special, you have a potential problem," said Todd Howland, director of the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Center for Human Rights in Washington. "Sacrificing rights hasn't ever gotten a government where it wants to go."

Evidently, Colombians think otherwise.

Claudio Campuzano (claudio-campuzano@hotmail.com) is U.S, correspondent for the Latin American newsweekly Tiempos del Mundo and editorial page editor of the New York daily Noticias del Mundo. He writes weekly for World Tribune.com

August 23, 2002



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