« Notes from Costa Rica | Main | U.S. military aid: the Pentagon’s role keeps growing »

May 10, 2006

A scary e-mail

Here is a translation of an e-mail sent Monday to the José Alvear Restrepo Lawyers’ Collective, a prominent Bogotá human rights organization. Copies were also sent to the National Indigenous Organization (ONIC), the Latin American Institute for Alternative Services (ILSA), the CUT (Colombia’s largest labor union), and the Colombian Platform for Human Rights, Democracy and Development.

We have no idea whether this is a missive from Colombia's lunatic fringe or a taste of what is to come for Colombia's human-rights defenders.

May 8, 2006 12:59 p.m.
From: alberto gabriel palomino (colombialibre2006_2010@yahoo.es)
Subject: no more disguised lies

We view with great concern how you give protection to rebels who claim to be social leaders under the supposed coverage of international humanitarian law. It is not possible to give credibility to the supposed defense of human rights you claim to do when 70 percent of the country sees that what you are doing is to favor the insurgency’s interests, masquerading as [social] leaders.

Since we decided to help President Doctor Álvaro Uribe Vélez with the issue of security policy, we have done nothing different than to believe that only under the iron fist and the use of force can the enemies of authentic democracy be defeated.

Therefore we are communicating to you, Alvear Restrepo Collective, that since you do not align yourselves with the governmental system that 40 million Colombians have elected and will re-elect, you will not have a space for participation or any credibility before our sovereign government. We are going to make the international community see that, in reality, you are nothing more than protectors of terrorists, fomenters of large-scale terrorism in a fatherland that wants nothing more to do with you or the FARC or the ELN or anything else that sounds like leftism, Chavez-ism, socialism or disguised communism.

We are struggling together with the president, and we make it known to you that the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia [the AUC] was our origin, and has now completed one cycle of service to the people and in favor of the people. Now that the demobilization processes are completed we are the present and future of the Colombian state, its security and its society, for many years to come. We have an active presence in the rural and urban areas of 21 departments and we act under many types of groupings, we have a working group under a national directorship. We are here, señores of the Collective, to offer a hand to the authentic democratic right and to all those who, recognizing the only path to saving our country, join with us.

Señores of the Alvear Restrepo Collective, this is an invitation for you to join with our crusade against terrorism, or else to prepare to have each of your members suffer the entire weight of our presence. We have in our favor the state armed forces themselves, who always support us in a great show of sovereignty.

And this also goes to all the parties to whom we are sending copies of this warning today. If you do not align yourselves to our reality, it is better that you go with your humanitarian ideas to some other place that is not our sacred Colombian territory. Let Señores Castro, Chávez, Morales or Lulla (sic) take you in.

This is your first warning.

And also stop helping the little leaders of the riff-raff, stop wasting time with those strident letters that you send to our president, he is very busy resolving the state’s real problems.

Long live the authentic state rebellion of the democratic right
Down with the servile socialists
Long live Álvaro Uribe Vélez 2006-2010 … and many more years!!!!!!!!!!
“Colombia free forever from the left”

Posted by isacson at May 10, 2006 6:03 PM

Trackback Pings

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://ciponline.org/cgi-bin/mt-tb.cgi/231

Comments

Post a comment

Thanks for signing in, . Now you can comment. (sign out)

(If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.)


Remember me?