Millions of Colombians are Protesting the Far-Right Government's Neoliberal Tax Reform Bill. In Resp

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#Colombia | President Ivan Duque's administration and the Strike Committee did not reach agreements to find a solution to the crisis that the country is going through. They will meet again today.



Colombian Government And Strike Committee Reach No Agreements
telesurenglish.net

#Colombia | Cali's Imbanaco Clinic fired Doctor Juliana Rojas for sending an outrageous message to a group of colleagues saying she was willing to pay money to paramilitaries so they would kill Indigenous people.



Colombia: Doctor Who Urged Indigenous People Genocide Was Fired
telesurenglish.net

 

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I forgot about this since the Gaza stuff

 

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2 June 2021
Colombia’s Partnership with NATO Allows It to Breach Human Rights Without Condemnation
By Paul Antonopoulos


Since Joe Biden’s ascendency into the White House on January 20, he has emphasised that the U.S.’ foreign policy will be guided by human rights, even if it means calling out traditional allies. However, Washington is completely silent about the repression of anti-government demonstrations in Colombia, its closest ally in Latin America.

At the end of the May 28 meeting with his Colombian counterpart Marta Lucía Ramírez, U.S.Secretary of State Antony Blinken even expressed “his concern and condolences for the loss of life during recent protests in Colombia and reiterated the unquestionable right of citizens to protest peacefully.” However, on the same day as Blinken’s statement, 13 deaths and hundreds of injuries were reported in Cali, the third city of Colombia. This occurred following demonstrations which degenerated into clashes between protestors and security forces.

People with bulletproof vests and guns shot at demonstrators in front of the police. The situation degenerated so badly that the military arrived to aid police to suppress protests against a new tax reform which will send many in the Middle Class into poverty. According to an official count, there are at least 59 deaths, including two police officers. There are also at least 2,300 injuries and 123 missing since protests began at the end of April. Human Rights Watch reported there were a total of 63 deaths as of May 27.

Yet, the U.S. is highly unlikely to denounce Colombia for this gross treatment of civilian protestors.

Colombia is Washington’s main ally in Latin America.


For this reason, it is unsurprising that Colombia is one of the countries with the most security and military cooperation agreements with the U.S. These agreements mostly revolve around drug trafficking, civil conflict and destabilising neighbouring Venezuela.

In addition, Colombia is the only Latin American country to gain recognition as a global partner of NATO. This was achieved in 2018 only because of Washington’s insistence. This agreement allows Colombia to associate with the activities of the Atlanticist alliance, including maritime security and countering terrorism and organized crime. In exchange, Colombia receives military material and equipment from the U.S.

This agreement does not constitute a blank check for decisionmakers in the Colombian capital of Bogota. The bilateral relationship between Washington and Bogota proved to be more fluid under the aegis of Donald Trump, who at the time was being influenced by warhawk John Bolton, his National Security Adviser. However, as Colombia’s right-wing President Iván Duque is not completely ideologically aligned with Biden, many speculate that Washington wants to maintain some distance with the current administration in Bogota.

In order to take the opposite view of his predecessor Trump, who successfully used conservative and quasi-patriotic rhetoric to ascend to power, Biden wants to restore the image of American leadership internationally that was destroyed over the past two decades, particularly following the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, through terrorizing journalists and whistleblowers like Julian Assange. Such an approach involves the promotion of human rights and reviving the idea of Western-styled democracy against so-called authoritarianism – hence Biden’s willingness to take any opportunity to demonize Russia and China as they do not conform to Western liberal standards.

Under this banner of human rights, the Biden administration raised its tone vis-à-vis China, with Blinken accusing the Asian Giant of genocide against the Muslim Uighur minority in Xinjiang province. In addition, Blinken also attempts to incriminate Moscow over the Navalny affair. The American President even promised to discuss human rights issues during his scheduled June 16 meeting in Geneva with his Russian counterpart Putin.

The unrest and fierce crackdown that ensued in Colombia came at the worse time for U.S. diplomacy as it does not correspond to the global image that Biden is attempting to project. The U.S. is faced with a dilemma as it appears that the fundamentals of bilateral relations in Biden’s view, based around human rights, is overlooked in the case of Colombia.

It is likely that Washington is discreetly encouraging Duque to settle the crisis without additional repressive excess. That being said, even if Colombia is to continue its violent repression against protestors, it is unlikely to deeply affect its relationship with the U.S. as the South American country is now an indispensable ally and enacts all of Washington’s demands, even to the detriment of its relations with its neighbours, like Venezuela.

Link:
Colombia’s partnership with NATO allows it to breach human rights without condemnation

 

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As the Colombian narco-regime crafted a neoliberal tax increase and told the impoverished public it had no choice, it spent more than $14.4 million to buy more than 100,000 Israeli assault rifles now being used to repress popular protests.



Colombian Army continues to procure Galil ACE-23 rifles
israeldefense.co.il
4:43 PM · Jun 4, 2021

 

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The Colombian State Is at War with Its People

BLACK AND INDIGENOUS COMMUNITIES KNOW THIS ALL TOO WELL

LAURA CORREA OCHOA, MARÍA CÁRDENAS, AND TIANNA S. PASCHEL
May 11, 2021

State violence is a daily occurrence in rural areas and particularly in Black and indigenous territories.

“Race and racism have shaped the most recent wave of repression.”

On April 28, Colombians began a National Strike protesting the latest attempt at implementing a set of neoliberal policies. The proposed tax reform, which was withdrawn as a result of the protests, would have mainly hit the middle and lower classes. But this was just the tip of an iceberg of economic inequality, corruption, and human rights violations in the midst of a pandemic in which urban sectors feel more than ever the threat of economic precarity, unemployment, and further debt. The Colombian government responded to the more than 300 peaceful protests across the country with brutal violence. Early on, Colombia’s right-wing President, Iván Duque Márquez, authorized military action against civilians in cities throughout the country. To date, at least 47 people have been killed, 39 by the hands of police, and 548 persons are still missing.

The violent crackdown on protesters in urban centers is in some ways unprecedented. However, it also represents a regrettable acceleration of a form of warfare that indigenous and Black communities know all too well, but one that is quieter and just as deadly. State violence is a daily occurrence in rural areas and particularly in Black and indigenous territories. Moreover, political repression in Colombia, as in other postcolonial societies in the Americas, is mediated by centuries of race and racism. Yet the political struggles of these communities and the racialized character of violence and repression is often elided from national and international media coverage about Colombia and its relations with the United States.

“Political repression in Colombia is mediated by centuries of race and racism.”

Yet we know that race and racism have shaped the most recent wave of repression, which has disproportionately impacted the city of Cali, home to the largest number of Black Colombians, and one of the largest populations of Afro-descendants in Latin America. Although there are no official numbers about the ethno-racial background of those killed, in this city the demonstrations have been particularly intense in poor and working-class neighborhoods with large Black populations. Colombia notoriously does not keep ethno-racial records of victims of police violence or even of the country’s long armed conflict. But looking at the photos of the victims released by local press outlets, it’s clear that many were in fact young Black men.

Further, former right-wing president Álvaro Uribe has promoted violence by directly encouraging the police and military to fire weapons to protect private property. Later he called the Regional Indigenous Council of Cauca (CRIC), who travelled to Cali in order to support urban protesters, “terrorists.” CRIC members were later attacked and shot at, apparently by local residents who saw their entry into the city as illegitimate. President Duque responded to this violence by requesting that indigenous activists “go back to their resguardos ,” territories comparable to Native American reservations in a US context). Comments like these expose the racist and colonial character of Colombia’s white and mestizo economic and political elites.

The Violence is Not New

The truth is, this violence is not new. Despite the official recognition of extensive constitutional rights for indigenous and to a lesser extent, Black, Colombian communities, their territorial, cultural, and political rights are routinely violated by the Colombian state, sometimes violently. While the violence against these populations has been portrayed as collateral damage in the armed conflict, it has become increasingly clear that this violence is intentional and rooted in racism. Indigenous and Black communities are targeted by state violence as they represent social sectors that live and bring into being alternatives to the neoliberal, extractivist and postcolonial economic model. The reports that Black and indigenous organizations have handed over to the Special Peace Jurisdiction and to the Truth Commission, as well as the related court cases, underscore the targeted forms of violence these communities experience, including forced displacement, sexual violence, perpetual death threats, and political assassinations. These are strategies of war and thus genocidal in nature. However, they often go unnoticed precisely because indigenous and Black communities are invisible or when they are seen, disposable.

“Indigenous and Black communities are targeted by state violence.”

The open fire on protesters over the last week represents a regrettable acceleration of a form of warfare that indigenous and Black communities know all too well. From the rural territories of the Pacific to cities like Cali, state repression is commonplace; ordinary citizens and activists are often considered military targets. Indigenous and Black leaders and communities in the Colombian Pacific and Northern Cauca regions have been particularly targeted, with several leaders from these regions killed in the past few weeks. Half of the leaders assassinated in 2020 were Indigenous. Several communities are under imminent threat of displacement—some from titled collective territories—due to confrontations between FARC dissidents and the military.

The final peace accord, signed in 2016 between the Colombian government and the Guerilla FARC-EP, has not actually brought about peace. Instead, chapters on rural land reform and political participation have opened the door to new forms of violence, enacted as a way to halt any meaningful social change. The agreement includes an Ethnic Chapter, which was the result of persistent mobilization by a coalition of indigenous and Black social movement organizations. The chapter calls for collective reparations; territorial autonomy; the right to prior, free, and informed consent; as well as the full realization of the rights of Black and indigenous communities guaranteed under the 1991 Constitution. However, Colombia’s current administration and its predecessor have done little to ensure that this chapter is implemented.

Further, some 1160 activists have been killed since the signing of the 2016 Peace Accord, and 82 activists and FARC excombatientes have been assassinated or disappeared this year alone. The fact that indigenous leaders represent a third of the victims while representing only 5% of the population underlines this argument: that the conflict is inextricably intertwined with racism and coloniality. How can a country boast of peace when so many defenders of the constitution and of human rights have been slain?

“Indigenous leaders represent a third of the victims while representing only 5% of the population.”

It is no surprise that former President Uribe would be so involved in the recent repression of protesters. A strategic ally of the US in the wars on drugs and terrorism, it was he that weaponized the word “terrorist” in the Colombian context, and it was his administration that targeted human rights activists, actively supported and organized paramilitary forces, and introduced bill after bill meant to undermine Black and indigenous communities’ rights to collective territory. While Colombia’s 1991 Constitution and its active Constitutional Court has long been admired among human rights lawyers and activists in the Global South, the country has also long been a poster child for neoliberal reforms. Thus, for the last few decades Black and indigenous communities have been fighting valiantly to try to make their rights on paper a reality amidst both legal and extralegal attempts to undermine them at every turn. They have faced everything from state repression to persistent legislative attempts to unravel their rights to state-sanctioned paramilitary violence. The collective nature of ethnic rights in Colombia poses an inherent threat to an economic model based largely on extractivism and large-scale mono-cultivation agriculture. There has never been a post-war or post-conflict period in Colombia, and this last week has made this particularly clear.

The eruption of protests around the country that began on April 28 are just the latest of many large-scale protests in Colombia over the last few years. The recent National Strike should be seen as a powerful countermovement against the continued erosion of rights, as well as a damning critique of the vacuousness of official peace. Indeed, these protests are a direct response to a movement from above by economic and political elites to undermine the constitution and hollow out the peace agreement, in great part to protect their economic agendas. These neoliberal policies have long been wielded against marginalized communities, above all indigenous and Black communities in rural and urban areas alike.

“Black and indigenous communities have been fighting valiantly to try to make their rights on paper a reality.”

Additionally, rightwing and centrist politicians in Colombia have also slowly and somewhat quietly passed reform after reform that benefited capital and the rich, including 4 tax reforms under former president Uribe and 4 under Juan Manuel Santos. The recent tax reform was just the latest attempt to further erode the constitutional rights of ordinary Colombians. Iván Duque had tried a few tax reforms on his own, including one that was stricken down by the Constitutional Court. Perhaps the most striking difference between this tax reform, and the many other neoliberal policies that his administration and previous ones have put forward, is that it threatened to affect a much broader sector within Colombian society, including urban populations and Colombia’s white/mestizo middle and lower-middle classes. If passed, it would have been a democratization of the economic and legal precarity that indigenous and Black communities experience every day.

Historically, the US has played an outsized role in Colombia’s internal affairs and in the dynamics of the armed conflict. Colombia continues to be the largest recipient of US foreign aid in Latin America, and the largest outside of the Middle East. In 2020, Congress appropriated over $460 million in foreign aid, with most of the funds being directed towards “peace and security,” which includes providing training and equipment to security forces. With this in mind, it is not an overstatement to say that US taxpayer dollars are being used to repress social protests in Colombia.

Yet, so far, and in contrast with the United Nations and the European Union, which have accused Colombian security forces of using brutal tactics, the response from the Biden administration has been muffled. According to Juan González, the National Security Council Director for the Western Hemisphere, “Police, whether in the United States or Colombia, need to engage by certain rules and respect fundamental freedoms, and that’s not a critique.” Doesn’t the undeniable bloodshed, some of which has been captured by cell phone videos, merit a critique? Biden himself has yet to speak out publicly against the Colombian state’s use of violence against its citizens and rampant violations of human rights, including against ethnic groups.

link:

The Colombian State Is at War with Its People – Spectre Journal

 

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“The US has played an outsized role in Colombia’s armed conflict.”

Meanwhile, Democrats in the House and the Senate , including Alexandra Ocasio Cortez, Jim McGovern, Ilhan Omar, and Jessica Ramos (who is Colombian-American), have expressed support for the demands of protesters and called for an end to police repression.

For better or for worse, the dependence of the Colombian state’s on US assistance means that the Biden administration has more political leverage on Duque than any other nation or international body—a reminder of the US’s imperial influence in Colombia and in other parts of the region. His administration should condemn and demand an end to the violent tactics of the state security forces against protestors; pressure the government to enter into serious and open dialogue with the organizers of the national strike and with the young people leading the manifestations on the streets; and to investigate and hold accountable those responsible for the murders, torture and disappearances of activists.

Though important, the gravity of the situation requires more than a strongly worded statement. Biden and the Democratic majority in Congress should consider withholding or suspending foreign assistance to Colombia as some US politicians have already suggested. McGovern has called for instituting conditions on US aid that ends up in the hands of the National Police and to the anti-riot police (ESMAD), responsible for many of the human rights violations during the strike. Last year McGovern and Ocasio Cortez proposed amendments to the 2020 military budget requiring that Colombian authorities report on allegations of abuses by the military and putting an end to the use of aerial fumigations to eradicate coca crops. Although this US-backed coca eradication strategy was halted by Colombian courts in 2017 due to its nefarious impact on public health, Duque’s government has been trying to restart the program .

“Biden should consider withholding or suspending foreign assistance to Colombia.”

The Duque administration has demonstrated its disregard for democratic institutions, the right to protest, and the right to life. He has made it clear that he and his administration are morally bankrupt and not interested in peace. Biden and the US Congress needs to:

1. Demilitarize all foreign aid to Colombia
2. Make all outgoing foreign assistance conditional on implementing the Peace Accords, particularly its Ethnic Chapter, which is typically sidelined from policy conversation in Colombia and abroad.
3. Make racial justice a priority of US foreign policy to Latin America. Debates and negotiations about peace-building, development, and foreign aid between the US and Colombia need to happen with the direct participation of Black and indigenous authorities and organizations with first-hand knowledge of the realities on the ground, their needs and solutions. One such organization is the Ethnic Commission for Peace and the Defense of Territorial Rights that is fighting for the full implementation of the Ethnic Chapter of the 2016 Peace Accords.

Even in the face of brutal repression, Colombians continue to be mobilized and are continuing to risk their lives on streets throughout the country. We invite those observing these atrocities to look a little deeper, both in terms of historical context and the layers of injustices, and to the complicity of the US government. The racialized political violence and repression that Black and indigenous communities experience are often ignored or altogether silenced in both national and international media. The coverage on the latest National Strike is no exception. We invite US-based journalists and content producers to report and write about Colombia in ways that are attentive to these complex dynamics. We also urge you all to take seriously the lives, and premature deaths, of Black and indigenous people who are at the forefront of progressive struggles for inclusion and social justice in Colombia. Black and indigenous activists often say “nosotros hemos puesto los muertos”, or “we are the ones who have put forth the most dead bodies,” as a way of underscoring the incommensurate violence these communities experience in this never ending war.

link:
The Colombian State Is at War with Its People – Spectre Journal

 

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8 June 2021
Canada Still Supports Colombia’s Repressive Right-wing Government
By Yves Engler

Last week right-wing Colombian President Ivan Duque deployed the military to Cali. The city of 2.3 million has been the epicenter of a month-long nationwide protest that forced the government to withdraw a regressive tax proposal that unleashed a general strike.

During the past month security forces have killed at least 50 and probably dozens more. Over 300individuals are missing, according to Colombia’s National Movement of Victims of State Crimes, in a country with a history of political disappearances.

In a sign the politics of the protesters are radicalizing, ten days ago protesters burnedmassive US and Israeli flags. In response Dan Cohen tweeted, “This isn’t just a strike against austerity measures. It’s a full-on uprising against imperialism.”

Perhaps one could add, against Canadian policies.

Clearly, Canada has promoted the policies Colombians are rebelling against. Over the past three-decades Ottawa has been close diplomatically to Latin America’s most repressive state and has promoted capitalist policies that have contributed to Colombia’s extreme inequality.

The Justin Trudeau Liberals has promoted President Iván Duque who Le Soleil labeled “le champion du retour de la droite dure en Colombie” (champion of the return of the hard right in Colombia). After Duque won a close election marred by fraud allegations, foreign minister Chrystia Freeland “congratulated” him and said, “Canada and Colombia share a commitment to democracy and human rights.” In August 2018 Trudeau tweeted, “today, Colombia’s new President, Ivan Duque, took office and joins … others with a gender-equal cabinet. Iván, I look forward to working with you and your entire team.” A month later he added, “thanks to President Ivan Duque for a great first meeting at UNGA this afternoon, focused on growing our economies, addressing the crisis in Venezuela, and strengthening the friendship between Canada & Colombia.”

As Trudeau got chummy with Duque, the Colombian president undercut the peace accord the previous (right, but not far right) government signed with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) to end Colombia’s 50-year civil war, which left over 200,000 dead. Duque’s policies increased violence towards the ex-rebels and social activists. More than 253 former FARC members have been killed in the past three years. Even more human rights defenders have been murdered.

Trudeau has yet to say anything about the massive repression of protesters in the past month. After numerous Canadian rallies were held in solidarity with protesters in Colombia Foreign Minister Marc Garneau released a statement ten days into the strike. But Garneau criticized the security forces’ deadly violence in equal measure to protestors’ purported vandalism. It also praised the Duque government, which had made all kinds of menacing statements.

This Canadian support for repressive Colombian governments is longstanding.

Stephen Harper had even closer diplomatic ties with Duque’s patron Alvaro Uribe. In 2009 the former PM referred to the far-right president as a valuable “ally” in a hemisphere full of “serious enemies and opponents.” A 2007 visit to Colombia by the Canadian PM was described by the Economist as giving Uribe “a voteof confidence at a time when he [was] being assailed both in Washington and at home.” At the time, Uribe’s government was plagued by a scandal tying numerous top officials to Colombia’s brutal paramilitaries. Dozens of Uribe-aligned congresspeople were implicatedand the president’s cousin was among those who had been jailed.

Uribe’s terrible human rights record did not stop Harper from signing a free-trade agreement with Colombia. Harper devoted a great deal of energy to backing the most repressive and right-wing government in Latin America. According to an April 2009 cable from the US embassy in Ottawa, in private the PM conceded that the Colombia trade accord was unpopular with Canadians. Released by Wikileaks the cable noted: “It was a painful but deliberate choice for the Prime Minister” to support president Alvaro Uribe in the face of stiff resistance to the free trade agreement, particularly from Canada’s labour movement.


The Canada-Colombia trade agreement was also opposed by most of that country’s organized peasantry and labour.

The trade deal was part of a long-standing push to liberalize Colombia’s economy. In the late 1990s Canada’s aid agency supported petroleum legislation reform, which benefited Canadian firms. More significantly, Ottawa began an $11 million project to re-write Colombia’s mining code in 1997. The Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) worked on the project with a Colombian law firm, Martinez Córdoba and Associates, that represents multinational companies, and the Canadian Energy Research Institute (CERI), an industry think-tank based at the University of Calgary.

They spent a couple years canvassing mining companies to find out what the industry wanted from new mining regulations. A representative from Greystar Corp., which was involved in the effort for nearly two years, explained how they provided “input that reflected the mining industry’s point of view as to what was important in such legislation to encourage mining.”

Once completed the CERI/CIDA proposal was submitted to Colombia’s Department of Mines and Energy and became law in August 2001. “The new code flexibilised environmental regulations, diminished labour guarantees for workers and opened the property of afro-Colombian and indigenous people to exploitation,” explained Francisco Ramirez, president of SINTRAMINERCOL, Colombia’s State Mine Workers Union. “The CIDA-backed code also contains some articles that are simply unheard of in other countries,” added Ramirez. “If a mining company has to cut down trees before digging, they can now export that timber for 30 years with a total exemption on taxation.” The new code also reduced the royalty rate companies pay the government to 0.4 percent from 10 percent for mineral exports above 3 million tonnes per year and from 5 percent for exports below 3 million tonnes. In addition, the new code increased the length of mining concessions from 25 years to 30 years, with the possibility that concessions can be tripled to 90 years.

Canadian officials were happy with the results. According to CIDA’s summary of the project, “Canadian energy and mining sector companies with an interest in Colombia will benefit from the development of a stable, consistent and familiar operating environment in this resource-rich developing economy.”

Ottawa has continued to plow ‘aid’ dollars into supporting the mining sector in Colombia. The Skills for Employment in the Extractives Sector of the Pacific Alliance, Andean Regional Initiative and Corporate Social Responsibility Strategy for the Canadian International Extractive Sector have channeled millions of dollars into assisting mining interests there.

Canadian assistance was used to reform the country’s non-resource sector as well. In 1995 CIDA provided $4 million to “contributeto the liberalization process of the telecommunications sector in Colombia.” Ottawa-based Destrier Management Consultants used the money for training seminars, workshops and advisors. Within a few years Canadian companies operated Colombia’s leading cellular phone provider and installed a large proportion of the country’s phone lines. In 2003 Canada’s “Nortel Networks”, explained Asad Ismi, “helped bring about the liquidation of TELECOM, Colombia’s biggest telecommunications company, and the likely privatization of its successor. … With the privatization, however, 10,000 unionized telecommunications workers lost their jobs that year, and over 70 trade unionists were murdered by paramilitaries for demonstrating against the privatization.”

In the late 1990s and 2000s Crown corporation EDC was heavily invested in Colombia despite widespread state-sponsored human rights violations. They provided investment insurance to Canadian companies, which had significant investments in Colombia. Canadian companies, for instance, ran Colombia’s most important oil pipeline and its two largest natural gas pipelines.

Canadian investment in Colombia, especially in the resource sector, was intimately tied to human rights abuses. A study on “The Presence of Canadian Petroleum Companies in Colombia,” found that “an avalanche of new contracts and new Canadian companies” entered Colombia in 2000 “at a moment when the internal conflict has intensified particularly in traditional, indigenous-occupied areas, and where resistance to their projects is significant.”

link:
Canada still supports Colombia’s repressive right-wing government

 

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Part 2

In the late 1990s Calgary-based Enbridge operated the OCENSA pipeline jointly with Toronto-based TransCanada Pipelines. Both companies owned a 17.5 percent share of the pipeline along with shares held by British Petroleum, Total and The Strategic Transaction Company. Until 1997 the OCENSA consortium contracted Defence Systems Colombia (a British firm) for security purposes. According to Amnesty International:

“What is disturbing is that OCENSA/DSC’s security strategy reportedly relies heavily on paid informants whose purpose is to covertly gather intelligence information’ on the activities of the local population in the communities through which the pipeline passes and to identify possible ‘subversives’ within those communities. What is even more disturbing is that this intelligence information is then reportedly passed by OCENSA to the Colombian military who, together with their paramilitary allies, have frequently targeted those considered subversive for extrajudicial execution and disappearance. …The passing of intelligence information to the Colombian military may have contributed to subsequent human rights violations.”

Amnesty added that OCENSA and DSC purchased military equipment for the notoriously violent 14th Brigade of the Colombian army.

While Canadian investors contributed to Colombia’s dirty war, so did Canadian arms manufacturers. In the late 1990s DND sold 33 Huey helicopters to the US State Department, which added machine guns and sent them to the Colombian police and military as part of “Plan Colombia”. The Huey sale followed Bell Helicopter Textron Canada’s export of 12 helicoptersdirectly to the Colombian air force and police. The helicopter was a type “widely used by the U.S. military in the 1970s in counter-insurgency operations in Vietnam.” Not only did Ottawa allow helicopter sales to Colombia’s military, the Canadian embassy in Bogota promoted them.

In 2013 the Harper government added Colombia to Canada’s Automatic Firearms Country Control List to facilitate the export of assault weapons. Since then, weapons sales to Colombia have usually totaled only a few hundred thousand dollars a year but in 2014 that number reached $45 million. The Crown-owned Canadian Commercial Corporation helped sell 24 light armoured vehicles to the Colombian army and four armoured personnel carriers to its police. Since 2011 Colombian military personnel have participated in Canada’s Military Training and Cooperation Program. Colombia’s police have also been instructed, reportsAbram Lutes, “through exchangeswith the RCMP and the ongoing Anti-Crime Capacity Building Program (ACCBP), which nominally trains the Colombian national police in combating drug trafficking. The ACCBP is Canada’s contribution to Colombia’s long drug war, which provides pretext for security forces and paramilitaries to target leftist guerillas and peasants who produce cocoa.”

As part of its “role in the fight against drug traffickers” Canada supplied intelligence gathering equipment to Colombia in the early 1990s. In 1990 Canada began a $2 million program to provide intelligence equipment and bomb detectors to the Colombian Departamento Adminitrativo De Securidad. At that time Colombia’s leading news magazine, Semana, suggested that Canada was working with the US in a hegemonic project in the region.

According to former JTF2 soldier Claude Morisset, Canada also sent soldiers to Colombia in the late 1990s. In We Were InvincibleMorisset describes his mission to the Colombian jungle to rescue NGO and church workers “because FARC guerillas threatened the peace in the region.” The Canadian soldiers were unaware that they were transporting the son of a Colombian leader, which prompted the FARC to give chase for a couple days. On two different occasions the Canadian forces came under fire from FARC guerrillas. Ultimately the Canadians were saved by US helicopters, as the JTF2 mission was part of a US initiative.

While Colombian protesters didn’t burn the Canadian flag, maybe they should have. Canada has long promoted corporate and imperial interests in Colombia and continues to do so.

Link:
Canada still supports Colombia’s repressive right-wing government

 

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CIA Director William Burns just flew to Colombia for what the far-right government says are a series of "delicate and important" meetings

This CIA visit comes while the narco-regime has been massacring and disappearing anti-austerity protesters in a brutally violent crackdown

 

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