Liduine Zumpolle 14

Ik heb een aantal reacties gekregen van iemand die zich identificeert als S. Cornelio op onderstaand stukje dat ik in februari 2009 schreef:

Jaren geleden zag ik in Lissabon het monument ter herdenking van de ontdekkingsreizigers, een monstrum van wit marmer 'ontstaan uit de nood van een gemeenschap om haar collectieve geheugen te toetsen aan de objectieve werkelijkheid.' De woorden waren al even bombastisch en leugenachtig als het monument zelf, een versteende getuigenis van de onbeheerste wil tot heersen, een onbedoelde aanklacht tegen het kolonialisme, de armoede, achterlijkheid, het verval, de vervuiling. Vooraan stond de Portugese prins Hendrik de Zeevaarder, met wie de ontdekking van de wereld begon. In zijn hand droeg hij een karveel. Achter hem de ontdekkingsreizigers, die ontdekten, de adel, die veroverde, de jezuieten, die het kolonialisme zegenden, de dichter, die de daadkracht bejubelde en tenslotte de geschiedschrijvers, die alle heroiek voor het nageslacht vastlegden. Eerst de vorst, vervolgens de adel en dan de geestelijkheid, want bloedig onrecht moet altijd gerechtvaardigd worden. Zonder ideologie kan moorden niet gerechtvaardigd worden, zo wist het Vaticaan beter dan wie dan ook.

De tijden zijn veranderd, maar niet de macht. Alleen is de macht van de geestelijkheid in Europa in handen gekomen van de moderne ideologen die vooral de mensenrechten als politiek wapen gebruiken. Een illustrerend voorbeeld daarvan is 'De Engel van La Picota' zoals het tijdschrift Vrij Nederland haar in een kop noemt. Ik heb het over Liduine Zumpolle, die opgevoerd wordt als 'de Nederlandse mensenrechtenactiviste' die 'al veertig jaar in Colombia [komt]'.

De bejaarde Zumpolle wordt in Columbia rondgereden in een 'fourwheeldrive' die ze kreeg van de Colombiaanse president met 'donker getint glas' en ze wordt bewaakt door twee 'bodyguards van het Departemento Administrativo de Seguridad (DAS), de Colombiaanse geheime dienst', die 'allebei een pistool achter in hun broeksband [hebben]', en die van 'de president' zelf opdracht hebben gekregen'haar zo goed te bewaken dat haar niets overkomt,' aldus bodyguard Henry.

Opmerkelijk is dat zowel Vrij Nederland als Zumpolle het volgende verzwijgen:

'According to recent reports in Colombia’s media and testimony from former officials, between 2002 and 2005 the DAS was essentially at the service of paramilitaries and major narcotraffickers. It drew up hitlists of union members and leftist activists, and even plotted to destabilize Venezuela.
All of this happened under the tenure of Jorge Noguera, Uribe’s DAS director from August 2002 until he left under a major storm cloud of scandal in October 2005. According to Rafael García, the agency’s former chief of information systems who has made a series of explosive allegations, “Jorge Noguera became the Vladimiro Montesinos of Alvaro Uribe’s government. He conspired against the governments of neighboring countries, he did away with leftist leaders, he participated in narcotrafficking operations, he maintained relations with paramilitary groups, etc. etc.”
A witness in jail
García is making his charges against Noguera from the La Picota prison in southern Bogotá. As the official in charge of the DAS computer networks, he was arrested in January 2005 for taking bribes to erase and change the files of paramilitaries and narcotraffickers.

Lees verder: http://www.ciponline.org/colombia/blog/archives/000242.htm

Desondanks beweert de 'mensenrechtenactiviste' Liduine Zumpolle dat binnen de DAS 'een grote schoonmaak [is gehouden], mijn jongens vertrouw ik blind. Ze doen alles voor me.' Hoe zij zo zeker is van 'een grote schoonmaak' binnen de geheime dienst maakt ze niet duidelijk. Begrijpelijk, want een'geheime dienst' blijft 'een geheime dienst' die vitale informatie geheim houdt, anders is er geen 'geheime dienst' meer. Desondanks schrijft de VN-journalist Harm Ede Botje Zumpolle's bewering onweersproken op.

Meer over Zumpolle die 'jarenlang voor de mensenrechtenorganisatie Pax Christi' werkte in een volgend stukje.

Die reacties gaan als volgt:

S Cornelio zei

Als colombiaan kan ik zeggen dat ieder verhaal meerdere kanten heeft, maar corruptie altijd de idealen ervan sloopt. Zover ik kan beoordelen denk ik dat Lidwien met de beste intenties in een web van corruptie is geraakt, dan is het vechten tegen de bierkaai. Voor al die mensen die hier oordelen alsof ze haar kennen; stel jezelf de vraag hoeveel ze wint of kan verliezen met haar werkzaamheden?

De documaker heeft haar trouwens opgezocht, zij niet hem. autoritair wordt ze genoemd en vriendjes met de overheid. Ik vraag me af hoe iemand haar taak zou kunnen uitvoeren als vrouw in zo'n harde strijd. Zonder bondgenootschap ben je niks, en krijg je nooit iets voor elkaar. Enige nuance is dan op zn plek ipv meteen een vinger te wijzen en te roepem: collaborateur!

Mensen halen uit de docu dat ze neerbuigend doet over colombianen en zichzelf ophemeld. Ik heb dit niet kunnen ontdekken. Komt dus voort uit interpretaties die ik niet deel.

"Het is duidelijk de bedoelingen van deze forum vol met onaangepaste comentaires die meer de persoon 'als person' willen aanvallen dan wat die persoon zelf doet. Typisch comunistische strategie als ze geen argumenten meer hebben, dan aavallen ze de persoon zelf."

- sterk punt hierover

"In uw 'documenten' heeft u het over het gegeven dat de regering van Colombia corrupt is. Daar ga ik volledig in mee.
Mijn punt is alleen dat mevrouw Zumpolle 'gedeserteerde' FARC strijders helpt. Dit vind ik een nobel doel omdat deze mensen vaak hun leven niet zeker zijn, een nieuw bestaan moeten opbouwen en tevens een gevangenisstraf riskeren. Wat zijn uw argumenten om dit streven van mevrouw Zumpolle als onjuist te beschouwen?

Overigens ben ik er niet op uit om u te demoniseren, belachelijk te maken of wat dan ook. Ik wil me juist meer verdiepen in de situatie van Colombia. Daarom open ik de dialoog en ik hoop dat we deze op niveau kunnen voeren."

- oei, die zat!

stan zei

oei cornelio,

of u nu een columbiaan bent of niet is volstrekt onbelangrijk. het samenwerken met een corrupt regime dat martelt, daar gaat het om. zumpolle deugt niet omdat ze samenwerkt met een terroristische macht. punt uit.
dank u.
stan van houcke

S Cornelio zei

oke stan, mijn punt zit hem in het nuanceren.

1: Is het mogelijk in Colombia een organisatie v kaliber te vinden om mee samen te werken die niet corrupt is?
2: helpt zij daadwerkelijk mensen? en kun je dat af zetten tegen tegen de risico's en de prijs daarvoor?
3: Zolang wij allemaal bij BP tanken, schoentjes van NIKE kopen en onze spaarrekening bij een bank hebben die investeert in defensie geld,etc,etc is niemand -jij ook niet- 100% vrij van corruptie of terroristische steun. De wereld is te connected hiervoor en dan kies je de minste van de kwaden, mee eens?

Dank voor deze boeiende uitwisseling van visies!

Que soy colombiano es muy importante en este tema.

groet

S Cornelio

stan zei

cornelio

als journalist die decennialang door de wereld heeft kunnen reizen kan ik alleen maar dit zeggen:

laten de blanke christelijke europeanen zich niet met de rest van de wereld bemoeien. ze hebben al genoeg chaos veroorzaakt om nu nog meer vuile handen te maken. in landen als colombia worden mensen als zumpolle gebruikt, en niemand weet precies wie wie gebruikt voor welk doeleinde. kies maar helemaal niet, probeer een fatsoenlijk leven te leiden. dat is alles.

S Cornelio zei

Ik begrijp je punt. Ben je ook van mening dat het westen zich totaal afzijdig moet houden van hulp, financiering en steun aan derde/tweede wereld landen?

stan zei

cornelio

wij steunen de derde wereld niet, dat is een misvatting, we dumpen onze overtollige waren aldaar, en verplichten de derde wereld om het geld dat ze van ons krijgen bij ons te besteden. het meeste geld verdwijnt onderweg in de zakken van organisaties, hulpverleners en corrupte autoriteiten. de kloof tussen rijk en arm in de wereld is onder andere op die manier in de afgelopen halve eeuw verdubbeld. de derde wereld is voor ons niets anders dan een reservoir van goedkope arbeid, daarom wordt nu ook het computerwerk naar bijvoorbeeld india overgeheveld waar een werknemer ongeveer tien procent kost van wat de bedrijven hier bij ons moeten betalen. ik vrees dat u teveel de praatjes van westerlingen geloofd. de werkelijkheid is veel gruwelijker. meer dan 1 miljard mensen op aarde lijdt dagelijks honger en dat aantal blijft stijgen. ondertussen worden de rijken steeds rijker, iedereen kan dat zien, alleen de mensen die een ideologische bril op hebben kunnen dat niet zien.
stan

S Cornelio zei

Een ideologische bril heb ik zeker op, dat is wat anders als een onwetende en vals optimistische bril. Ik heb zelf zo'n beetje heel midden-amerika door gereisd en van zuid-amerika de bovenste landen. Daar heb ik veel vrijwilligerswerk gedaan in kindertehuizen en dat was zeer nodig! Ik heb grote armoede gezien..je bent niet de enige. Maar het wereld beeld dat nu geschetst wordt is vooral te wijten aan grote corporate multi-nationals en bedrijven die economisch uit zijn op winst. Je gaat mij toch niet vertellen dat je de mensen die op een kleinschalige manier hun bijdrage leveren op deze 'grote hoop' gooit van kwade consumerende westerlingen.
Ik en vele anderen hebben nooit geld willen ontvangen voor wat we daar deden. Een kale kip kun je trouwens niet plukken. Zonder idealen is alle hoop vervlogen en als je denkt dat we ons totaal afzijdig moeten houden dan moet je dat ook maar eens gaan uitleggen aan zo'n kindje in een tehuis daar.

stan zei

daar had je het niet over, en daar heb ook ik het niet over, ik heb eerder al geschreven: 'probeer een fatsoenlijk leven te leiden. dat is alles'.

waar ik het over heb zijn de good-doers die zich met een politieke ideologie met anderen bemoeien, kortom de zumpolle's, lui die zich corrumperen en met het grootste tuig samenwerken omdat ze hun ego willen oppoetsen. cornelio, lees galeano's werk en je weet wat ik bedoel. nog wat informatie voor je:

Several mayors and former governors are also under investigation, and the former head of the DAS, Colombia's equivalent of the FBI, is on trial for erasing paramilitaries' files and conspiring with them to commit electoral fraud in the 2002 presidential elections. With the pressure building on many fronts to confess, ranchers and other powerful businessmen are acknowledging for the first time that they supported the paramilitaries for years.

dit is het systeem dat zumpolle de hand boven het hoofd houdt.
stan

http://stanvanhoucke.blogspot.com/2010/05/liduine-zumpolle-13.html


S. Cornelio, lees verder:

Dominion of Evil

Colombia's paramilitary terror

by Steven Ambrus

Amnesty International magazine, Spring 2007

Colombia's paramilitary demobilization is unearthing the staggering magnitude of paramilitary terror-and the unholy alliance of political, military and business leaders that sustained it.

In the early 1990s, a butcher named Rodrigo Mercado got fed up with paying protection money to Colombia's leftwing guerrillas. Unable to shake them off, he sought financing from ranchers, politicians and businessmen and raised a 350-man militia. Then he went on the rampage. People accused of leftist sympathies in the state of Sucre were shot. Others were carved to bits with chainsaws, buried in mass graves or fed to alligators. Mercado delighted in the killing, survivors say. Moreover, it provided benefits. As thousands of people fled, Mercado and his men seized control of local governments and acquired vast tracts of farmland and shoreline. Then they used their new possessions to dispatch boats loaded with cocaine to foreign markets.

"They were merciless," said Arnol Gómez, a community leader from the town of San Onofre. "They had so much power that no one could do business or run for office without their approval. Even the police supported them."

Today, after a decade of terror and destruction, an edgy calm has settled over the rolling grasslands and tin-patch towns where Mercado spent his fury. The warlord has been dead for more than a year, a victim of bloodletting in his ranks. His troops have fully demobilized through a 2003 peace deal between the government and a paramilitary umbrella group known as the United Self- Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC). Local farmers have returned to their tiny plots of plantains and corn. But criminal investigators are only now uncovering graves on Mercado's abandoned farms. And with hundreds of people dead and hundreds more still missing in Sucre, the painful process of uncovering the truth about what happened there and in other areas of paramilitary control is just getting underway. For the first time, Colombians are confronting the immense dimensions of the paramilitary terror that has gripped their country for four decades, and the unholy alliance of military, business and political leaders that propelled it forward.

"Colombia is at a crossroads after years in which the paramilitaries infiltrated the world of legitimate business and the agencies of local and national government," said Iván Cepeda, the son of a left-wing senator who was murdered in 1994 by an alliance of military and paramilitary operatives. "Colombia will either become a nation of laws and democratic institutions or sink further into violence, authoritarianism and the denial of basic rights."

In 2005, Colombia's Congress passed the "Justice and Peace" law governing the demobilization, trial and reintegration of 31,000 AUC combatants, including commanders accused of war crimes and drug trafficking. Harshly criticized by human rights groups and the United Nations, the law allows paramilitary leaders to serve reduced sentences of eight years on special farms and contains loopholes likely to let top commanders keep millions of hectares of stolen land.

The law does, however, give prosecutors new incentives to unveil the truth. Because paramilitaries lose sentence reductions for crimes they fail to confess, it has energized a crusading prosecutor general and Colombia's supreme court to unravel the paramilitaries' criminal activities and to discover their connections with the highest spheres of money and power. Critics say that witness intimidation and legal trickery will prevent the paramilitaries from coming clean. But the dominoes are beginning to fall.

In March 2006, police seized the computer of Rodrigo Tovar, a former AUC commander. Tovar, a scion of the coastal aristocracy, was an enchanting and cosmopolitan rancher whose demobilization ceremony in March 2006 turned into fiesta attended by two former governors, much of the local elite and one of the nation's most famous musicians. But Colombians were scandalized to learn from an October 2006 attorney general's report that many of Tovar's "demobilized troops" were not paramilitaries at all, but unemployed farmers paid to act the part. And they were outraged when investigators discovered tape recordings and documents on Tovar's computer detailing the murder of nearly 600 merchants, union members and suspected leftists, as well as paramilitary alliances with the power brokers of five states on Colombia's Atlantic coast. Tovar and his men had ruled the region. They bankrolled the campaigns of congressmen and mayors. They organized electoral fraud. They bribed dozens of policemen and military officers and skimmed public contracts in social security, health and agriculture.

"This is further confirmation that the paramilitaries control the state, the economy and the system of justice in large chunks of Colombia," said Gustavo Duncan, a security analyst and expert on the AUC. "With their private armies and drug profits, they are more powerful than the Sicilian Mafia in regions where they have become the very state itself."

In the wake of these revelations, the political establishment is reeling. Nine congressmen-all of them allies of President Álvaro Uribe-are being investigated on charges ranging from helping create and finance paramilitary groups to murder and corruption.

Several mayors and former governors are also under investigation, and the former head of the DAS, Colombia's equivalent of the FBI, is on trial for erasing paramilitaries' files and conspiring with them to commit electoral fraud in the 2002 presidential elections.

With the pressure building on many fronts to confess, ranchers and other powerful businessmen are acknowledging for the first time that they supported the paramilitaries for years. "2006 will go down in history as the year in which the country learned how far the tentacles of paramilitarism reached," pronounced Semana, Colombia's leading newsweekly, in an end-of-year editorial in which it made "paramilitarism" its person of the year. "Though many Colombians knew that the paramilitaries controlled various regions of the country ... nobody imagined that this scourge had become a cancer that was silently eating away the pillars of democracy."

The paramilitary groups' emergence into public awareness began in the early 1980s when wealthy landowners and drug traffickers hired mercenaries to help defend them against guerrilla extortion and kidnapping in Colombia's 42-year-old civil war. With the support of the military and police, the groups began to purge their regions of leftist influence. Thousands of union members, peasant leaders, and leftist politicians were killed. Hundreds of thousands of people were driven from their homes. Stoked by profits from the drug trade, the paramilitaries became, in much of Colombia's hinterland, a state within the state. They became more powerful than their old allies in the cocaine cartels-in the early 1990s, some paramilitaries allegedly assisted with U.S.-Colombian efforts to destroy the Medellín cocaine cartel-and, in some regions, more powerful than the military itself.

President Uribe has always had a complicated relationship with the paramilitaries. When he was governor of the state of Antioquia in the mid-1990s, the paramilitaries there were in the midst of a brutal struggle with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the nation's largest guerrilla group.

Uribe, whose father had been killed by the FARC during a kidnapping attempt, was widely accused by human rights organizations of sympathizing with, or at least turning a blind eye to, the worst paramilitary abuses. And he was criticized for supporting statesponsored civil defense groups, known as CONVIVIR, a number of which had documented links to the paramilitaries and to the murder and abuse of the civilian population. When he became president, commentators even quipped that his paramilitary demobilization pact was merely "an agreement among friends."

But Uribe's past has not distanced him from the United States. On the contrary, Washington supports the president because of his stated eagerness to collaborate against the drug trade, his openness to private investment, and his opposition to the spread of left-wing movements in Latin America. The United States gives Colombia more than $700 million in anti-narcotics and counter-insurgency assistance annually. But support for Uribe is not unconditional. Despite the damning nature of the allegations against then-Governor Uribe's tenure in Antioquia, U.S. officials are encouraging the prosecutor's office to move the purging process forward, to press the paramilitary investigations into the heart of the government itself.

"From conversations I've had with U.S. and Colombian officials, I'm convinced that the U.S. wants these investigations to continue," said Daniel Garcia Peña, a former top peace negotiator for the Colombian government. "Elements inside the Justice Department want the paramilitaries and their allies to be put in jail and for those involved in drug trafficking to eventually be extradited."

The Uribe administration appears to understand the magnitude of the crisis. "Allegations against political allies are obviously uncomfortable for the government, but we are willing to go all the way to prosecute the guilty, no matter who they are," said Vice President Francisco Santos. "We need to turn a page in our history, give voice to the victims and thoroughly reform our institutions." The potential beneficiaries are the victims themselves, who have felt excluded from the investigations into their paramilitary persecutors, but who on occasion seem bolstered by growing support from both the authorities in Bogotá and the international community.

In November 2005, 2,000 survivors, encouraged by the arrival of an honest military commander, gathered in a small sports arena to testify to representatives of the Colombian Senate, the United Nations and the Organization of American States (OAS) about the political-paramilitary alliance that had wracked their region. People who had not confided to anyone for a decade poured out heartrending tales of torture, executions and the forced disappearances of loved ones. They recalled how Rodrigo Mercado and his men took over the municipal government through electoral fraud and intimidation, then drained the county coffers dry, leaving schools to crumble and hospitals bereft of supplies. They told of a generalized decline into brutality in which neighbor denounced neighbor and friend turned against friend-exploiting the paramilitaries' presence to eliminate romantic and business rivals with false accusations.

Since then, townspeople have readily spoken to reporters, eager that their tragedies not be forgotten. José de la Concepción Huertas talked about how his son was "disappeared" off the streets four years ago by a paramilitary thug infatuated with his son's pregnant wife. A relative, Oberta Vaena, displayed a faded photograph in a wooden frame of his two teenage brothers and spoke of how the young boys were executed for accidentally dropping and breaking mangoes belonging to a paramilitary ally. "The paramilitaries wanted to sow terror and establish their authority," said Vaena. Neither survivor had much patience with the government's plan for reintegration. "The commanders should get life sentences, and their troops and financiers should be punished too," said de la Concepción. "There was evil here."

Following demobilization, paramilitary commanders spent much of their time awaiting legal proceedings on farms supplied with first-class food, cocktails and female companionship and were transferred to jails only in late 2006 after reports they might escape. Demobilized rank-and-file paramilitaries have lived less luxuriously, but substantially better than their victims. They receive subsidies of $163 per month, high school education, psychological therapy and training in cooking and other trades.

Survivors in San Onofre and other regions say they resent the unequal treatment. They complain that while they toil for less than $5 a day on meager plots, the government pampers their oppressors. "The paramilitaries are generally young people with a very low education level who have been in the jungle for years and don't know the rules of society, don't know right from wrong," said Reintegration Commissioner Frank Pearl, explaining the investment in the former combatants. "We want to train them for the job market, to change their values and beliefs."

The government has launched projects in which paramilitaries and victims work side by side and communities are compensated for their suffering through the building of schools and bridges. Amnesty International vigorously opposes such projects because of the trauma that victims naturally feel in the presence of the paramilitaries. Nevertheless, the government believes they are an important step toward reconciliation. "Our role as a government institution is to show people how to forgive," Pearl said. But that is easier said than done. There are now more than 3 million internal refugees in Colombia and 3.5 million hectares (about 9 million acres) of land in the hands of paramilitary commanders and their front men, according to CODHES, the nation's leading nongovernmental refugee agency. The paramilitaries have not only taken huge quantities of land, the agency says, they have taken the best land. Centuries old Afro-Colombian, Indian and peasant farmer communities have been dispersed, their plots stolen for paramilitary drug crops as well as palm oil, cattle and logging operations. As hundreds of thousands of victims of paramilitary terror pack into the slums of the major cities and roam the streets begging for bread, forgiveness has become about more than a question of attitude. It is inextricably linked to reparation. "The paramilitaries have used extremely intricate strategies for hiding the origin of stolen land," said Jorge Rojas, director of CODHES. "And unfortunately the government lacks a legal mechanism for either identifying or returning it."

Indeed, instead of feeling repentant, some paramilitaries seem eager to increase their wealth. At its height, the AUC exported an estimated 40 percent of Colombian cocaine, controlling coca fields and ports for shipping drugs abroad, intelligence officials say. Some paramilitaries are still trying to maximize their share of the trade. Last year, the OAS drew attention to the emergence of dozens of tiny but deadly new paramilitary gangs. Since then, those groups have waged horrific campaigns of intimidation to protect cocaine laboratories, as well as arms and drug shipments, along Colombia's borders with Ecuador and Venezuela. Colombian authorities say they have captured more than 200 former paramilitary combatants who had joined new groups. But with former AUC members trying to hold onto their land and perpetuate their power, human rights groups say they still feel threatened because some paramilitary structures have not only survived but have morphed into new, potentially more volatile groups.

Iván Cepeda is among the concerned. He has been threatened innumerable times since the paramilitaries officially demobilized. As head of the nongovernmental National Committee of Victims of State Crimes and one of the most vocal activists in demanding reparation for paramilitary victims, he uses bulletproof windows at home, avoids political conversations on the phone and travels only with unarmed protectors from the human rights group Peace Brigades International. Cepeda points out that members of his organization have narrowly escaped assassination recently and that altogether more than 3,000 people have been murdered since the paramilitaries officially ended hostilities. He is convinced not only that many remain active but that they continue to have the support of hard-line elements in the military and police.

After decades of crippling paramilitary violence and corruption, complicity by politicians and generals, and the crushing influence of drugs, Colombia must determine how to work its way out of a decades-long cycle of turmoil and misery.

"We are at a juncture where a part of the truth about the paramilitaries is coming to light, and where some journalists and state functionaries are trying to clean up the system and achieve justice for victims," Cepeda said. "But the future is uncertain. There are powerful elements of paramilitarism still at large."

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En tenslotte kreeg ik deze reactie:

S Cornelio heeft een nieuwe reactie op uw bericht "Liduine Zumpolle 13" achtergelaten:

dank stan voor je info. Ik respecteer je kennis en ervaring. Ergens voelde ik me soms in zuid-amerika in hetzelfde vaarwater zitten als Zumpolle in de docu en ik heb geen corrupte agenda.
Ik weiger daarom verbittert te raken of hoop te verliezen op het moment dat zoiets als de zaak van DAS en Zumpolle uitkomt, omdat ik in wezen geloof dat ieder individu vanuit het westen een duurzaam en positief verschil kan maken.