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Posted on 10/08/2003 7:20:04 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
BOGOTA, Colombia, Oct 7 (Reuters) - Colombian leftist rebels killed two town mayors after holding a clandestine meeting with them, bringing to nine the number of mayors slain in the war-torn nation this year, authorities said on Tuesday.
The killings, blamed on the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, come less than three weeks before Colombians vote on Oct. 26 in local elections that have been dogged by a wave of assassinations, kidnappings and death threats.
Orlando Hoyos, mayor of the southern village of Bolivar, was shot dead on Monday as he left a secret meeting in the mountains with FARC rebels and other officials. Jaime Zambrano, mayor of neighboring Santa Rosa, was killed on Tuesday, police said.
Mayors and councilors in Colombia's lawless countryside are common targets of illegal armed group fighting in a four-decade war. Local war lords, often the real authority in towns with little state presence, frequently summon councilors and mayors to intimidate them and check on their platforms.
The FARC, Colombia's largest rebel army, has threatened to kill all candidates for the October vote, throwing down the gauntlet to law-and-order President Alvaro Uribe.
Uribe, whose father was killed by the FARC during a botched kidnapping, took power last year promising to restore security in a country gripped by a war that claims the lives of thousands of people every year.
The military has pledged to guarantee security during the vote but admits it is impossible to control all the nation's 1,098 municipalities. Many mayors rule from fortified army barracks or by phone from relatively safer regional capitals.
In separate violence, government troops killed 14 leftist rebels and two right-wing paramilitary outlaws in several clashes across the country, the army reported.
The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia may be getting beaten on the battlefield, but the 17,000-strong leftist insurgency known as the FARC has proven once again that it is capable of something perhaps more serious: creating a power vacuum in largely rural areas far from the federal government's reach.
''This is worse for democracy,'' Benítez said. 'They are in a hurry to show their power, to say, `There won't be elections here.' And they've done it.''
From 1998 to 2000, Benítez was the mayor of Támara, a town of 9,000 people in the northeastern state of Casanare. At the townspeople's urging, he signed up to run again. At a recent campaign event, he was summoned to see Commander Antonio, a regional leader of the FARC.
Surrounded by five armed men dressed in camouflage, Antonio politely but firmly told Benítez to withdraw from the race. Benítez did.
''It was an order. I thought, `Well, if it's like that, I'm leaving,'' he said Tuesday over coffee in the nation's capital, where he fled. ''I don't need this.'' Concerned over why the other candidate was not forced to quit, more than 100 people, including the police lieutenant, urged Benítez to reconsider in the past week. They told him he couldn't ``leave the town to the bandits.''***
Terror Close to Home In Venezuela, a volatile leader befriends Mideast, Colombia (FARC) and Cuba*** Middle Eastern terrorist groups are operating support cells in Venezuela and other locations in the Andean region. A two-month review by U.S. News, including interviews with dozens of U.S. and Latin American sources, confirms the terrorist activity. In particular, the magazine has learned that thousands of Venezuelan identity documents are being distributed to foreigners from Middle Eastern nations, including Syria, Pakistan, Egypt, and Lebanon.
Venezuela is supporting armed opposition groups from neighboring Colombia; these groups are on the official U.S. list of terrorist organizations and are also tied to drug trafficking. Maps obtained by U.S. News, as well as eyewitness accounts, pinpoint the location of training camps used by Colombian rebels, a top rebel leader, and Venezuelan armed groups.
Cubans are working inside Venezuela's paramilitary and intelligence apparatus. The coordination between Cuba and Venezuela is the latest sign that Venezuelan President Chavez is modeling his government on Castro's Cuba.
The Venezuelan government denies supporting Middle Eastern terrorist groups and says that no Cubans are operating inside its intelligence agencies. Venezuela has long denied providing aid to the Colombian guerrilla groups.
Venezuela is providing support--including identity documents--that could prove useful to radical Islamic groups, say U.S. officials. U.S. News has learned that Chavez's government has issued thousands of cedulas, the equivalent of Social Security cards, to people from places such as Cuba, Colombia, and Middle Eastern nations that play host to foreign terrorist organizations. An American official with firsthand knowledge of the ID scheme has seen computer spreadsheets with names of people organized by nationality. "The list easily totaled several thousand," the official says. "Colombians were the largest group; there were more than a thousand of them. It also included many from Middle Eastern `countries of interest' like Syria, Egypt, Pakistan, Lebanon." The official adds: "It was shocking to see how extensive the list was." U.S. officials believe that the Venezuelan government is issuing the documents to people who should not be getting them and that some of these cedulas were subsequently used to obtain Venezuelan passports and even American visas, which could allow the holder to elude immigration checks and enter the United States. U.S. officials say that the cedulas are also being used by Colombian subversives and by some Venezuelan officials to travel surreptitiously.***
California recall tame compared with Venezuela's*** Caracas, Venezuela -- The political struggle to remove Venezuela's flamboyant leftist President Hugo Chavez makes California's recall election look like a simple civics lesson.
Unlike Gov. Gray Davis, Chavez, a former army officer who first won the presidency in 1998, has plenty of tricks up his sleeve to stall and even derail the process.
Vanessa Roca, a 31-year-old secretary from the eastern state of Monagas, says she lost her job at a state-owned transport company after signing a petition calling for a recall referendum to remove Chavez from office. She traveled seven hours by bus to ask officials at the National Electoral Commission (CNE) to remove her name from the petition.
"A friend who had the same thing happen to him told me this might help me get my job back," she said. "I understand it happened to a lot of us."
As the Chavez government tries to remain in office, state employees and students who signed the petition, or who are suspected of sympathizing with the political opposition, are being purged from jobs, internships and grants, according to dozens of interviews with trade unionists, students, state workers, lawyers and human rights activists.
And in an effort to discredit the recall movement, state workers whose names appear on the petition are being encouraged by the government to sign legal complaints alleging that their signatures were forged.
Former President Carlos Andres Perez predicts Chavez "will not have a peaceful exit" and will be forced out of office if he refuses to accept the recall vote. "Violence is bad, and we don't promote it," he recently told Colombia's daily newspaper, El Tiempo, "but no other option is possible." ***
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As least they embrace diversity...
They campaigned to pressure then-president Bill Clinton to issue pardons to free the radicals, even though the terrorists themselves had not requested that their sentences be commuted. When Clinton agreed to grant them clemency in August 1999, Serrano blasted him for requiring them to renounce violence as a precondition of their release.
That presidential action caused problems for then-first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, who was about to begin her campaign to become a U.S. senator. "President Clinton made his decision to release the FALN terrorists at the same time his wife was campaigning for the Senate in New York," the Senate Republican Policy Committee reported in a policy paper. "Many commentators believe he hoped to win votes for his wife from the large Hispanic population in New York City. However, law-enforcement groups and victims'-rights groups were outraged, and his clemency offer did not poll well in New York state. His wife then opposed the granting of clemency, and the president denied that she was in any way involved in the decision."***
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