A World Apart: Two Women With Birthdates in 1800s Are Still Alive

Emma Morano (left): In this Friday, June 26, 2015 photo, Emma Morano, 115, looks at an old portrait of herself in her apartment in Verbania, Italy. (AP Photo/Antonio Calanni) Susannah Mushatt Jones (right):In this Monday, June 22, 2015 photo, Susannah Mushatt Jones, 115, right, is embraced by her niece Lois Judge in her room at the Vandalia Avenue Houses, in the Brooklyn borough of New York. Jones and Emma Morano, of Verbania, Italy, who is also 115, are believed to be the last two people in the world with birthdates in the 1800s. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

• Anna Morano  Born: Nov. 29, 1899  Verbania, Italy
• Susannah Mushatt Jones  Born: July 6, 1899  Brooklyn, New York

By CBS/AP
When Susannah Mushatt Jones and Emma Morano were born in 1899, there was not yet world war or penicillin, and electricity was still considered a marvel. The women are believed to be the last two in the world with birthdates in the 1800s.

The world has multiplied and changed drastically in their lifetimes. They have seen war destroy landmarks and cities and have seen them rebuilt. They witnessed the Gilded Age, a term coined by Mark Twain, and the dawn of civil rights, the rise and fall of the fascists and Benito Mussolini, the first polio vaccines and the first black president of the United States.

Jones, who lives in Brooklyn, currently tops a list of supercentenarians, or people who have lived past 110, which is maintained by Los Angeles-based Gerontology Research Group. The organization tracks and maintains a database of the world's longest-living people. Morano, of Verbania, Italy, is just a few months younger than Jones and is Europe's oldest person, according to the group. The group knows of no others born in the 1800s.

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So, What Did the Muslims Do For the Jews?: Islam Saved Jewry — A History Lesson

By David J Wasserstein

Originally published in the The Jewish Chronicle

Islam saved Jewry. This is an unpopular, discomforting claim in the modern world. But it is a historical truth. The argument for it is double. First, in 570 CE, when the Prophet Mohammad was born, the Jews and Judaism were on the way to oblivion. And second, the coming of Islam saved them, providing a new context in which they not only survived, but flourished, laying foundations for subsequent Jewish cultural prosperity – also in Christendom – through the medieval period into the modern world.

By the fourth century, Christianity had become the dominant religion in the Roman empire. One aspect of this success was opposition to rival faiths, including Judaism, along with massive conversion of members of such faiths, sometimes by force, to Christianity. Much of our testimony about Jewish existence in the Roman empire from this time on consists of accounts of conversions.

Great and permanent reductions in numbers through conversion, between the fourth and the seventh centuries, brought with them a gradual but relentless whittling away of the status, rights, social and economic existence, and religious and cultural life of Jews all over the Roman empire.

A long series of enactments deprived Jewish people of their rights as citizens, prevented them from fulfilling their religious obligations, and excluded them from the society of their fellows.

Had Islam not come along, Jewry in the west would have declined to disappearance and Jewry in the east would have become just another oriental cult.

This went along with the centuries-long military and political struggle with Persia. As a tiny element in the Christian world, the Jews should not have been affected much by this broad, political issue. Yet it affected them critically, because the Persian empire at this time included Babylon – now Iraq – at the time home to the world’s greatest concentration of Jews.

Here also were the greatest centres of Jewish intellectual life. The most important single work of Jewish cultural creativity in over 3,000 years, apart from the Bible itself – the Talmud – came into being in Babylon. The struggle between Persia and Byzantium, in our period, led increasingly to a separation between Jews under Byzantine, Christian rule and Jews under Persian rule.

Beyond all this, the Jews who lived under Christian rule seemed to have lost the knowledge of their own culturally specific languages – Hebrew and Aramaic – and to have taken on the use of Latin or Greek or other non-Jewish, local, languages. This in turn must have meant that they also lost access to the central literary works of Jewish culture – the Torah, Mishnah, poetry, midrash, even liturgy.

The loss of the unifying force represented by language – and of the associated literature – was a major step towards assimilation and disappearance. In these circumstances, with contact with the one place where Jewish cultural life continued to prosper – Babylon – cut off by conflict with Persia, Jewish life in the Christian world of late antiquity was not simply a pale shadow of what it had been three or four centuries earlier. It was doomed.

Had Islam not come along, the conflict with Persia would have continued. The separation between western Judaism, that of Christendom, and Babylonian Judaism, that of Mesopotamia, would have intensified. Jewry in the west would have declined to disappearance in many areas. And Jewry in the east would have become just another oriental cult.

But this was all prevented by the rise of Islam. The Islamic conquests of the seventh century changed the world, and did so with dramatic, wide-ranging and permanent effect for the Jews.

Within a century of the death of Mohammad, in 632, Muslim armies had conquered almost the whole of the world where Jews lived, from Spain eastward across North Africa and the Middle East as far as the eastern frontier of Iran and beyond. Almost all the Jews in the world were now ruled by Islam. This new situation transformed Jewish existence. Their fortunes changed in legal, demographic, social, religious, political, geographical, economic, linguistic and cultural terms – all for the better.

First, things improved politically. Almost everywhere in Christendom where Jews had lived now formed part of the same political space as Babylon – Cordoba and Basra lay in the same political world. The old frontier between the vital centre in Babylonia and the Jews of the Mediterranean basin was swept away, forever.

Political change was partnered by change in the legal status of the Jewish population: although it is not always clear what happened during the Muslim conquests, one thing is certain. The result of the conquests was, by and large, to make the Jews second-class citizens.

This should not be misunderstood: to be a second-class citizen was a far better thing to be than not to be a citizen at all. For most of these Jews, second-class citizenship represented a major advance. In Visigothic Spain, for example, shortly before the Muslim conquest in 711, the Jews had seen their children removed from them and forcibly converted to Christianity and had themselves been enslaved.

In the developing Islamic societies of the classical and medieval periods, being a Jew meant belonging to a category defined under law, enjoying certain rights and protections, alongside various obligations. These rights and protections were not as extensive or as generous as those enjoyed by Muslims, and the obligations were greater but, for the first few centuries, the Muslims themselves were a minority, and the practical differences were not all that great.

Along with legal near-equality came social and economic equality. Jews were not confined to ghettos, either literally or in terms of economic activity. The societies of Islam were, in effect, open societies. In religious terms, too, Jews enjoyed virtually full freedom. They might not build many new synagogues – in theory – and they might not make too public their profession of their faith, but there was no really significant restriction on the practice of their religion. Along with internal legal autonomy, they also enjoyed formal representation, through leaders of their own, before the authorities of the state. Imperfect and often not quite as rosy as this might sound, it was at least the broad norm.

The political unity brought by the new Islamic world-empire did not last, but it created a vast Islamic world civilisation, similar to the older Christian civilisation that it replaced. Within this huge area, Jews lived and enjoyed broadly similar status and rights everywhere. They could move around, maintain contacts, and develop their identity as Jews. A great new expansion of trade from the ninth century onwards brought the Spanish Jews – like the Muslims – into touch with the Jews and the Muslims even of India.

A ll this was encouraged by a further, critical development. Huge numbers of people in the new world of Islam adopted the language of the Muslim Arabs. Arabic gradually became the principal language of this vast area, excluding almost all the rest: Greek and Syriac, Aramaic and Coptic and Latin all died out, replaced by Arabic. Persian, too, went into a long retreat, to reappear later heavily influenced by Arabic.

The Jews moved over to Arabic very rapidly. By the early 10th century, only 300 years after the conquests, Sa’adya Gaon was translating the Bible into Arabic. Bible translation is a massive task – it is not undertaken unless there is a need for it. By about the year 900, the Jews had largely abandoned other languages and taken on Arabic.

The change of language in its turn brought the Jews into direct contact with broader cultural developments. The result from the 10th century on was a striking pairing of two cultures. The Jews of the Islamic world developed an entirely new culture, which differed from their culture before Islam in terms of language, cultural forms, influences, and uses. Instead of being concerned primarily with religion, the new Jewish culture of the Islamic world, like that of its neighbours, mixed the religious and the secular to a high degree. The contrast, both with the past and with medieval Christian Europe, was enormous.

Like their neighbours, these Jews wrote in Arabic in part, and in a Jewish form of that language. The use of Arabic brought them close to the Arabs. But the use of a specific Jewish form of that language maintained the barriers between Jew and Muslim. The subjects that Jews wrote about, and the literary forms in which they wrote about them, were largely new ones, borrowed from the Muslims and developed in tandem with developments in Arabic Islam.

Also at this time, Hebrew was revived as a language of high literature, parallel to the use among the Muslims of a high form of Arabic for similar purposes. Along with its use for poetry and artistic prose, secular writing of all forms in Hebrew and in (Judeo-)Arabic came into being, some of it of high quality.

Much of the greatest poetry in Hebrew written since the Bible comes from this period. Sa’adya Gaon, Solomon Ibn Gabirol, Ibn Ezra (Moses and Abraham), Maimonides, Yehuda Halevi, Yehudah al-Harizi, Samuel ha-Nagid, and many more – all of these names, well known today, belong in the first rank of Jewish literary and cultural endeavour.

W here did these Jews produce all this? When did they and their neighbours achieve this symbiosis, this mode of living together? The Jews did it in a number of centres of excellence. The most outstanding of these was Islamic Spain, where there was a true Jewish Golden Age, alongside a wave of cultural achievement among the Muslim population. The Spanish case illustrates a more general pattern, too.

What happened in Islamic Spain – waves of Jewish cultural prosperity paralleling waves of cultural prosperity among the Muslims – exemplifies a larger pattern in Arab Islam. In Baghdad, between the ninth and the twelfth centuries; in Qayrawan (in north Africa), between the ninth and the 11th centuries; in Cairo, between the 10th and the 12th centuries, and elsewhere, the rise and fall of cultural centres of Islam tended to be reflected in the rise and fall of Jewish cultural activity in the same places.

This was not coincidence, and nor was it the product of particularly enlightened liberal patronage by Muslim rulers. It was the product of a number of deeper features of these societies, social and cultural, legal and economic, linguistic and political, which together enabled and indeed encouraged the Jews of the Islamic world to create a novel sub-culture within the high civilisation of the time.

This did not last for ever; the period of culturally successful symbiosis between Jew and Arab Muslim in the middle ages came to a close by about 1300. In reality, it had reached this point even earlier, with the overall relative decline in the importance and vitality of Arabic culture, both in relation to western European cultures and in relation to other cultural forms within Islam itself; Persian and Turkish.

Jewish cultural prosperity in the middle ages operated in large part as a function of Muslim, Arabic cultural (and to some degree political) prosperity: when Muslim Arabic culture thrived, so did that of the Jews; when Muslim Arabic culture declined, so did that of the Jews.

In the case of the Jews, however, the cultural capital thus created also served as the seed-bed of further growth elsewhere – in Christian Spain and in the Christian world more generally.

The Islamic world was not the only source of inspiration for the Jewish cultural revival that came later in Christian Europe, but it certainly was a major contributor to that development. Its significance cannot be overestimated.

_______________
David J Wasserstein is the Eugene Greener Jr Professor of Jewish Studies at Vanderbilt University. This article is adapted from a May 2012 Jordan Lectures in Comparative Religion at the School of Oriental and African Studies.

Copyright David J Wasserstein, Jewish Chronicle, 2012

Reprinted with permission from Center for Research in Globalization.

Censoring History: The American Historical Association Censors Ad for Book on the US and the Creation of Israel

By Alison Weir
The American Historical Association (AHA) has refused to publish a paid advertisement for my book, Against Our Better Judgment: The Hidden History of How the U.S. Was Used to Create Israel.

This type of action demonstrates how the history discussed in my book has, in fact, so often remained hidden. It follows an incident a few years ago in which the largest chain of history magazines in the U.S. refused any advertisement by the Council for the National Interest, based on the accusation that CNI is “anti-Israel.”* CNI is a 20-year-old organization that works for policies that represent American interests and principles.

The AHA was founded in 1884 and chartered by Congress in 1889 “to serve the interests of the entire discipline of history,” according to its website. It is the largest professional history organization in the U.S. and publishes two journals, American Historical Reviewand Perspectives on History. The organization says the latter is “the principal source for news and information about the historical discipline.”

According to AHA Executive Director Jim Grossman in a phone conversation with me, AHA would not publish the ad for several reasons: The book “does not fall within the scope of the mission of the AHA, the book is “advocacy not scholarship,” it “has not been peer reviewed,” and it “has not been reviewed by the mainstream press.”

None of these objections – even if they were accurate – seem relevant to a paid advertisement, and none violate AHA’s published advertising guidelines in any way. In fact, AHA guidelines particularly make clear that advertising in an AHA publication “does not necessarily constitute endorsement or approval of any product or service advertised.”

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Mass Terror Against Blacks in America — What Was It Like?: Reprints of Newspaper Articles From the Time

Will Brown (left) after being killed, mutilated and burned outside a courthouse in Omaha on September 28, 1919. Laura Nelson (right) was lynched on May 25, 1911 in Okfuskee County, Oklahoma. Ms. Nelson was lynched along with her
son. They were hung together from a local bridge. Among the killers of Ms. Nelson and her son was Charley Guthrie,
the father of famed folk singer Woody Guthrie. This photograph of her lynching was sold on postcards.

By Ronald David Jackson
A new study shows that almost 4000 African Americans were lynched during a 73 year period in America's South ending in 1950. Clearly, this is an undercount of racial killings since outright murders of blacks by whites (the kind that didn't involve hanging) are not included in this study. You can watch an interview with Bryan Stevenson, founder of the Equal Justice Initiative which conducted the study, here.

Public torture, lynching, and burnings was a gruesome social celebration for many whites and photographs from lynchings were often published as postcards and sold in stores across the United States. Racists looked for any reason to lynch blacks, often killing them for "infractions" as minor as bumping into whites while rushing for a train, daring to wear a military uniform, or for not addressing whites as "Mr." or "Mrs." One black woman was even lynched for knocking on the front door of a white-owned home when social protocol demanded African Americans should only approach the back door. Hundreds of Mexican Americans were also lynched, often for things as minor as speaking Spanish.

Newspaper Publications and Lynchings
What follows are newspaper items from an era when blacks faced mass terror throughout America. These items were captured more or less at random from a newspaper database maintained by the Library of Congress.  Some of the articles were published in black-owned publications.

The first thing I noticed about many of these articles is that lynchings of blacks was so commonplace that in most cases the article didn't even warrant a big headline and more than just a few sentences. Therefore, some readers might even find it difficult to find the item on the page. I deliberately did not highlight the articles on any of the pages so that readers will get some sense of how un-important lynchings were to most whites at the time.

You will notice that blacks were being lynched for such "major" offenses as the alleged killing a cow or a horse. Many of the articles were written in a cheerful style, as lynchings were often festive occasions for the whites in attendance; and many articles were written in a dry "matter of fact" style, as if lynchings were an ordinary everyday occurrence. In many cases, the lynchings were of blacks who "didn't know their place." For example, blacks were being lynched simply because they were successful businesspersons, or had the audacity to hit back when struck by a white person.

The reason given for many of the lynchings was "assault" (rape) or "attempted assault" of a white woman.  Common sense suggests that in the vast majority of cases this was merely a convenient excuse that helped to "justify" the murder in the minds of the white public. In those days black men could be lynched for merely looking at a white woman. So to suggest that thousands of black men were running around the country assaulting white women is simply absurd, especially given the fact that the "black rapist" could have "safely" raped a black woman in a black community and gotten away with it — since white society at the time had so little concern for the well-being of black women or the goings on within the black community.

The Deep South: Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina,
Florida.

Of particular note is the fact that many lynchings took place outside of the so-called "Deep South", which blows away the myth that lynchings were a  Southern phenomenon only. The new study on lynchings calculates that almost 4,000 blacks were lynched.  This may be a extremely conservative estimate, because a search of the Library of Congress' newspaper database using the search terms "Negro" and "lynched" returned 33,745 items. We can assume, however, that in some cases several different newspapers may have reported on the same incident.

The Shame of America
The Evening Star, November 23, 1922



____________

Damnable White Whelps
Cayton's Weekly, June 08, 1918



____________

Gladio B and the Battle for Eurasia: Gladio A — Entailed Terrorism by US & NATO in Europe, Gladio B Expands This 'Strategy of Tension' (Video)

‘Operation Gladio B’–the continuation of the old NATO Gladio program–covers a tangled web of covert operatives, billionaire Imams, drug running, prison breaks and terror strikes. Its goal: the destabilization of Central Asia and the Caucasus. In this presentation to Studium Generale in Groningen on November 19, 2014, James Corbett lifts the lid on this operation, its covert operatives, and the secret battle for the Eurasian heartland.

__________________

GLADIO - The CIA & MI6 Terror Network In Europe

Multimedia presentation by Ronald David Jackson

The Net Is Mightier Than The Sword: James Corbett Speaks on the Power of the Internet at TEDxGroningen (Video)

ISIS From the Inside — 'Meeting ISIL': The Most Informative Documentary on the Islamic State and the War in Syria — Comes Out of Iran

TOP: ISIS fighters use aerial photographs and a digital projector as they plan an attack on a town in Syria and discuss
the Syrian Army's likely reaction. BOTTOM: ISIS fighters conduct a night raid on a home in Iraq dressed as Iraqi soldiers - They fool the occupant into believing they are working for the Iraqi government and get him to provide the names of his collaborators before they execute him. (Screen capture from YouTube video)

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Meeting ISIL

The Best Documentary on Japan's Tsunami?: 'Japans Tsunami Caught On Camera' — All Footage Was Taken by the Witnesses

Civil Disobedience Used by Colorado Students Against School Board That Sought To Censor Lessons On Civil Disobedience

Students from Columbine High School protest proposed changes to AP History curriculum last week.
(Photo: John Lebya/@presto89/Twitter)

By Deirdre Fulton
Protesting the conservative school board's efforts to censor their history curriculum, more than a dozen students were escorted out of a Jefferson County Board of Education meeting in Colorado on Thursday night after disrupting proceedings by reading from their history textbooks and reciting the Pledge of Allegiance.

The students employed one of the very tactics that school board member Julie Williams was seeking to downplay through a proposed curriculum review committee: civil disobedience. In late September, Williams' proposal—to establish a committee to ensure that the district's history texts promoted positive aspects of the United States and avoided encouragement of "civil disorder, social strife or disregard of the law"—prompted mass student walk-outs and teacher 'sick-outs.'

Many of the students involved in Thursday evening's action were organizers of the September protests.

According to Chicago Public Radio, "the disruptions started when board members refused to let students speak, after they didn’t speak in the order they were called. A few minutes later, one student after another stood up in the public meeting, reciting historic acts of civil disobedience from history textbooks."

The report continues:

When asked to leave the room, students at the podium left or were escorted out peacefully. After another group of students read aloud from history books and were escorted out, about a dozen students stood up in the packed meeting to read the Pledge of Allegiance. They then filed out.

Along with the students were “legal consultants,” law students taking descriptive notes of the scene. That didn’t please one security guard who lobbed several insults at the law students.

Standing in a circle outside the education building, a set of sprinklers suddenly came on. When the students moved out of the way, those sprinklers came on. The pattern repeated until all the sprinklers were on but the students didn’t leave. A security officer came out and informed the group that they were trespassing.

Student organizer Ashlyn Maher, a member of the recently formed JeffCo Student Network for Change, didn't get a chance to speak at Thursday's meeting. She posted her speech on Facebook.

"Our problem is that you, the board majority, passed a redundant, and highly opposed curriculum review committee because you have other motives," Maher said. "You want to limit what we learn so you can push your own political opinion. Our problem is that the nation you want to build consists of people who cannot think critically. We as students want to develop our minds. Critical thinking is our ticket to the future. Do not limit what we learn...Do not try to fool us...Do not pretend that patriotism is turning a blind eye and a passive mind to the changing world around us."

Chalkbeat Colorado reports that "as part of their demonstration, the students said they had four demands: a public apology from the school board’s conservative majority for referring to students as 'union pawns;' a reversal of an earlier decision to amend content review policies; proof from the board that they listen and act on community input instead of what students called an 'ideological' agenda; and more resources for classroom instruction."

Watch security guards take books away from the students in the video of the action below:

Reprinted with permission from Common Dreams.

Pioneering Trinidad & Tobago TV Personality Hazel Ward-Redman Remembered

Screen grab of Hazel Ward-Redman, taken from a documentary about the 50 most
influential people in Trinidad and Tobago.

By Janine Mendes-Franco
This week, Trinidad and Tobago got news that Hazel Ward-Redman, a veteran television personality who encouraged the musical and artistic talents of generations of youth, had passed away after a long battle with cancer.

Her television programmes Twelve and Under and Teen Talent showcased the abilities of kids from all over the country – poetry, dance, music and singing were all standard fare – and launched the future careers of many who were passionate about the arts. Contestants went on to become writers, musicians and filmmakers. In 2006, when Trinidad and Tobago Television (the national broadcaster that produced Ward-Redman's shows) finally closed its doors, her colleague Neil Giuseppi reminisced:

And there was Auntie Hazel Ward whose cultural programmes set standards of excellence I attempted to follow in later years [...]

Over the years, ttt became the breeding ground for many of this nation’s cultural icons. Programmes like Scouting for Talent, Mastana Bahar, Teen Talent, Twelve and Under, Mainly for Women and Indian Variety, continuously unearthed the great wealth of talent that resides in our twin-island Republic. Several of the country’s top artistes got their first public recognition through the screens of ttt.

Trinidad and Tobago will forever owe a debt of gratitude to people like Hazel Ward-Redman [...] for their tremendous contributions to the development of the nation’s culture.

“Auntie Hazel”, as she was called, was honoured in a television documentary as one of the 50 most influential people in Trinidad and Tobago:

Tributes soon began to pour in via social media. On local radio station 96.1 WEFM's Facebook page, Ward-Redman was acknowledged for her work in television broadcasting. Commenters on the thread had fond memories of growing up watching her on television and commended her encouragement of young people. Anthony Brooks called her a “pioneer and trailblazer”, while Roma Sinanan described her this way:

Beautiful and exuberant spirit, so infectious that her personality was reflected on all who loved her and appreciated her tremendous contribution to our children of our land. Thank you and many blessings on your journey to the Source from which you came.

The Independent Media Producers Association of Trinidad and Tobago noted:

We have lost a valuable Icon today. Please stop for a moment and remember the light that was Aunty Hazel. May she rest in peace.

On Twitter, Patricia Worrell felt as if something significant had come to an end:

'End of an era' talk has become a bit of a cliché. But #HazelWard is dead, and it feels like the end of an era to many. RIP Aunty Hazel
— Patricia Worrell (@bytesdog) October 27, 2014

People who knew her personally or professionally flooded Facebook with tributes of their own – I was one of them:

Auntie Hazel Ward, thank you for understanding young people and encouraging their talent. I appeared (along with my guitar) as a guest artiste on one of the 12 and Under shows; Auntie Hazel always had a way of making you feel special. Farewell and God speed to a woman who did yeoman's service for music and the arts in this country.

Writer Lisa Allen-Agostini shared this anecdote:

I remember being on Teen Talent a million years ago. I auditioned at Newtown Girls and the accompanist Maurice Connors was so puzzled at my (ahem) unique vocal ability that he stopped halfway through and asked what I was singing. Aunty Hazel kindly asked me whether I had another talent. She let me return after half hour's practice in the yard, and loved my poetry. Not exactly a star is born but still. RIP Aunty Hazel.

My colleague, filmmaker Danielle Dieffenthaler, summed up her influence like this:

For a generation of us, she was the inspiration.

Hazel Ward-Redman's funeral is scheduled for this Saturday in San Fernando, the main city in south Trinidad.

Christopher Columbus Reinvented as an 'Anti-Muslim Crusader' by Reich-Wingers — In Attempt To Excuse His Atrocities

Christopher Columbus arrived to the "New World" with a
sword in his hand and terror and thievery in his heart.

By Travis Gettys
As some cities and states phase out Columbus Day in favor of a holiday honoring indigenous people, conservatives are hyping the famed explorer as a Christian warrior who battled Islam.

Recent historical scholarship has focused on the cruelty Christopher Columbus visited upon the indigenous people he encountered during his exploration.

That leaves his reputation ripe for a “politically incorrect” revision.

The Tea Party's Allen West only lasted one term in congress because
of his psychotic rants. (Screen capture from YouTube video)

“It’s time for a little trek through history because Columbus’ achievement is relevant to where we are today,” wrote Allen West, the conservative commentator and former Republican congressman. “To understand his achievement, we need to put the whole episode into context.”

West notes that Columbus set out on his voyage the same year the Moors were finally driven from Spain after nearly 800 years, and about 40 years after the fall of Constantinople into Ottoman hands.

“So the man from Genoa … stepped forward not only to challenge the belief that the world was flat, but to find a westward route by sea to the Indies and China,” West argues. “With the defeat of the Islamic armies, Columbus believed he could find favor with Ferdinand and Isabella, and indeed Isabella took a liking and supported Columbus’ endeavor. So we can thank Islamic conquest for inspiring Columbus to find a new trade route west.”

However, most educated people in Europe and the Muslim world were aware of ancient proof that the world was round, and some scholars claim African and Muslim explorers had reached the New World centuries before Columbus.

His conservative champions don’t exactly dispute that Columbus enslaved the natives he met in the West Indies, but they argue that was more merciful than simply killing them – and besides, they insist, he was doing God’s work.

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The Voyages of Christopher Columbus Revisited: 'Hero' of American History Brought Nothing But Mass Murder, Slavery and Rape to the Americas

"The atrocities committed by Christopher Columbus  makes ISIS look like boy scouts."

Illustration from the era depicts the savagery of Christopher Columbus and his crew. (From the documentary The Canary Effect)

By Dahr Jamail and Jason Coppola

To mark Columbus Day In 2004, the Medieval and Renaissance Center in UCLA published the final volume of a compendium of Columbus-era documents. Its general editor, Geoffrey Symcox, leaves little room for ambivalence when he says, "This is not your grandfather's Columbus.... While giving the brilliant mariner his due, the collection portrays Columbus as an unrelenting social climber and self-promoter who stopped at nothing - not even exploitation, slavery, or twisting biblical scripture - to advance his ambitions.... Many of the unflattering documents have been known for the last century or more, but nobody paid much attention to them until recently. The fact that Columbus brought slavery, enormous exploitation or devastating diseases to the Americas used to be seen as a minor detail - if it was recognized at all - in light of his role as the great bringer of white man's civilization to the benighted idolatrous American continent. But to historians today this information is very important. It changes our whole view of the enterprise."

    But does it?

"They ... brought us parrots and balls of cotton and spears and many other things, which they exchanged for the glass beads and hawks' bells," Christopher Columbus wrote in his logbook in 1495. "They willingly traded everything they owned.... They were well-built, with good bodies and handsome features.... They do not bear arms, and do not know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it by the edge and cut themselves out of ignorance. They have no iron. Their spears are made of cane.... They would make fine servants.... With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want. Let us in the name of the Holy Trinity go on sending all the slaves that can be sold."

Dominican Priest and Writer, Bartolome de Las Casas: The savagery of Christopher
Columbus and his crew was so profound that he said his hands trembled as he wrote
about it. (From the documentary The Canary Effect)

Catholic priest Bartolome de las Casas, in the multi-volume "History of the Indies" published in 1875, wrote, "... Slaves were the primary source of income for the Admiral (Columbus) with that income he intended to repay the money the Kings were spending in support of Spaniards on the Island. They provide profit and income to the Kings. (The Spaniards were driven by) insatiable greed ... killing, terrorizing, afflicting, and torturing the native peoples ... with the strangest and most varied new methods of cruelty."

This systematic violence was aimed at preventing "Indians from daring to think of themselves as human beings. (The Spaniards) thought nothing of knifing Indians by tens and twenties and of cutting slices off them to test the sharpness of their blades.... My eyes have seen these acts so foreign to human nature, and now I tremble as I write."

Father Fray Antonio de Montesino, a Dominican preacher, in December 1511 said this in a sermon that implicated Christopher Columbus and the colonists in the genocide of the native peoples:

"Tell me by what right of justice do you hold these Indians in such a cruel and horrible servitude? On what authority have you waged such detestable wars against these people who dealt quietly and peacefully on their own lands? Wars in which you have destroyed such an infinite number of them by homicides and slaughters never heard of before ..."

In 1892, the National Council of Churches, the largest ecumenical body in the United States, is known to have exhorted Christians to refrain from celebrating the Columbus quincentennial, saying, "What represented newness of freedom, hope, and opportunity for some was the occasion for oppression, degradation and genocide for others."

Yet America continues to celebrate "Columbus Day."

That Americans do so in the face of all evidence that there is little in the Columbian legacy that merits applause makes it easier for them to avoid taking responsibility for their own actions, or the actions of their government. Perhaps there is good reason.

***

In "Columbus Day: A Clash of Myth and History," journalist and media critic Norman Solomon discusses how historians who deal with recorded evidence are frequently depicted as "politically correct" revisionists while the general populace is manipulated into holding onto myths that brazenly applaud inconceivable acts of violence of men against fellow humans.

Native children were used as food for attack dogs and natives' lives were considered so worthless that they were literally used to test the sharpness of their swords. (From the documentary The Canary Effect)

For those of us who are willing to ask how it becomes possible to manipulate the population of a country into accepting atrocity, the answer is not hard to find. It requires normalizing the inconceivable and drumming it in via the socio-cultural environment until it is internalized and embedded in the individual and collective consciousness. The combined or singular deployment of the media, the entertainment industry, mainstream education or any other agency, can achieve the desired result of convincing people that wars can be just, and strikes can be surgical, as long as it is the US that is doing it.

Never has this process been as blatant and overt as in recent years when the time has come for America to legitimize the idea of global domination. A Department of Defense report titled Joint Vision 2020 calls for the US military to be capable of "full spectrum dominance" of the entire planet. That means total domination and control of all land, sea, air, space and information.

That's a lot of control.

How might this become accepted as "Policy" and remain unquestioned by almost an entire population?

The one word key to that is: Myths. The explanation is that the myths the United States is built upon have paved the way for the perpetuation of all manner of violations.

Among the first of these is that of Christopher Columbus. In school we were taught of his bravery, courage and perseverance. In a speech in 1989, George H.W. Bush proclaimed: "Christopher Columbus not only opened the door to a New World, but also set an example for us all by showing what monumental feats can be accomplished through perseverance and faith."

Never mind that the monumental feats mainly comprised part butchery, part exploitation and the largest part betrayal of host populations of the "New World."

***

On their second arrival in Hispaniola, Haiti, Columbus's crew took captive roughly two thousand local villagers who had arrived to greet them. Miguel Cuneo, a literate crew member, wrote, "When our caravels ... were to leave for Spain, we gathered ... one thousand six hundred male and female persons of those Indians, and these we embarked in our caravels on February 17, 1495.... For those who remained, we let it be known (to the Spaniards who manned the island's fort) in the vicinity that anyone who wanted to take some of them could do so, to the amount desired, which was done."

In 1500, Columbus wrote to a friend, "A hundred castellanoes (a Spanish coin) are as easily obtained for a woman as for a farm, and it is very general and there are plenty of dealers who go about looking for girls; those from nine to ten (years old) are now in demand."

Such original "monumental feats" as were accomplished by our nation's heroes and role models were somewhat primitive. Local inhabitants who resisted Columbus and his crew had their ears or nose cut off, were attacked by dogs, skewered with pikes and shot. Reprisals were so severe that many of the natives committed mass suicide and women began practicing abortions in order not to leave children enslaved. The population of Haiti at the time of Columbus's arrival was between 1.5 million and 3 million. Sixty years later, every single native had been murdered.

Today, "perseverance and faith" allow us to accomplish much more and with far greater impunity. The US continues to liberate Iraq and Afghanistan with 2,000-pound bombs in civilian areas and purge Pakistan via drone attacks on weddings.

Neither case is of isolated whimsy. It was and remains policy.

In "A People's History of the United States," celebrated historian Howard Zinn describes how Arawak men and women emerged from their villages to greet their guests with food, water and gifts when Columbus landed at the Bahamas. But Columbus wanted something else. "Gold is most excellent; gold constitutes treasure; and he who has it does all he wants in the world, and can even lift souls up to Paradise," he wrote to the king and queen of Spain in 1503.

Rather than gold, however, Columbus only found slaves when he arrived on his second visit with seventeen ships and over 1,200 men. Ravaging various Caribbean islands, Columbus took natives as captives as he sailed. Of these he picked 500 of the best specimens and shipped them back to Spain. Two hundred of these died en route, while the survivors were put up for sale by the archdeacon of the town where they landed.

Columbus needed more than mere slaves to sell, and Zinn's account informs us, "... desperate to pay back dividends to those who had invested, (he) had to make good his promise to fill the ships with gold. In the province of Cicao on Haiti, where he and his men imagined huge gold fields to exist, they ordered all persons fourteen years or older to collect a certain quantity of gold every three months. When they brought it, they were given copper tokens to hang around their necks. Indians found without a copper token had their hands cut off and bled to death.

"The Indians had been given an impossible task. The only gold around was bits of dust garnered from the streams. So they fled, were hunted down with dogs, and were killed."

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Brazilians May Elect Their First Black President — A Woman Named Marina Silva

“She’s going to come with her tan skin and popular appeal.... She’s going to be so different, and for that reason, so similar to all of us.”—Marina Silva campaign song.

Photo provided by edu2424.

By Taylor Barnes
The official jingle for Marina Silva's presidential campaign discreetly refers to the candidate's skin color: “She’s going to come with her tan skin and popular appeal.... She’s going to be so different, and for that reason, so similar to all of us.”

The brief line – among diverse references to how she appeals to all Brazilians of all creeds – is symbolic. After her years in the public eye as a politician and activist, Brazilians know well the personal story of Ms. Silva: She hails from an impoverished family of 11 children in a remote corner of the Amazon, worked as a housemaid, and was illiterate until the age of 16. She’s a devout Pentecostal Christian and an outspoken environmentalist.

But in one of the most diverse nations in the world, few are talking about the fact that, if victorious, Ms. Silva would be Brazil’s first president who identifies as black. It’s put a spotlight on how race is – and isn’t – discussed here, and what that means for a nation that often describes itself as a “racial democracy” but still suffers from deep inequality and discrimination that fall along racial lines.

“If you look closely, people don’t speak about racial issues. It’s so complicated,” says Rodrigo Ledo, a press manager for the Brazilian Socialist Party, for which Silva became the presidential candidate after her running mate died in an August plane crash. “We have the aura of living in harmony, despite there being so much prejudice. It’s part of our education as Brazilians,” Mr. Ledo says.

Brazil is the second-largest country of afro-descendants in the world, behind Nigeria. Some estimates say Brazil accounted for 30 to 40 percent of the trans-Atlantic slave trade during its colonial period, a higher percentage than the United States. And according to the 2010 census, Brazil is now a “majority minority” nation, where more than half the population does not identify as white.

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Israel Gives Jews a Bad Name — War Crimes and Occupation is Turning Israel Into a Pariah State

By Danny Schechter

When I was growing up in a Jewish community in New York in the late fifties, there was a predictable collective response to news events that expressed itself in one question:

“Is it good for the Jews?”

Many persecuted minorities made up largely of immigrants operate in an inward looking culture characterized by a fear of persecution, and a desire to keep a low profile for fear of stirring up anti-semitism or just “trouble.”

Jews who have been victimized throughout history tend to look at the world though the prism of that victimization, even when their own community is being viewed by others as victimizers. Their fears are easily manipulated with appeals to a collective memory.

Back in my youth, every time some big crook’s picture was splashed in the tabloids, I was reassured by being told, at least he isn’t Jewish.’ Although later, I learned about Jewish gangsters like Meyer Lansky who practically ran the Mafia. If you want proof, rent one of those Godfather movies.

Later, I learned from YIVO, The Institute for Jewish Research, there had been as many Jewish criminals in our community as in others, Learning about this helped me contextualize what I came to see as a perversion of Jewish values into a dominant Zionist narrative that embraced or ignored crimes from the earliest days of the conquest of Palestine up through the current war on the people of Gaza.

Jewish writers have not downplayed this history, reports the YIVO Encyclopedia that even speaks of Jews from Latin America:

“Literary stereotypes, exemplified by the refined Jewish pimp in Sholem Aleichem’s short story “A mentsh fun Buenos-Ayres” (A Man from Buenos Aires; 1909) created the image of white slavery as a quintessentially Jewish occupation. Scholars remain divided as to the extent to which Jews were disproportionately represented in the trade. The association of Jews with international prostitution prompted energetic communal initiatives in Europe and in the Americas against gangs of Jewish procurers.”

Once Israel was established after a war of terror against the British, the new government began to eradicate all vestiges of Jewish institutions, replacing thousands of years of Yiddish –language culture—which they saw as a culture of weakness—with Hebrew and the cult of the macho sabra and military heroism.

This attitude infests the whole society despite formal equality for woman. In a recent interview, Joanne Zack-Pakes, director of Open Door Counseling Centers, the flagship project of the Israel Family Planning Association, speaks of an Israeli Culture “that is very sexual, but specifically a culture shaped by macho sexuality and male power.”

No wonder, soon, the Kibbutzim that relied on Jewish labor to avoid exploiting Arabs were gone. The Labor Movement was gone. The right became ascendant. The seeds of hatred and contempt towards Palestinians were planted and nurtured as their communities were displaced from the own lands by a settler-run almost colonial society. It based itself on occupied lands all in the name of a questionable biblical mythology. Noam Chomsky says it is not like South Africa’s apartheid. It’s worse.

Now, let’s fast-forward into the present, in the era of Wall Street with a disproportionate number of leading Jewish bankers and lawyers, including, until recently, Bernard Madoff who typified the hypocrisy of being a prominent philanthropist while at the same time, a skillful and serial financial gangster, not above ripping off Jewish charities and the rich and poor alike. He even took money from Eli Wiesel, the pro-Israeli author of prize-winning books on the holocaust and a backer of the Israeli firsters.

I cite all this not to feed the racist and fabricated conspiracy theorists that have been blaming “the Jews” for everything from time immoral, from the fraudulent “protocols of Zion” conspiracy through the ravings of Nazis then and now.

My concern is more internal. What has our community done to reinforce our own stereotypes, and actively, if not aggressively, cultivated a reputation for “toughness” as an antidote to the well known but misleading image of a people who passively went to the gas chambers?

In some circles, Jews blame themselves while vowing “Never Again” and supporting or rationalizing extreme militarism, and systematic human rights abuses. in the name of Israel and Jewish survival.

The extremist Jewish right-wing encourages us to be even tougher, to forget about standing up for justice and identifying with oppressed people. An article in leftist turned rightist, David Horowitz’s website, FrontPage, features a prominent U.S. PR expert, Ronn Torrossian, singing the praises of “the top Ten Living Tough Jews.”

“The list of the Top 10 Living Tough Jews it is not only about brute physical strength,” he writes, “ it is about a people who are smart, strong, resilient, rugged, bold and fearless,”

This is a reflection of good, tough Jews who are positive representations of the Jewish people, (no gangsters here) – don’t let a yarmulke fool you.”

And, yet, who tops his toughness list of role models, the people he wants us to emulate?

1. “Israel Defense Forces: All of the men and women of the Israel Defense Forces – the holy Jewish army are the toughest (and holiest) Jews one can ever imagine. They protect the people of Israel against tremendous odds, and with Israel’s survival threatened daily these Jews are consummate warriors, fighting not only for a country but for an important ideal.”

Weighing in at number 8 is none other the number one funder of America’s right-wing politicians, the man every GOP hopeful sucks up to: Sheldon Adelson.

“The richest Jew in the world, Adelson, is famously resilient, stubborn and focused on winning. The son of Jewish immigrants, Adelson grew up lower-class, dropped out of the City College of New York – and has built one of the largest casino empires in the world?”

You get the idea. Be tough. Become a zillionaire. And run a country that now has the fourth largest military in the world (US funded of course) that can target an overcrowded ghetto like Gaza—not unlike those many Jews were once forced to live in—turning it into a shooting gallery for the most sophisticated weaponry, all justified as necessary for their country’s survival.

Writer and former New York Times correspondent Chris Hedges who reported from Gaza, calls Israel’s tough guy but very slick PR campaign, “the Big Lie.”

“The Big Lie makes it clear to the Palestinians that Israel will continue to wage a campaign of state terror and will never admit its atrocities or its intentions,“ he writes.

“The vast disparity between what Israel says and what Israel does tells the Palestinians that there is no hope. Israel will do and say whatever it wants. International law, like the truth, will always be irrelevant. There will never, the Palestinians understand from the Big Lie, be an acknowledgement of reality by the Israeli leadership.

Hedges adds,

“Israel’s ambassador to the United States, Ron Dermer, in a Big Lie of his own, said last month at a conference of Christians United for Israel that the Israeli army should be given the “Nobel Peace Prize … a Nobel Peace Prize for fighting with unimaginable restraint…. The Big Lie destroys any possibility of history and therefore any hope for a dialogue between antagonistic parties that can be grounded in truth and reality.”

To Jewish Rabbis like Michael Lerner, it’s not just the truth that is being trashed. It is Judaism itself.

He writes on Salon:

“…it is the brutality of that assault which finally has broken me into tears and heartbreak. While claiming that it is only interested in uprooting tunnels that could be used to attack Israel, the IDF has engaged in the same criminal (emphasis mine) behavior that the world condemns in other struggles around the world: the intentional targeting of civilians (the same crime that Hamas has been engaged in over the years in its bombing of Sdeyrot and its current targeting of Israeli population centers, thankfully unsuccessfully, which correctly has earned it the label as a terrorist organization).

Using the excuse that Hamas is using civilians as “human shields” and placing its war material in civilian apartments, a claim that a UN human rights investigatory commission found groundless when it was used the last time Israel invaded Gaza in 2008-2009 and engaged in similar levels of killing civilians), Israel has managed to kill over 1,500 Palestinians and has wounded over 8,000 thousand more.”

On and on he goes, as someone who has backed Israel for years, excoriating the way Israel’s needs and Zionist ideology as defined by a harsh right-wing government, dominated by a military dominated “security cabinet, “has come to speak for and define the needs of Jews in the world.

He realizes that Israel. by use of military power, political lobbying and media manipulation now defines the narrative of what being Jewish is supposed to be.

Critics, especially Jews like myself, are dismissed, and marginalized if not attacked violently in Israel and labeled as “self-haters” for not embracing this redefinition of Judaism as militarism, idealism as authoritarianism, and a new fascism with a Hebrew face.

Rabbi Lerner of Tikkun Magazine adds,

“I’m heartbroken to see the Judaism of love and compassion being dismissed as “unrealistic” by so many of my fellow Jews and rabbis. Wasn’t the central message of Torah that the world was ruled by a force that made possible the transformation from “that which is” to “that which can and should be”? And wasn’t our task to teach the world that nothing is fixed, that even the mountains can skip like young rams and the seas can flee before the triumph of God’s justice in the world?

Instead of preaching this hopeful message, too many rabbis and rabbinical institutions are preaching a Judaism that places more hope in the might of the Israeli army than in the capacity of human beings (including Palestinians) to transform their perception of “the other” and overcome their fears.”

So whatever Israel is “winning,” the Jewish People are loosing. The key lesson of the holocaust was human rights of all peoples need protection. That is not a lesson that the droning on robots of Israel’s Sparta-like Israeli PR Army has any use for.

The rest of the world is judging us. Jews have to judge us well.

Let me close with the words of Ahmad Kathrada who spent 26 years in prison in South Africa alongside Nelson Mandela , and was considered his closest comrade, He recently visited Palestine and said it felt all too familiar. He wrote recently:

“What worries me is the sheer impunity with which Israel acts. It reminds me of the many years that apartheid was allowed to flourish in South Africa with little constructive action on the part of the major powers such as the US, France, Germany and the UK, including some of the leading Arab states such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

“While writing this, my thoughts go back to August-September of 1951, when I visited the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland. I find myself asking: “Has apartheid Israel so quickly forgotten the millions of Jews, communists and gypsies who were exterminated by the Nazis, that they now commit the same crimes?”

Can his observation also be applied to Israel, and all the countries like our own, that fall over each other endorsing what Israel says and then ignoring what it does

Among the other more immediate crimes against Palestinians, international law and history, Israel gives Jews a bad name.

__________
News Dissector Danny Schechter blogs at newsdissector.net and edits mediachannel.org Comments to dissector@mediachannel.org.

Reprinted with permission from Center for Research in Globalization.

More Than a Half Century Later, How Should Jamaica View Its Independence Day?

Jamaican Independence Day celebrations. Photo taken from the WAVE: Galleries,
Museums, Archives of Wolverhampton Flickr page. CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

By Janine Mendes-Franco
Jamaica achieved its independence from British rule 52 years ago. Like the citizens of most Caribbean states, Jamaicans today wrangle with the ripple effects of the region's history, including social and economic challenges.

Like many other regional territories, Jamaica was “discovered” by Christopher Columbus for the Spanish crown in the 1490s; its indigenous population was effectively annihilated, either intentionally or as a result of diseases that the Spanish brought with them. Midway through the 1600s, the island was seized by the British and remained under colonial rule for the next two hundred years as a pawn in the heinous transatlantic slave trade, during which African slaves were brought to the island, primarily to work the sugar estates.

Emancipation in 1834 brought an economic, social and mental shift to Jamaica and the region as a whole, and signaled the beginning of the separation process from their collective — and forcibly adopted — mother country. These Caribbean territories began to make their intentions known as early as 1958, when they joined together to form the West Indies Federation, which was to function as a single-state political entity that would operate free from British rule. The arrangement failed — partly due to Jamaica's dissatisfaction with how slowly the process of gaining independence was going — and the federation was soon dissolved, allowing each member nation to forge ahead with breaking the chains of colonial rule on its own. Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago were the first to succeed, becoming independent states on Aug. 6, 1962 and Aug. 30, 1962, respectively. Other islands would follow suit well into the early 1980s.

But the road to self-governance has not always been smooth. The Westminster parliamentary system, which is strongly based on public opposition, didn't necessarily translate well to the psyche of a region that endured hundreds of years of human rights abuses and is still suffering its effects. The learning curve for a people who historically never had a say, continues to be a steep one, especially in a climate where corruption was already entrenched.

On the 52nd anniversary of their country's independence from British rule, a pair of Jamaican bloggers have reflected on the meaning of the occasion.

Jean Lowrie-Chin, whose post listed many of the island's achievements and compared its gains with what she deemed other less fortunate countries, cited a strong democracy, freedom of the press and citizens’ resourcefulness in the face of economic hardship as noteworthy things to celebrate:

I will listen to no ‘grinches’ today, those cynics trying to steal my joy in Emancipation and Independence. We keep talking ourselves into this ditch of despair, instead of raising our voices in thanks for our many blessings. If you think we are badly off, please check the international newscasts, where countries are at war and an airplane of ordinary passengers with everyday plans is shot out of the sky.

Her compatriot Nadine Tomlinson wrote about the country's progress and wondered whether “the child” that Jamaica was in 1962 would be proud of “the adult” it has become. She agreed with Lowrie-Chin that some of the island's greatest resources lie in its people, but suggested that Jamaicans are still held back from reaching their full potential, thanks to “psychological slavery”, adding that she saw “a dire need for an evolution of the collective mentality.”

Reprinted with permission from Global Voices.

Afro-Colombian Areas Taking A Battering By Colombia's FARC Insurgents

Atrocities by Guerrillas, Criminal Groups Go Unpunished

Mónica Julieth Pernia Cortes with two of her children. Pernia Cortes was tortured
and killed in Tumaco on June 5, 2014, evidence strongly suggests by the FARC.

By HRW
Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) guerrillas are committing widespread abuses with impunity in the mostly Afro-Colombian city of Tumaco and its surrounding rural areas, Human Rights Watch said today.

Human Rights Watch documented a wide range of abuses committed against scores of victims in Tumaco in 2013 and 2014 in which there is compelling evidence the FARC was responsible. These abuses included killings, disappearances, kidnapping, torture, forced displacement, attempted forced recruitment, planting landmines, extortion, and death threats against community leaders. Official data indicates the FARC has also committed sexual violence in Tumaco in 2013 and 2014.

“FARC abuses are devastating Tumaco’s Afro-Colombian communities,” said José Miguel Vivanco, Americas director at Human Rights Watch. “The FARC has a tight grip over the lives of many Tumaco residents, who are forced to keep silent as the guerrillas plant their fields with landmines, drive them from their homes, and kill their neighbors and loved ones with impunity.”

Paramilitary successor groups also engaged in rampant atrocities in Tumaco until they stopped operating in the municipality in late 2013. There is compelling evidence that members of the security forces have been responsible for some human rights violations there as well.

The identification cards of two sisters who were disappeared
from a Tumaco neighborhood in early 2013, evidence strongly
suggests by a paramilitary successor group. The sisters were
13 and 14 years old at the time of their disappearance.

Human Rights Watch visited Tumaco in May and June and interviewed more than 90 abuse victims, their relatives, community leaders, and local officials, among others. Research also drew on government data, official reports, and criminal case files.

Human Rights Watch documented abuses in Tumaco against more than 70 victims since 2013 in which there is strong indication the FARC was responsible, including 12 killings, 3 disappearances, 6 cases of attempted forced recruitment, and 5 cases of torture, among other types of abuse. Human Rights Watch also documented abuses against 16 victims in recent years in which evidence points to the perpetrators being paramilitary successor groups, including the disappearance of three teenage girls and attempted forced recruitment of two teenage boys.

Official data strongly suggests that the FARC and paramilitary successor groups have committed more than 300 killings and dozens of disappearances in Tumaco over the past several years.  Tumaco has among the highest officially reported levels of homicides, disappearances, conflict-related sexual violence and abuse, landmine victims, and forced displacement in Colombia. More than 10,000 Tumaco residents have fled their homes annually since 2011, according to government figures.

Over the past decade, the FARC and paramilitary successor groups – principally the Rastrojos – vied for control of Tumaco. Paramilitary successor groups emerged in Tumaco after the deeply flawed official demobilization of right-wing paramilitary organizations.

Since late 2013, the FARC has established an undisputed presence in many of the urban and rural areas of Tumaco, after numerous Rastrojos members were arrested and several neighborhoods succeeded in expelling the group. Some Rastrojos members stayed in Tumaco – and there has been concern among residents and officials over the possible arrival of another paramilitary successor group, the Urabeños – but, at this time, the FARC’s influence is uncontested by other armed groups.

The FARC has a tight grip over the lives of many Tumaco residents, who are forced to keep silent as the guerrillas plant their fields with landmines, drive them from their homes, and kill their neighbors and loved ones with impunity.

José Miguel Vivanco, Americas director

“Almost no one has been held accountable for the atrocities in Tumaco,” Vivanco said. “As long as Colombia fails to deliver justice in Tumaco, residents will remain vulnerable to abuses, whether from guerrillas, paramilitaries, gangs, or security force members.”

The Attorney General’s Office reported that only seven of its investigations into the more than 1,300 homicides committed in Tumaco since 2009 have led to convictions. Prosecutors have not obtained a single conviction in any of their more than 680 investigations into disappearances and forced displacement committed since 2009 in Tumaco and several nearby municipalities. Only four of the 314 investigations into sexual violence and abuse in Tumaco since 2009 have led to a conviction. Eight local prosecutors interviewed by Human Rights Watch were handling more than 1,100 investigations each. In some of the cases documented, justice authorities delayed – or completely failed – to take basic steps to investigate abuses.

The municipality of Tumaco, in southwestern Colombia, has roughly 200,000 residents, 89 percent Afro-Colombian. Slightly over half of the municipality’s population lives in the city of Tumaco, Colombia’s second-largest Pacific port. Much of Tumaco’s rural population lives on land that is collectively owned and governed by what are termed Afro-Colombian “community councils” and on indigenous reserves. Tumaco’s poverty, illiteracy, and infant mortality rates are all more than twice the national average.

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, and the UN independent expert on minority issues have found that Afro-Colombians nationwide face discrimination, socio-economic exclusion, and pervasive violence.

The FARC should immediately end its abuses against civilians in Tumaco and the rest of Colombia, Human Rights Watch said. It should stop using antipersonnel landmines, and disclose information on where landmines are laid so they can be cleared; stop interfering with school safety and children’s education; and reveal the whereabouts and/or return the remains of disappearance victims.

The Colombia government should promptly and effectively investigate, prosecute, and punish atrocities in Tumaco, Human Rights Watch said. It should significantly increase the personnel and resources assigned to the Tumaco prosecutor’s office, and establish a robust witness protection program for Tumaco cases. It should also address the issue of racial discrimination when carrying out policies to improve socio-economic conditions and curb abuses in Tumaco.

“As the FARC discusses peace in Havana with the Colombian government, in Tumaco its members have been brutalizing some of the most vulnerable communities in Colombia,” Vivanco said. “A peace agreement could eventually improve conditions in Tumaco but, in the meantime, the FARC needs to end its abuses against the civilian population, and the government should ensure justice for atrocities by all sides.”

Abuses in Tumaco: Summary of Findings
The following is a summary of the findings of recent Human Rights Watch research in Tumaco, including research on killings, disappearances, sexual violence, forced recruitment, forced displacement, and impunity. It concludes with the details of 10 illustrative cases.

Killings
The FARC and paramilitary successor groups have been responsible for widespread killings in Tumaco. Each year between 2011 and 2013, the annual homicide rate in Tumaco was at least 110 homicides per 100,000 people, more than three times the national rate (which is the 10th highest of all reported national rates worldwide, according to UN data).[1] A range of officials told Human Rights Watch that paramilitary successor groups and guerrillas have committed the vast majority of the homicides.[2]

The government’s Victims Unit, which provides reparations to conflict victims, registered 366 conflict-related killings committed in Tumaco between 2011 and 2013, more than in any other Colombian municipality.[3] The vast majority – if not all – were of civilians.[4] The FARC was presumed responsible for a majority of the killings, according to Victims Unit data.[5] Many killings and other abuses by paramilitary successor groups were not registered by the unit or are probably attributed to unidentified perpetrators.[6]

Human Rights Watch documented 17 killings committed in Tumaco in 2013 and 2014, 12 in which there is strong reason to believe the FARC was responsible, 3 in which there is evidence security force members carried out unlawful killings, and 2 in which it is unclear who was responsible. In 5 of the apparent FARC killings, there is evidence the victims were tortured. Tumaco residents Human Rights Watch interviewed described numerous other FARC and paramilitary successor group killings in their communities over the past several years.

Disappearances, Dismemberment, and Kidnapping
Human Rights Watch documented six disappearances committed in Tumaco since 2013, three with compelling evidence of FARC responsibility, and three in which a paramilitary successor group appears to be responsible. The Victims Unit registered 30 conflict-related disappearances committed in Tumaco between 2011 and 2013, the second-largest number of all Colombian municipalities during the period.[7] The unit’s data points to the FARC’s responsibility in a large portion of the registered cases.[8]

Residents of urban and rural areas said that paramilitary successor groups sometimes dismembered people they killed. Residents of two neighborhoods said the Rastrojos maintained three houses there where they repeatedly took victims to dismember them. According to official reports, the dismembered body parts of at least six people have been found in Tumaco since 2012, including Zolanyi Cortés Arroyo, a 14-year-old girl found on the shore of the city in July 2013 after she had been missing for two weeks.[9]

Human Rights Watch documented the kidnapping of a man in Tumaco in 2014 in which there is strong evidence of FARC responsibility.[10]

Sexual Violence
Human Rights Watch documented the rape of two women and a teenage girl in a Tumaco village by a group of unidentified armed men in 2012, as well as the rape of a teenage girl the same year by a man who identified himself to the victim as a FARC member. In all six disappearance cases Human Rights Watch documented – of five teenage girls and a young woman – families of the victims received information indicating they may have been raped.

Tumaco residents said the Rastrojos had raped women and teenage girls in their communities. The Victims Unit has registered 55 cases of conflict-related sexual violence and abuse committed in Tumaco since 2011, the second highest number in Colombia during the period. According to the Victims Unit’s data, the FARC was presumed responsible in 33 cases, paramilitary successor groups in 2, and unidentified attackers in 20.[11]

FARC and paramilitary successor group members in Tumaco have attempted to make young women and teenage girls their girlfriends or sexual partners through threats and intimidation, according to relatives of the young women and a community leader. Some families have sent their daughters away from areas where these groups have a strong presence to protect them from potential sexual exploitation or abuse.

Forced Recruitment, Recruitment and Use of Children, and Interference with Education
Human Rights Watch documented the attempted forced recruitment of 4 adults and 2 teenage boys by the FARC since 2013, as well as the attempted recruitment of 2 teenage boys by a paramilitary successor group during the period. In several cases, the victims had to flee Tumaco to avoid recruitment. Residents said the FARC is currently recruiting children under age 18 and reported seeing children actively operating as FARC members in their communities, including as gun-carrying members and lookouts.

The FARC and paramilitary successor groups have attempted to recruit children at Tumaco schools. One day in mid-2014, the FARC placed explosives roughly 10 meters from a village school’s entrance when the military was in town, forcing cancellation of classes for the day, residents said. The FARC has held meetings with students and teachers at the same school.

Use of Antipersonnel Landmines
The FARC are planting antipersonnel landmines in Tumaco’s rural areas. The 1997 Mine Ban Treaty, to which Colombia is a state party, comprehensively bans antipersonnel landmines and their use is a violation of international law.[12] According to official data, there have been 121 new victims of landmines and unexploded ordnance in Tumaco since 2011, more than in any other municipality in Colombia, which has one of the world’s highest annual rates of new landmine victims.[13] Of the 81 civilian victims, 16 died, and 65 were injured, 6 of whom had limbs amputated.

In one instance in 2011 that residents of an Afro-Colombian collective territory described, a woman stepped on a landmine, and when her husband tried to rescue her, his movement detonated another landmine, which killed him. The woman bled to death because residents were afraid of setting off another landmine if they tried to rescue her, a community leader said.

Community leaders said the FARC usually plant landmines when the military is in the area, or to protect coca crops. According to the UN, in 2013 there were 16,336 acres of coca – the raw material for producing cocaine – in Tumaco, more than three times the area planted in any other municipality in Colombia, which is the world’s second largest coca producer.[14]

Extortion, Restrictions on Movement, Social Control, and Forced Displacement
The FARC and paramilitary successor groups have been responsible for widespread extortion in Tumaco, with victims ranging from large businesses to informal street vendors, as well as community council governments, according to victims, business leaders, and justice officials.

Residents of various urban and rural communities told Human Rights Watch the FARC is imposing severe restraints on their movements and daily activities. In certain communities, the FARC prohibits people from walking around at night and levies fines of roughly US$250 for traveling by river after 6 p.m. It insists on approving visitors to some communities, and prohibits people – including community council leaders – from visiting areas within their own communities. Some residents also said they were forced to attend a FARC meeting under the threat of a fine, and that people – including members of a victims’ association – had been prohibited from meeting in large groups.

Community council leaders described the FARC’s social control and abuses as a direct threat to the autonomy and cultural traditions of Afro-Colombian communities. For example, one leader said people can no longer hunt or fish at night – traditional practices within his community – because of the FARC’s restrictions on movement and use of landmines.

Abuses by the FARC and paramilitary successor groups, and fighting between the FARC and security forces, have driven thousands of Tumaco residents from their homes. Each year between 2011 and 2013, more than 11,000 Tumaco residents were newly displaced, placing it in the top three Colombian municipalities in numbers of people displaced during those years.[15] Human Rights Watch also documented the cases of dozens of Tumaco residents displaced by the FARC and paramilitary successor groups since 2013.

Impunity
Colombia has consistently failed to ensure justice for abuses in Tumaco. There have been more than 1,300 homicides in Tumaco since 2009. The Attorney General’s Office reported that only seven of its investigations into these crimes have led to convictions, and that just 11 are at the trial stage.[16]

Local prosecutors are investigating 285 cases of disappearances and 379 cases of forced displacement committed since 2009 in Tumaco and several other small municipalities nearby. All investigations are in the preliminary stage, with no one charged, let alone convicted.[17] A specialized unit dedicated to investigating disappearances and forced displacement has an additional 210 open investigations into such crimes in Tumaco, all in the preliminary stage.[18] Of prosecutors’ 314 investigations into sexual violence crimes in Tumaco since 2009, only four have led to convictions, and eight are at the trial stage.[19]

The specialized prosecutorial unit dedicated to investigating paramilitary successor groups has not obtained a single conviction against members of such groups for homicides, disappearances, forced displacement, or sexual violence committed in Tumaco since 2009.[20]

The local prosecutors’ overwhelming caseload sets them up to fail. Human Rights Watch interviewed 9 of the 11 prosecutors in the Attorney General’s Office in Tumaco. Eight of them were handling at least 1,100 investigations each.[21] For example, one prosecutor was investigating 1,421 cases, including 402 homicides and 72 cases of sexual violence and abuse. The prosecutor with the lightest caseload had 740 investigations. The Attorney General’s Office has not yet followed through on its January 2014 commitment to assign 10 additional prosecutors to the Tumaco office.

In some cases Human Rights Watch documented, interviews with victims and justice authorities indicated that prosecutors and investigators had delayed – or completely failed – to take basic steps to investigate serious abuses. This included repeatedly refusing to take testimony from a family member about the people allegedly responsible for a disappearance, waiting at least three weeks to assign investigators to a murder case, and failing to interview a murder victim’s nuclear family members. For example, more than a year-and-a-half after unidentified gunmen killed Miller Angulo, a renowned victims’ rights leader in Tumaco, criminal investigators still had not interviewed his family or even verified that he was in fact a victims’ rights leader. Over a nearly year-long span in 2013 and 2014, no steps were taken to investigate the case.[22]

Another obstacle to justice is that many abuses by guerrillas and paramilitary successor groups go unreported due to fear of reprisals, abuse victims, their families, and prosecutors told Human Rights Watch. When cases are reported, pervasive fear of retaliation among witnesses, victims, and their families impedes cooperation with investigations.

Justice officials also face serious security risks in carrying out their work in Tumaco. On July 17, 2014, individuals who identified themselves as FARC members intercepted four Attorney General’s Office officials as they were driving back to the city of Pasto after exhuming bodies in Tumaco, sources in the Attorney General’s Office said. The FARC held the officials captive for roughly two hours, during which they threatened to kill them, told them not to return to the area, and burned their car.[23]

Abuse victims’ families described the devastating consequences of the impunity enjoyed by those who killed or disappeared their loved ones, such as having to endure threats and intimidation from the people responsible for the crimes. A woman said the FARC members who killed her husband in 2014 subsequently walked by her home on repeated occasions, peering inside, intimidating her. She fears her family would suffer reprisals if she reports the men to authorities.[24]

Socio-Economic Exclusion
Many residents believe the high poverty rate, lack of economic opportunities, and limited access to basic services in Tumaco have created an environment in which armed groups thrive by easily recruiting members.

The latest available government figures on Tumaco’s rates of multidimensional poverty[25] (84.3 percent, 2005), illiteracy (17 percent, 2005), and infant mortality (59 deaths per 1,000 births, 2009) are all at least twice the national average.[26]

Even though more than half of Tumaco residents live in the city, just 0.3 percent of its households were connected to the sewage system in 2011, compared with 72 percent of Colombian households nationwide.[27]

Selected Cases

Killing and torture of Mónica Julieth Pernia Cortes, Tumaco, June 5, 2014
On the afternoon of June 5, 2014, Mónica Julieth Pernia Cortes, a 25-year-old mother of three, left her home in Tumaco, telling her family she would be right back. She never returned. On June 7, her body was found floating off the shore of the El Bajito neighborhood in Tumaco, her ankles bound by a cable. Her body had “signs of torture,” according to the police report, which describes multiple open wounds on her back, shoulders, right hand, head, neck, and breasts.[28]

Human Rights Watch received a credible report that on the night of June 5, El Bajito residents saw two men on a motorbike bring Pernia Cortes to the neighborhood, where more than a dozen other FARC members were waiting. The FARC members then moved her to an abandoned area nearby.[29] According to the report, at some point that night she momentarily escaped and screamed for help, but FARC members threatened to attack neighbors if they assisted her, and the group recaptured her. Residents heard her screaming for about an hour.[30] Several sources confirmed to Human Rights Watch that the FARC have a strong presence in El Bajito.[31]

More than two weeks after Pernia Cortes’s body was found, the prosecutor who had been assigned the investigation told Human Rights Watch that he was unaware he had been assigned the case and indeed, had not even heard of the killing.[32] (Two justice officials confirmed to Human Rights Watch that the prosecutor had been assigned the case three days after Pernia Cortes’s body was found.[33]) Nearly a month after the killing, no investigators – who conduct criminal investigations under the orders of prosecutors – had been assigned to work with the prosecutor on the case.[34]

Killings and torture of Germán Olinto Méndez Pabón, Edilmer Muñoz Ortiz, and two other men in a town in the Las Varas community council, Tumaco, 2013 and March 2014
Human Rights Watch documented four other killings in Tumaco in which there is also evidence that the FARC tied up and tortured the victims before murdering them. On March 18, 2014, the bodies of police Major Germán Olinto Méndez and Patrol Officer Edilmer Muñoz Ortiz were found in San Luis Robles, a rural town in the Las Varas community council, three days after the FARC had abducted them in the area. The judicial police crime scene report said that both were found with their hands bound, and multiple open wounds.[35]

A crime scene photograph depicts a small wooden stake driven into the back of the neck of one of the men. The medical examiner’s office concluded that the causes of Muñoz Ortiz’s and Méndez’s deaths were a slit throat, and blunt force trauma to the head, respectively. According to the medical examiner’s office, both bodies had evidence of “repeated blunt force traumas to different parts of the body capable of causing intense pain, as well as signs of defenselessness due to being tied up,” which were findings “consistent with the medical diagnosis of torture.”[36] On March 23, the FARC’s secretariat issued a statement admitting FARC members had detained the policemen and killed them.[37] Prosecutors have ordered the arrest of nine alleged FARC members for the killings.[38]

In another case, a witness told Human Rights Watch that in early 2013, he saw two Las Varas community members with their hands and feet bound near a park in San Luis Robles. The witness said the two men’s faces looked severely beaten, that some of their teeth were lying on the ground next to them, and that he subsequently saw the FARC drive out of town with the men in a car. The witness, and another person interviewed separately by Human Rights Watch, said the FARC later killed the two men.[39]

Disappearance of a young woman and two teenage girls, Tumaco village, 2013
Over a two-week span in 2013, two teenage girls and a young woman went missing from the same FARC-dominated village in Tumaco, according to a member of one of the victims’ families.[40] One of the victims, who left her home for a brief appointment, was last seen that day in the village with a known FARC member walking behind her. On separate occasions, FARC members told one of the families that the group had abducted and killed all three, but refused to hand over their bodies or disclose their whereabouts. A FARC member told one family member that their relative had been tied up by the group and raped. The family member told Human Rights Watch:
I always feel sick, really sick. I cannot sleep, thinking about whether it’s true that they raped her, that they tied her up, and that they killed other people in front of her…. Could it be true that they did all this, without me being able to do anything? I want them to return her to me, or to know the truth – what is it that they did to her?[41]
In 2014, a FARC member, believing one of the families had received a government reparations payment for the disappearance, tried to extort the money and threatened to kill more relatives.[42]

Killings of Sebastían Preciado and Angelo Cabezas, Chilví, Tumaco, May 14, 2014
On May 14, 2014, at around 4 p.m., the FARC carried out an attack with explosives against a group of policemen playing soccer in the village of Chilví, resulting in the deaths of Sebastían Preciado, 13, and Angelo Cabezas, 14, and wounding eight policemen. The two boys were sitting right next to the soccer field watching the police play immediately prior to the attack, according to several credible sources.[43] The same sources said that Cabezas had just come from finishing soccer practice, and Preciado had come to Chilví’s town center to pick up his little sister from school. Initial reports said the attack was with a grenade; however, justice authorities are verifying what kind of airborne explosive device was used.

The police issued a public statement the day after the attack blaming Cabezas and Preciado for launching airborne explosives on the FARC’s behalf,[44] but Human Rights Watch found strong reasons to believe the boys were bystanders, and not responsible for the FARC attack. Regardless of whether the boys set off the explosive device, there is overwhelming evidence that the FARC is responsible for killing them: either the FARC carried out the attack with the boys present or they used the boys for military purposes.

Evidence against the police version of the events includes that both boys were known in the small community to be well-behaved, active students who were friendly with the police, for whom they often ran errands.[45] Chilví residents who were near the attack told the Ombudsman’s Office that individuals driving on a motorbike had launched the explosive device.[46] Many Chilví residents publicly protested the police’s accusations. One of the two police who initially told justice authorities the boys were responsible for the explosion has since retracted his claim.[47]

In a public letter, the FARC’s top commander, alias Timochenko, said a FARC member – and not Cabezas and Preciado – threw a grenade at the police.[48] Timochenko said the FARC had verified that no civilians were in the area prior to the attack, but claimed that the boys coincidentally had run out of a house near the field and crossed in front of the police right at the time of the explosion. Timochenko’s claim that the boys suddenly ran out of a house contradicts several credible accounts that the boys had been sitting next to the field watching soccer when the attack occurred.

Evidence also strongly suggests that following the attack, Cabezas received grossly inadequate medical care as law enforcement authorities interrogated him in the San Andres de Tumaco Hospital. Preciado died at 4:48 p.m., immediately after arriving at the hospital, and Cabezas died at 10:15 p.m. Cabezas’ mother said she arrived with her son at the hospital at around 4:30 p.m., but that he did not receive any medical attention until 9 p.m., although she repeatedly pleaded for assistance.

According to medical records, Cabezas was bleeding from an ear, said his whole body was in pain, and had 27 open shrapnel wounds, as well as lacerations to his intestines and liver.[49] Instead of being treated, Cabezas’s mother said, he was accused and interrogated by law enforcement officials for more than four hours. Cabezas denied setting off any explosive device and said he saw a smoking object fly above his head at the time of the attack, his mother said. Hospital records confirm that at 9:10 p.m., Cabezas “entered into [cardiac] arrest at the moment the prosecutor was interrogating him.”[50]

The hospital denies that it failed to treat Cabezas opportunely but its account of the night has serious inconsistencies. Hospital records indicate that Cabezas arrived there at 6:42 p.m. – more than two hours after the explosion and at least two hours after Preciado arrived at the same hospital – and that he was not admitted to the emergency room and given treatment until 7:50 p.m. However, in a subsequent letter responding to the Tumaco Diocese’s public call for an investigation into possible negligence, the hospital said Cabezas actually arrived there at 4:45 p.m.[51] The arrival time stated in the letter coincides with the accounts of Cabezas’s mother and two other witnesses, who, like his mother, told Human Rights Watch that medical staff refused to treat Cabezas. The evidence therefore strongly suggests that Cabezas arrived at the hospital around 4:45 p.m., but either was not treated until 7:50 p.m., as hospital records said, or 9 p.m., as his mother said, before being declared dead at 10:15 p.m.

A justice official said the hospital’s possible negligence is not under investigation.[52]

Forced displacement of eight leaders and dozens of their family members from the Las Varas community council and killing of a Las Varas community leader, 2013 and May 11, 2014
On the morning of January 29, 2013, a regional FARC commander called the president and legal representative of the Las Varas community council government and told them they had been declared “military targets” of the guerrilla group.[53] The council’s legal representative then received a phone call alerting him that armed FARC members were looking for him at his home in Las Varas. After the president and legal representative received another phone call from the FARC commander threatening to kill them, the authorities evacuated them from Tumaco on January 30. Their families, as well as six other Las Varas community leaders and their families, fled Tumaco over the next several days. In total, the FARC threats displaced roughly 40 people.[54]

Abuses against the Las Varas leaders continued: on May 11, 2014, two people on a motorbike shot dead Marcelino Castillo, a community leader, in San Luis Robles. In separate interviews, community members and officials told Human Rights Watch they had received information pointing to the responsibility of the FARC, which has a powerful presence in Las Varas.[55]

Kidnapping of a man in Tumaco, 2014
In 2014, FARC members kidnapped a man in Tumaco and held him for ransom for nearly a week, said the victim and an official.[56] Juan (pseudonym) told Human Rights Watch that when driving in Tumaco one night, armed men forced him out of his car, blindfolded him, and took him on a boat for several hours until they reached a small riverside village, where they placed him in a house.[57] In the morning, Juan’s captors told him to call his family to have them contact the group to arrange a ransom payment. The next morning, his three captors, carrying rifles, machetes, and shovels, woke Juan up and told him they had received an order to bury him. Then they said they would give him a final opportunity to call his family about the payment, which he did. During his captivity, Juan said, several other armed men repeatedly visited his captors.

Juan believed his captors belonged to the FARC because he knew they dominated Tumaco’s rural areas and could hear them talk about their activities in other areas of Tumaco where the FARC is strong. After he was released in exchange for a ransom payment, Juan said, he was able to visually identify a FARC member as one of the men involved in his abduction.[58]

Extortion and death threats against Tumaco business owners, 2013 and 2014
The extortion demands on Jorge and Maria (pseudonyms), the owners of a small business in Tumaco, started on October 1, 2013, when they received a letter signed by the FARC threatening to throw a grenade at their business if they did not pay US$1,500.[59] About a week later, an armed man who identified himself as a FARC member went to their business, put a gun to Jorge’s head, demanded the payment, and took roughly $400 from the cash register.

Several days later, Jorge and Maria received a call from man who identified himself as a guerrilla member, demanded a $1,000 payment within two days, and threatened to kill their children if they did not pay. The business owners reported the extortion to the authorities and several days later Jorge received a call from a man who said he would cut out his tongue and decapitate him for having called the police.

The extortion continued through April, when two men who identified themselves as FARC members entered Jorge and Maria’s business, pointed a gun at their teenage daughter, demanded $1,500, stole roughly $550, and threatened to kill them. The daughter fled Tumaco. Authorities subsequently arrested a man as he collected an extortion payment from Jorge and Maria. The death threats and extortion demands have continued, however.[60]

Attempted military use and forced displacement of two teenage boys, Tumaco village, 2014
In early 2014, FARC members threatened two teenage boys, telling them not to say anything after they saw the group transporting weapons in their village in a Tumaco community council, one of the boys’ relatives said. Two days later, six FARC members entered the boys’ school in the village and told them to place a bomb in a location where the military was camped. The boys refused and subsequently fled the village out of fear for their lives.[61]

Disappearance of three teenage girls from Tumaco neighborhood, 2013
One night in early 2013, two sisters and their friend, ages 13, 14, and 15, left their homes to meet in their Tumaco neighborhood, and never returned.[62] A neighbor told the families that he had heard the girls crying and screaming that night from inside a house in the area.^[63] The neighbor told them he had heard the girls being beaten, and that they were removed from the house at around 4 a.m. Based on the neighbor’s account of the screaming, and other similar rape cases and rumors in the neighborhood, relatives think the girls were raped.

The girls’ families suspected that a paramilitary successor group was responsible for the disappearances. They said a successor group operated in the neighborhood at the time and had killed other female victims from the area. A relative of the two sisters said that roughly a week prior to their disappearance, a paramilitary successor group member told her threateningly to watch out for the girls “because they’re very pretty.”[64]

Killings of Daniel Quiñones Riascos, Alex Quiñones Pai, and Ricardo (pseudonym), Tumaco, 2013
On the night of December 10, 2013, the police set up checkpoints on the main roads out of Tumaco following a grenade attack in the city. Shortly after the attack, at roughly 10:30 p.m., a 24-year-old college student named Daniel Quiñones Riascos failed to stop at a police checkpoint on the Pindo Bridge in Tumaco, driving around it on his motorbike with his friend Alex Quiñones Pai on the back.[65] A report by a policeman at the scene said that the police then fired warning shots into a “cleared area” and shouted at Navy marines stationed closely down the road to stop the motorbike; and that the marines then fired on the two men, knocking them and the motorbike over. Several marines who were there claimed, however, that the police shot directly at the two men.[66]

Daniel Quiñones Riascos’s father said witnesses told him the two young men raised their arms and said not to shoot after passing the police checkpoint, and that both Navy and police personnel had shot at the two young men. Quiñones Riascos was shot in his right shoulder blade area and right forearm and Quiñones Pai was shot in both legs.[67] Quiñones Riascos was declared dead at 10:40 p.m. and Quiñones Pai died later that night.

The policeman’s report said that after the shooting, the marines had cleaned their weapons, reloaded them, and picked up and rearranged the bullet shells they had fired. The marines refused to provide judicial police with their weapons or information about on-duty personnel, according to the report, which alleges that a Navy lieutenant told police his superior had ordered them not to hand over the information. Marines later went to the police station to hand over 11 rifles, which looked “recently cleaned and washed with oil,” according to the report.[68]

As of June, the investigation into the incident was in the preliminary stage, with no suspects charged. The prosecutor handling the case said he may send it to the military justice system.[69]

Several months prior to those killings, Navy personnel fatally shot another unarmed young man near the Pindo Bridge, the man’s mother said. One morning in mid-2013, Ricardo (pseudonym), 18, arrived at his home and told his mother that marines had just searched him and his friends as they crossed the bridge, and hit his face with the handle of a rifle. Shortly afterward, as Ricardo and his mother walked near the bridge, a marine told him not to come close “because he would blow him away.” The marines tried to grab Ricardo, and then at least one of them fired at him, said his mother, who said she was standing next to her son at the time. She said Ricardo fell to the ground with bullet wounds in both legs and died in the hospital that night.[70]

 

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[1] Institute of Legal Medicine and Forensic Sciences (INML), “Official data about violence in Colombia,” http://www.medicinalegal.gov.co/forensis (accessed July 21, 2014); United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, “UNODC Homicide Statistics 2013,” http://www.unodc.org/gsh/en/data.html (accessed July 17, 2014).

[2] Human Rights Watch interviews with officials from the Attorney General’s Office, Tumaco mayor’s office, and police intelligence, Tumaco, May and June 2014.

[3] Victims Unit, “Victims by type of abuse,” Cut-off date July 1, 2014, http://rni.unidadvictimas.gov.co/?q=v-reportes (accessed July 21, 2014).

[4] The Victims Unit can only register killings of civilians and cases of security force members killed outside of combat; it is prohibited from registering killings of members of irregular armed groups. According to data compiled by the Tumaco’s mayor’s office, only 29 of the more than 460 total homicides in Tumaco in 2012 and 2013 were of security force members. Available data does not indicate how many of these 29 homicides were committed outside of combat and/or registered by the Victims Unit. Email from Tumaco mayor’s office official to Human Rights Watch, April 25, 2014; Law 1448 of 2011, article 3.

[5] Email from Victims Unit official to Human Rights Watch, July 8, 2014. Of the 366 killings, the unit registered 907 spouses, partners, and other relatives of victims in cases attributed to the guerrillas, 39 in cases attributed to paramilitary successor groups, 5 in cases attributed to the security forces, and 353 in cases attributed to unidentified perpetrators.

[6] The Victims Unit has repeatedly denied requests for reparations made by victims of killings and other abuses by paramilitary successor groups on grounds that their crimes are not related to the armed conflict.

[7] Victims Unit, “Victims by type of abuse,” Cut-off date July 1, 2014, http://rni.unidadvictimas.gov.co/?q=v-reportes (accessed July 21, 2014).

[8] Email from Victims Unit official to Human Rights Watch, July 8, 2014. Of those 30 disappearances, the Victims Unit registered 92 spouses, partners, and other relatives of victims in disappearance cases attributed to guerrillas, and 36 in cases attributed to unidentified perpetrators. (See endnote 6 on the lack of registration of cases by paramilitary successor groups.)

[9] Emails from INML official to Human Rights Watch, July 7 and 10, 2014; Ombudsman’s Office of Colombia, Early Warning System, “Follow-up Note No. 007-14,” April 14, 2014, p. 14.

[10] Human Rights Watch interviews with a Tumaco resident and an official, 2014.

[11] Email from Victims Unit official to Human Rights Watch, July 8, 2014. (See endnote 6 on the lack of registration of cases by paramilitary successor groups.)

[12] The Colombian government is a party to the Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Antipersonnel Mines and on their Destruction. Colombia signed the Convention on December 3, 1997, ratified it on September 6, 2000, and it entered into force on March 1, 2001.

[13] Colombian Presidency’s Program for Integrated Action against Anti-Personnel Landmines, “Victims of Anti-Personnel Landmines,” http://www.accioncontraminas.gov.co/Paginas/victimas.aspx (accessed July 21, 2014).

[14] UN Office on Drugs and Crime and the Government of Colombia, “Monitoring of Coca Crops 2013,” June 2014, www.unodc.org/documents/crop-monitoring/Colombia/Colombia_Monitoreo_de_Cultivos_de_Coca_2013_ web.pdf (accessed July 14, 2014), p. 20.

[15] Victims Unit, “Displacement – People,” http://rni.unidadvictimas.gov.co/?q=v-reportes (accessed July 14, 2014).

[16] Email from Attorney General’s Office official to Human Rights Watch, July 15, 2014.

[17] Human Rights Watch requested data about cases of disappearances and forced displacement exclusively in Tumaco but the Attorney General’s Office provided data about local prosecutors’ investigations into such cases in Tumaco and several surrounding municipalities. Email from Attorney General’s Office official to Human Rights Watch, July 15, 2014.

[18] Email from Attorney General’s Office official to Human Rights Watch, July 11, 2014.

[19] Email from Attorney General’s Office official to Human Rights Watch, July 15, 2014.

[20] Email from Attorney General’s Office official to Human Rights Watch, July 3, 2014.

[21] The prosecutors investigate crimes in Tumaco and several surrounding municipalities. Human Rights Watch interview with prosecutors, Tumaco, May 2014.

[22] Human Rights Watch interview with justice official, Tumaco, June 2014.

[23] Report from Technical Investigation Body (CTI) office in Pasto to prosecutors in Pasto, July 22, 2014, on file at Human Rights Watch; Human Rights Watch telephone interview with justice official, July 22, 2014.

[24] Human Rights Watch interview with Tumaco resident, 2014.

[25] The Multidimensional Poverty Index is employed by the UN Development Programme and measures poverty by identifying multiple deprivations at the individual level in health, education, and standard of living.

[26] “Agreement No. 019 by which some adjustments are made to the Tumaco Mayor’s Office’s Development Plan for 2012-2015,” Tumaco Municipal Council, November 13, 2013, http://tumaco-narino.gov.co/apc-aa-files/61616166346535623838616166343139/acuerdo-n-019.pdf (accessed July 17, 2014).

[27] “Agreement No. 005 by which Tumaco’s municipal indigenous and Afro food and nutrition plan is adopted for 2012-2022,” Tumaco Municipal Council, March 13, 2013, http://www.tumaco-narino.gov.co/apc-aa-files/31396130663234376265616637336262/acuerdo-no.-005.pdf (accessed July 22, 2014); National estimate from the Encuesta Nacional de Calidad de Vida - ENCV 2011, as reported by the WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme (JMP) for Water Supply and Sanitation, http://www.wssinfo.org/documents/?tx_displaycontroller[type]= country_files (accessed July 17, 2014).

[28] Judicial police report, on file at Human Rights Watch.

[29] Human Rights Watch interview with Tumaco resident, 2014.

[30] Ibid.

[31] Human Rights Watch interviews with Tumaco residents, 2014.

[32] Human Rights Watch interview with prosecutor, Tumaco, June 24, 2014.

[33] Human Rights Watch interviews with justice officials, Tumaco, June 2014.

[34] Human Rights Watch telephone interview with justice official, July 3, 2014.

[35] SIJIN, “Technical Inspection of a Cadaver,” Report No. 528356000538201400745, March 18, 2014, on file at Human Rights Watch.

[36] INML, “Press Release No. 3,” March 19, 2014, http://www.medicinalegal.gov.co/oficina-de-prensa (accessed July 14, 2014).

[37] “The FARC recognized the killing of police in Tumaco,” El Espectador, March 22, 2014, http://www.elespectador. com/noticias/nacional/farc-reconocieron-asesinato-de-policias-tumaco-articulo-482434 (accessed July 14, 2014).

[38] Human Rights Watch interview with justice official, 2014.

[39] Human Rights Watch interviews with Tumaco residents, 2014.

[40] Human Rights Watch interview with Tumaco resident, 2014.

[41] Ibid.

[42] Ibid.

[43] Human Rights Watch interview with Tumaco residents, 2014; Ombudsman’s Office, “Report on the grenade attack against police in the village of Chilví in Tumaco in which two children died,” May 15, 2014; “The case of the child-bombs in Tumaco was false?” Semana, May 25, 2014, http://www.semana.com/nacion/articulo/falsos-ninos-bomba/389155-3 (accessed July 14, 2014).

[44] National Police, “In the town of Chilvi in the municipality of Tumaco, eight police were wounded when an explosive device was thrown,” May 15, 2014.

[45] Human Rights Watch interview with Tumaco residents, 2014; Diocese of Tumaco press release, May 20, 2014; “The case of the child-bombs in Tumaco was false?” Semana, May 25, 2014.

[46] Ombudsman’s Office, “Report on the grenade attack against police in the village of Chilví in Tumaco in which two children died,” May 15, 2014.

[47] Human Rights Watch interviews with justice officials, Tumaco, June 2014.

[48] “FARC announce unilateral ceasefire for the second round,” Semana, June 7, 2014, http://www.semana.com/ nacion/articulo/farc-anuncian-nuevo-cese-el-fuego-por-segunda-vuelta-electoral/390926-3 (accessed July 14, 2014).

[49] Hospital San Andres de Tumaco E.S.E records for Angelo Cabezas, May 14, 2014, on file at Human Rights Watch; INML, “Expert Autopsy Report,” May 15, 2014, on file at Human Rights Watch.

[50] Ibid.

[51] Letter from Hospital San Andres de Tumaco to the Dioceses of Tumaco, May 30, 2014, on file at Human Rights Watch.

[52] Human Rights Watch interview with justice official, Tumaco, June 2014.

[53] Human Rights Watch interview with Tumaco resident, 2014.

[54] Victims Unit, “Resolution by which it is decided whether or not to register in the Victims Registry, by virtue of article 156 of Law 1448 of 2011 and article 37 of Decree 4800 of 2011,” March 6, 2013, on file at Human Rights Watch.

[55] Human Rights Watch is withholding the details of the information out of concerns for the safety of the sources of the information. Human Rights Watch interviews with Tumaco residents and officials, 2014.

[56] Human Rights Watch interview with Tumaco resident, 2014; Human Rights Watch interview with official, 2014.

[57] Human Rights Watch interview with Tumaco resident, 2014.

[58] Ibid.

[59] Human Rights Watch interview with Tumaco residents, 2014; Human Rights Watch interview with justice official, 2014.

[60] Human Rights Watch interview with Tumaco residents, 2014.

[61] Human Rights Watch interview with Tumaco resident, 2014.

[62] Criminal complaint filed with the Attorney General’s Office, date withheld, on file at Human Rights Watch; Human Rights Watch interviews with Tumaco residents, 2014.

[63] Human Rights Watch interviews with Tumaco residents, 2014.

[64] Ibid.

[65] Human Rights Watch interview with Tumaco resident, June 2014; Report sent from police witness to Tumaco police commander, December 11, 2013, on file with Human Rights Watch.

[66] Reports sent from marine witnesses to Navy commanders in Tumaco, December 11, 2013, on file at Human Rights Watch; report sent from police witness to Tumaco police commander, December 11, 2013, on file at Human Rights Watch.

[67] INML, “Expert Autopsy Report No. 2013010152835000299,” December 12, 2013, on file at Human Rights Watch; Centro Divino Niño Hospital records for Alex Quiñones Pai, on file at Human Rights Watch.

[68] Report sent from police witness to Tumaco police commander, December 11, 2013, on file at Human Rights Watch.

[69] Human Rights Watch interview with prosecutor, Tumaco, June 2014.

[70] Human Rights Watch interview with Tumaco resident, 2014.

Reprinted with permission from Human Rights Watch.