Back in January 2010 the first reports started appearing on internet about the discovery of a mass grave about 120 miles south of Bogotá in La Macarena, in the department of Meta. Some 2000 bodies were mentioned in initial reports and the Colombian Attorney General has spoken about 25,000 “disappeared”.

Back in May 2007 the BBC reported the uncovering of a mass grave of 105 people in the south of the country and attributed the deaths to the ongoing “civil conflict” (when Colombia has been at civil war with itself for decades). Now with the latest discovery in La Macarena, the 2007 BBC report appears to be the tip of the iceberg.

The Colombian army has claimed responsibility for the bodies at La Macarena but says that they are guerrillas killed in the war and that there are only “450” bodies at the site (as if only “450” is somehow acceptable!). However, there is good reason to suspect that not all the bodies are “guerillas killed in combat”.

From 2005 onward the Uribe government offered monetary rewards to the military for each guerrilla or insurgent killed and handed in. Giving such incentives where human lives are concerned led to what has been termed the “false positives” scandal. A “false positive” is an innocent person executed by the military and then dressed in guerrilla combat fatigues to simulate a “dead enemy combatant” and thus enable the heroic soldiers to claim the reward.

According to the ONIC, Colombia’s National Organization of Indigenous People, early morning (August 26, 2009, at 5:00 AM) a group of armed “men dressed in military uniforms, without insignia and wearing masks, fired indiscriminately at the house of an Awá family” on the Gran Rosario indigenous reservation in the municipality of Tumaco. 12 Awa killed in the attack; reportedly 5 were children.

Here is a summary of the scandal from Hiram's 1555 Blog which reveals the false positives genocide in some detail:

”U.S. & COLOMBIA COVER UP ATROCITIES THROUGH MASS GRAVES

"The biggest human rights scandal in years is developing in Colombia, though you wouldn’t notice it from the total lack of media coverage here. The largest mass grave unearthed in Colombia was discovered by accident last year just outside a Colombian Army base in La Macarena, a rural municipality located in the Department of Meta just south of Bogota. The grave was discovered when children drank from a nearby stream and started to become seriously ill. These illnesses were traced to runoff from what was discovered to be a mass grave – a grave marked only with small flags showing the dates (between 2002 and 2009) on which the bodies were buried.

"According to a February 10, 2010 letter issued by Alexandra Valencia Molina, Director of the regional office of Colombia’s own Procuraduria General de la Nacion – a government agency tasked to investigate government corruption – approximately 2,000 bodies are buried in this grave. The Colombian Army has admitted responsibility for the grave, claiming to have killed and buried alleged guerillas there. However, the bodies in the grave have yet to be identified. Instead, against all protocol for handling the remains of anyone killed by the military, especially those of guerillas, the bodies contained in the mass grave were buried there secretly without the requisite process of having the Colombian government certify that the deceased were indeed the armed combatants the Army claims.

"And, given the current “false positive” scandal which has enveloped the government of President Alvaro Uribe and his Defense Minister, Juan Manuel Santos, who is now running to succeed Uribe as President, the Colombian Army’s claim about the mass grave is especially suspect. This scandal revolves around the Colombian military, most recently under the direction of Juan Manuel Santos, knowingly murdering civilians in cold blood and then dressing them up to look like armed guerillas in order to justify more aid from the United States. According to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pilay, this practice has been so “systematic and widespread” as to amount to a “crime against humanity.” And sadly, when Ms. Pilay made this statement, she literally did not know the half of it.

"To date, not factoring in the mass grave, it has been confirmed by Colombian government sources that 2,000 civilians have fallen victim to the “false positive” scheme since President Uribe took office in 2002. If, as suspected by Colombian human rights groups, such as the “Comision de Derechos Humanos del Bajo Ariari” and the “Colectivo Orlando Fals Borda,” the mass grave in La Macarena contains 2,000 more civilian victims of this scheme, then this would bring the total of those victimized by the “false positive” scandal to at least 4,000 –much worse than originally believed.

"That this grave was discovered just outside a Colombian military base overseen by U.S. military advisers — the U.S. having around 600 military advisers in that country — is especially troubling, and raises serious questions about the U.S.’s own conduct in that country. In addition, this calls into even greater question the propriety of President Obama’s agreement with President Alvaro Uribe last summer to grant the U.S. access to 7 military bases in that country.

"The Colombian government and military are scrambling to contain this most recent scandal, and possibly through violence. Thus, on March 15, 2010, Jhonny Hurtado, a former union leader and President of the Human Rights Committee of La Cantina, and an individual who was key in revealing the truth about this mass grave, was assassinated as soldiers from Colombia’s 7th Mobile Brigade patrolled the area. Just prior to his murder, Jhonny Hurtado told a delegation of British MPs visiting Colombia that he believed the mass grave at La Macarena contained the bodies of innocent people who had been “disappeared.”

"The discovery of this mass grave by sheer accident raises the prospect that there are more yet to be found. Certainly, it is the consensus of human rights groups in Colombia that this is only be the tip of the iceberg. In any case, the discovery of this grave, on top of the large magnitude of the “false positive” scandal already known, justifies a serious rethinking of U.S. policy toward Colombia — a policy pursuant to which the U.S. has sent over $7 billion of military aid to Colombia since 2000 and still counting. This policy, which President Obama is only deepening, has continued the U.S.’s long-standing practice of giving the most military aid to the worst human rights abusers. The time is way overdue for this practice to end. (Daniel Kovalik is a human and labor rights lawyer living in Pittsburgh.)"

As Hiram remarks in his blog:

NOW CORRECT ME IF I’M WRONG, BUT ISN’T THIS ONE OF THE REASONS THAT AMERICA CLAIMED THAT HANGING OF SADDAM HUSSEIN WAS JUSTIFIED? THEY CLAIMED THAT HE COMMITTED ATROCITIES AND BURRIED PEOPLE IN MASS GRAVES AND THAT IN AND OF ITSELF JUSTIFIED REGIME CHANGE AND A TRIAL AND THEN A HANGING? I WOULD BE WARY IF I WERE AN AMERICAN POLITICIAN (PAST & PRESENT). REMEMBER, WHAT’S GOOD FOR THE GOOSE IS GOOD FOR THE GANDER.

This is food for thought.

We all have to ask ourselves about the role of the media in reporting, or rather not reporting, this violation of human rights in Colombia. For example, there has not been one story published in the following daily newspapers: El Espectador in Colombia; El Universal in Venezuela; El Páis in Spain.

On the other hand there are hundreds of column inches dedicated to the “evidence” presented by Colombia at the OAS yesterday accusing Venezuela of harboring FARC guerrillas on its territory. The “evidence” consisted of coordinates from Google Earth, photos of guerrilla camps which could have been taken in any jungle and some beach photos. One beach looks like any other.

Any right thinking human being knows that the killing of innocents and up to 25,000 disappeared should be the priority for an OAS investigation especially after a delegation of Euro Deputies visited La Macarena in January after the mass grave had been discovered.

In a televised interview, Adrienne Pine, professor of anthropology at American University in Washington, DC, says that Colombia’s system of paying fighters for killing insurgents is to blame.

“Colombia has received $6 billion in US aid, 80 percent of it military,” said Pine. “Troops are paid for how many FARC insurgents they kill, so the military has started killing civilians to justify the funding they are getting from the US military.”

These accusations directly tie US aid to a massive human rights violation, yet the issue is not being covered in the mainstream media.

“I think the mainstream US media has an interest in not portraying the US government negatively,” said Pine. “The US government has been directly involved in training the Colombian military to root out insurgents. Over 10,000 Colombian soldiers have received training at the School of the Americas in Ft. Benning, Georgia.” 

Watch the following RT video from April 2, 2010:

Outgoing Colombian President Uribe could be using the alleged harboring of FARC rebels in Venezuela as a smokescreen to offset attention from the mass civilian killings which have taken place in Colombia during his watch from 2002 until now.
 
Will the toothless OAS Human Rights Commission take up the banner to protect the Colombian civilian population? Or will this just be another whitewash with Colombia being labeled a “model democracy” in the corridors of power where the truth behind these killings must already be known?

Let’s face it – Uribe’s involvement with paramilitary death squads has never been fully investigated and has been swept under the carpet. 34 senators and congressmen from his party including his own cousin are currently in jail for cooperating with the narco death squads originally set up back in the 1980’s by Uribe himself after his father was killed by FARC guerrillas.

Whatever conclusion readers draw from the human rights scandal in Colombia US involvement with a criminal regime running the rogue Colombian state and the continued financing of such activities plus the establishment of seven new military bases has to be questioned not only in Washington, but also by US and global public opinion. 

READ HIS BIO AND MORE ESSAYS BY
AXIS OF LOGIC COLUMNIST, ARTURO ROSALES