Fw: QUIET COUP IN COLOMBIA?

["Nello Margiotta" <animarg@tin.it>]

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 Via Workers World News Service
 Reprinted from the July 19, 2001
 issue of Workers World newspaper
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 EDITORIAL: QUIET COUP IN COLOMBIA?
 
 The Colombian regime and its U.S. mentors have no answers to
 the revolution gathering strength in that country except to
 increase the already bloody repression of the masses. That
 is the gist of a law expected to be signed by President
 Andres Pastrana that would give unprecedented powers to the
 Colombian military--setting up a virtual military
 dictatorship in that supposedly "democratic" country.
 
 It is yet another sign that U.S. intervention in Colombia,
 magnified when Congress last year approved $1.3 billion for
 the so-called Plan Colombia, has not brought about the
 economic relief promised and so urgently needed by the
 Colombian people. Instead it is building up an already
 repressive state into the kind of open dictatorship that
 ruled over South Vietnam during the years of the U.S. war
 there.
 
 The State Department, Central Intelligence Agency and
 Pentagon have become expert over the years at cloaking their
 violent interventions around the world in the sweetest of
 words. They employ an immense propaganda machine that churns
 out disinformation--lies, in other words. But they cannot
 hide the ugly truth forever. And that has some of the most
 ardent defenders of U.S. imperialism worried.
 
 The New York Times editorialized on July 10 that "a new law
 that has passed Colombia's Congress and awaits the signature
 of President Andres Pastrana would give the military
 dangerous new powers over civilians and lessen the
 possibility that officers would be held accountable for
 abusing them." The bill, admits the Times, "would make
 authorities such as mayors and governors subordinate to
 military commanders. The bill would also give the military
 the ability in many cases to authorize raids, arrest
 civilians and in some cases carry out investigations," all
 of which is "inconsistent with the Colombian constitution."
 
 "The new bill would also contribute to the impunity of the
 armed forces, by placing a two-month time limit on the
 ability of civilian authorities to open investigations of
 crimes committed in the course of military operations.
 Another part of the security law says that when people are
 arrested in the act of committing crimes, the military need
 only inform judges of their capture, instead of bringing
 them before the courts."
 
 The Times remembers how this kind of repression merely drove
 forward the revolutionary uprising of the people in Vietnam
 and eventually sickened U.S. soldiers and civilians alike
 until a mighty movement won an end to the war. This organ of
 Wall Street recognizes the great vulnerabilities of U.S.
 imperialism when pitted against a popular insurgency like
 the heroic revolutionary forces in Colombia.