Death Squads

this refers mostly to the dirty wars in central and so america

see indig activ suppress

see also human rights violations

wiki has mult flags

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https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-58508001

no lnx pix

Record number of environmental activists murdered

By Claire Marshall

BBC Environment & Rural Affairs Correspondent

Published 13 September

image captionSouth African environmental activist Fikile Ntshangase was shot dead in her own home

A record number of activists working to protect the environment and land rights were murdered last year, according to a report by a campaign group.

227 people were killed around the world in 2020, the highest number recorded for a second consecutive year, the report from Global Witness said.

Almost a third of the murders were reportedly linked to resource exploitation - logging, mining, large-scale agribusiness, hydroelectric dams and other infrastructure.

The report called the victims "environmental defenders" killed for protecting natural resources that need to be preserved, including forests, water supplies and oceans.

Since the Paris Agreement on climate change was signed in 2015, the organisation says on average four activists have been killed each week.

It said this "shocking figure" was likely to be an underestimate because of growing restrictions on journalists and other civic freedoms.

Logging was the industry linked to the most murders with 23 cases - with attacks in Brazil, Nicaragua, Peru and the Philippines.

Indigenous peoples, most often on the frontline of climate change, accounted for a further one third of cases. Colombia had the highest recorded attacks, with 65 people killed last year.

'Unbearably heavy burden'

A senior campaigner for Global Witness, Chris Madden, called on governments to "get serious about protecting defenders." He said companies must start "putting people and planet before profit' or he warned that "both climate breakdown and the killings" would continue.

"This dataset is another stark reminder that fighting the climate crisis carries an unbearably heavy burden for some, who risk their lives to save the forests, rivers and biospheres that are essential to counteract unsustainable global warming. This must stop''.

The organisation called on governments to formally recognise the human right to a safe, healthy and sustainable environment, and ensure commitments made at November's UN climate change conference, COP26, integrate human rights protections.

In response, COP26 president Alok Sharma told the BBC he had "prioritised meeting people on the front line of climate change," to ensure the voices of all are heard."

'Shot dead in her living room'

Those murdered included South African Fikile Ntshangase, 65, who was involved in a legal dispute over the extension of an opencast mine operated by Tendele Coal near Somkhele in KwaZulu-Natal province. She was shot dead in her own living room.

Her daughter, Malungelo Xhakaza, 31, said her "mother's struggle lives on." She said: "To this day no arrests have been made in the investigation into my mother's murder. There has been no accountability. It seems to me that someone wants this mine expansion and the extraction to go ahead, no matter the cost."

Petmin Limited, which owns the Somkhele mine through its subsidiary Tendele Coal Mining, told Global Witness that it "acknowledges community tensions may have been a factor in Fikile's death." The company said it "strongly condemns any form of violence or intimidation" and has offered full co-operation with the police.

Óscar Eyraud Adams

image captionÓscar Eyraud was killed in his home in Mexico in 2020

The killings also included Óscar Eyraud Adams, who was murdered in Mexico in September 2020. He was working to help the indigenous Kumiai community in Baja California have better access to water.

Global Witness said activists still under threat included communities in Guapinol in Honduras, where dozens of people have been protesting against an iron oxide mining concession that was granted by the central government in a protected area. Campaigners believe the Guapinol river, a vital water source, is threatened. The organisation says "many community members remain incarcerated."

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chiquita Brands International Inc. bananas are arranged at Union Street Produce Co. in San Francisco, California.

Banana giant Chiquita Brands will need to pay $38.3 million to family members of those killed during Colombia’s bloody Civil War after the company was found liable for funding a right-wing paramilitary group.

The verdict was handed down on Monday by a jury in West Palm Beach, Florida. The landmark ruling is the first time a major U.S. company has been found guilty of human rights abuses in another country.

“The verdict sends a powerful message to corporations everywhere: profiting from human rights abuses will not go unpunished. These families, victimized by armed groups and corporations, asserted their power and prevailed in the judicial process,” said Marco Simons, general counsel at EarthRights International, a nonprofit representing victims in the case, in a statement.

The trial included testimony from families of the nine victims, including expert reports, and key documentary evidence.

Chiquita, which is headquartered in Florida, said in statement following the verdict that “the situation in Colombia was tragic for so many,” adding, “however, it does not change our belief that there is no legal basis for these claims.”

According to court documents, Chiquita agreed to pay a $25 million fine to the the U.S. government in 2007 after it admitted that it had paid about $1.7 million between 1997 and 2004 to the United Self-Defense Forces of Columbia (AUC). The AUC was labeled a terrorist organization by the U.S. in 2001.

Chiquita has faced similar suits filed in U.S. courts from families of other victims that were killed by the paramilitary group, which the company also paid.

The court’s latest verdict follows a weeks-long trial, including a jury selection period that began in April, EarthRights said, adding that its case was originally filed in July 2007 and was later combined with several other cases.

“It’s a triumph of a process that has been going on for almost 17 years, for all of us who have suffered so much during these years,” one of the victims said in EarthRights’ press release. “We’re not in this process because we want to be; it was Chiquita, with its actions, that dragged us into it. We have a responsibility to our families, and we must fight for them.”

Chiquita jury verdict in Colombia paramilitary killings case awards millions : NPR

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gov whitmer mich now blm WOMEN also Ilhan

https://www.alternet.org/2020/11/marines/

Three Marine Corps veterans and their porn-star neo-Nazi guru, arrested last month on charges that they engaged in an interstate gun-running scheme, comprised a band of violent fascists who had recently moved to Idaho with the intent of making it a base of operations for their plans to engage in acts of domestic terrorism, federal prosecutors revealed this week.

According to the grand-jury indictment filed this week by prosecutors in North Carolina, the men's schemes went well beyond those with which they have been charged—namely, buying semiautomatic rifles, altering them into automatics, then shipping them from Idaho to North Carolina. The foursome not only engaged in paramilitary training in the Idaho desert, they surveilled two separate Black Lives Matters marches in Boise this summer and discussed killing participants. They also plotted to assassinate BLM founder Alicia Garza.

Three of the four men—Justin Hermanson, 21, who used the code name "Sandman"; Liam Collins, 21, aka "Disciple"; and Jordan Duncan, 25, aka "Soldier"—had met while serving in the U.S. Marine Corps. The fourth—Paul Kryscuk, 35, whose nom de plume was "Deacon"—was a porn star (under the stage name "Pauly Harker") who had lived most of his life on Long Island, New York. He met the other men online in the now-defunct neo-Nazi message board Iron March, and was the group's general leader, though all they identified as members of the terrorist organization Atomwaffen Division....

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militia wear helo t-shirt, RWDS, have assault weapons

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/in-trumps-america-there-is-before-due-process/

IMI

The federal government's killing of Michael Reinoehl exactly two months before the November 3 presidential race ought to have been one of the most high-profile election issues being discussed in America. Instead, it has been almost forgotten save for some media outlets starting to question the official narrative of his death. The little-known self-proclaimed "antifa" activist was killed by federal agents on September 3. Officers claimed that he had fired shots at them before being gunned down. But a week after his killing, the Washington Post found that "the wanted man wasn't obviously armed."

The Thurston County sheriff in Lacey, Washington, where the suspect was killed, released a public statement saying his investigation team "can confirm… that Mr. Reinoehl pointed the handgun that he had in his possession at the officers at the time of the shooting." The U.S. Marshals Service whose forces were the ones that shot Reinoehl released a similar statement claiming that the fugitive task force that had been sent to his location "attempted to peacefully arrest him," but, after being shot at, "Task force members responded to the threat and struck the suspect who was pronounced dead at the scene."

News outlets took the official statements at their word and dutifully reported the incident as one where a suspected killer opened fire on officers and was fatally shot in the course of his arrest. In other words, there was "nothing to see here." But according to a New York Times investigation six weeks after his death, it remains unclear "whether law enforcement officers made any serious attempt to arrest Mr. Reinoehl before killing him."

According to nearly two dozen witnesses that the New York Times spoke to, "all but one said they did not hear officers identify themselves or give any commands before opening fire." Even though Reinoehl was armed at the time of his death, his handgun was found in his pocket and an AR-style rifle in a bag in his car, suggesting he did not threaten the officers trying to arrest him as official accounts had initially claimed.

Reinoehl was wanted in connection to the fatal shooting of a Trump-supporting right-wing activist named Aaron J. Danielson during Black Lives Matter protests in Portland, Oregon. President Donald Trump ranted on Twitter on the day he was killed, "Why aren't the Portland Police ARRESTING the cold blooded killer" and adding,"Everybody knows who this thug is." Later he hailed the fatal shooting triumphantly, saying in a Fox News interview:

"We sent in the U.S. Marshals for the killer, the man who killed the young man on the street.… Two and a half days went by, and I put out [on Twitter], 'When are you going to go get him?' And the U.S. Marshals went in to get him, and theyended in a gunfight. This guy was a violent criminal, and the U.S. Marshals killed him. And I'll tell you something—that's the way it has to be. There has to beretribution when you have crime like this."

In referring to Reinoehl as a "cold blooded killer" and "violent criminal" even though at the time of his death he was a suspect, Trump made clear that in his America, "law and order" means you are guilty before being proven so and can be targeted for extrajudicial assassination if those in power decide you deserve it. Such shocking words coming from any other head of state in the world would trigger instant condemnations from the U.S. State Department. Speaking to his supporters, Trumpboasted of the "great job" that U.S. Marshals did in Portland, adding meaningfully, "you know what I mean."

Attorney General William Barr, who appears to have no understanding of how the nation's system of criminal justice is supposed to work, released a statement praising the federal troops' actions and echoing Trump's words in more official-sounding language. Barr called Reinoehl, "a dangerous fugitive, admitted Antifa member, and suspected murderer," and said before any investigation into the killing was complete that "[w]hen Reinoehl attempted to escape arrest and produced a firearm, he was shot and killed by law enforcement officers." In doing so, Barr too justified this extrajudicial assassination as Trump did and went as far as calling the whole incident, "a significant accomplishment in the ongoing effort to restore law and order to Portlandand other cities." He applauded "the fugitive task force team that located Reinoehl and prevented him from escaping justice."

To Barr, the top law enforcement official in the nation, "justice" meant death, rather than arrest followed by charges and a fair trial. To Barr and Trump, the constant drumbeat of "law and order" is essentially a promise to fatally punish those perceived as enemies of the government.

In addition to the Washington Post and the New York Times, several other media outlets have corroborated that Reinoehl's killing appeared unjustified. Rolling Stone characterizes one eyewitness's account of the scene as "a violent ambush" that "resembled an execution." Oregon Public Broadcasting in collaboration with ProPublica spoke to witnesses who said that the officers shot him without warning and "looked less like law enforcement officers than members of a right-wing militia."

In a VICE News interview released just after his death, Reinoehl can be seen claiming that he acted in self-defense in Portland—just as an attorney for Kyle Rittenhouse, the Trump-supporting armed suspect in the Kenosha, Wisconsin, killing of two Black Lives Matter activists, said. With Reinoehl dead at the hands of U.S. Marshals, we will never know the truth.

Instead, Reinoehl now serves as the perfect symbol of the shadowy enemy that Trump rails against. A participant in Black Lives Matter protests, Reinoehl claimed he was "100% ANTIFA all the way." The president's promise to designate "ANTIFA" (which is an ideology, not an organization) as "a Terrorist Organization" has fed into dangerous notions designed to create panic among his base. It has raised the specter of "violent mobs" terrorizing communities that only swift government action of the sort aimed at Reinoehl can quell.

But who are the "violent mobs" really? In Trump's world, armed self-defense is acceptable only for white supremacists who support him, not for the left-wing activists they routinely threaten and hurt. Since protests began earlier this year, according to NPR, "Right-wing extremists are turning cars into weapons, with reports of at least 50 vehicle-ramming incidents" at protests against police brutality. Conservative news outlets including Fox News and the Daily Caller have encouraged such attacks. Even the Department of Homeland Security's latest threat assessment identifies, "racially and ethnically motivated violent extremists—specifically white supremacist extremists," as "the most persistent and lethal threat in the Homeland" among what the agency designates as "Domestic Violent Extremists" or DVEs.

As if to underscore the threat, more than a dozen white men were just arrested (without being harmed) in connection with a kidnapping plot aimed at Michigan's Governor Gretchen Whitmer. The governor, who is among several women who have faced Trump's online ire, said, "I do believe that there are still serious threats that groups like this group, these domestic terrorists, are finding comfort and support in the rhetoric coming out of Republican leadership in the White House to our state house."

In Trump's America, white nationalist armed vigilante men reign supreme while those of us speaking out against fascism are symbolized by Reinoehl—and like him will be not be considered innocent until proven guilty. We will never know whether or not Reinoehl was guilty of murdering Danielson, as he was not given a chance to stand trial. In Trump's America, there will be no law, only order. To Trump, "[t]here has to be retribution," rather than due process. Among the many issues at stake in the November 3 election, this ought to be a central concern.

Sonali Kolhatkar is the founder, host and executive producer of "Rising Up With Sonali," a television and radio show that airs on Free Speech TV and Pacifica stations.

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https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/upside-genocide/

no lnx

under the direction of Gen. Efraín Ríos Montt, Guatemala’s then-dictator, the country’s military forces engaged in crimes against humanity—including genocide—against the indigenous peoplein the Ixil region of the department of Quiché, according to the findings of a three-judge panel. (A constitutional court later vacated the sentence on technical grounds but did not challenge the findings [see Kate Doyle, “Guatemala’s Genocide on Trial,” June 10/17].) Largely ignored during the trial, as a thoughtful piece by The New York Times’s Elisabeth Malkin observed, was the role of top Reagan administration officials—including Ronald Reagan himself—in helping to empower and then cover up the Guatemalan military’s crimes.

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When Ríos Montt executed his coup in March 1982, US Ambassador Frederic Chapin—perhaps naïvely, perhaps cynically—welcomed the event with the words “The Guatemalan government has come out of the darkness and into the light.” Even after the killings increased in intensity, this remained the official US line. Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights Elliott Abrams credited Ríos Montt with having “brought considerable progress” on human rights issues and insisted that “the amount of killing of innocent civilians is being reduced step by step.” As if living in an Orwell novel, Abrams demanded that Congress provide the regime with advanced arms because its alleged “progress need[ed] to be rewarded and encouraged.”

This attitude remained consistent up the chain of command. Secretary of State George Shultz believed that the Ríos Montt regime “help[ed] prevent an extremist takeover.” Most enthusiastic of all, perhaps, was President Reagan: he judged Ríos Montt to be “totally dedicated to democracy” and “a man of great personal integrity and commitment.” Were they simply ignorant of the abuses? If they were, it may have been due to willful ignorance. Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs Thomas Enders wrote to Amnesty International disputing its reporting on the killings in Guatemala and insisted that the government was making “significant progress” on human rights while the genocide was taking place.What’s more, declassified documents reveal that just ten days before Reagan sang the dictator’s praises upon meeting him, the State Department had received reports of a “well-founded allegation of a large-scale killing of Indian men, women and children in a remote area by the [Guatemalan] army.”

Genocide or no, Guatemala was considered an important ally in the Reagan administration’s anticommunist crusade in Central America, which was focused on, but not limited to, Nicaragua and El Salvador. These officials were hoping to convince Congress to lift the arms embargo against Guatemala that had been put in place under the Carter presidency.Reagan wanted to equip the new regime with advanced helicopter parts to improve its ability to strafe and kill its opponents. Congress never agreed to this, but it did grant additional economic aid, while the Guatemalan military got its advanced weaponry from Israel and Taiwan. Moreover, as Allan Nairn reported in The Progressive in 1986, though the helicopter deal did not go through, “in late 1982, [the Reagan administration] quietly approved a pair of transactions worth $40 million to supply the Guatemalan air force with two transport jets and eight T-37 trainers.”

To be fair to the genocidal dictator, as Walter LaFeber notes in his history of US policy in the region, Inevitable Revolutions, what came after his regime was hardly an improvement. Following a 1983 coup in which Ríos Montt was deposed—and which the US may have encouraged—the military continued its genocidal rampage. As LaFeber writes, “In one village, the army herded the entire population into the courthouse, raped the women, beheaded the men, and took the children outside to smash them to death against rocks.”

In 1999, a UN investigative body known as the Historical Clarification Commission reported that Guatemala’s military and paramilitary forces were responsible for 93 percent of the 42,275 cases of people who, in the words of human rights activist Aryeh Neier, were “murdered, disappeared, raped, or tortured”—and that number covered little more than 20 percent of the estimated victims. President Clinton traveled there and apologized for the US role in these crimes. But what I find interesting is how little the act of helping to engender—and then justify—the genocide has mattered to the reputations of the former US officials who helped it along.

Thomas Enders was rewarded with an ambassadorship to Spain. Elliott Abrams was raked over the coals a bit during Iran-Contra for lying to Congress, but not for his role in helping to ensure that the Guatemalan military’s mass murder continued unimpeded. Following a high-level Middle East policy job in the second Bush administration, Abrams was welcomed by the Council on Foreign Relations and frequently gives paid speeches to synagogues and Jewish groups. George Shultz, meanwhile, is as respected a former statesman as anyone alive, and Ronald Reagan, of course, has been turned into an American icon.

Franklin Roosevelt’s reputation has suffered grievously for his relative inaction during the Nazi Holocaust. Henry Kissinger is considered a “war criminal” even in some polite company for his tangential role in the Cambodian genocide of the 1970s (as well as his role in the 1973 Chilean coup). And yet, for some reason, those who encouraged and apologized for the genocidal rampages of the Guatemalan regime have gotten off scot-free. This is itself a kind of crime. How about the next time that, say, Elliott Abrams speaks at a local synagogue, worshipers inquire as to which genocidal murders he condemns and which he not only supports, but actually helps to make possible?

Frank Smyth wrote about the Ríos Montt trial earlier this year, and asked if other Guatemalan military officers would ever face justice for their role in that country's genocide.

Eric Alterman Longtime Nation media columnist Eric Alterman is a CUNY distinguished professor of English at Brooklyn College and the author of 11 books.

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https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/01/24/what-the-right-wing-in-latin-america-means-by-democracy-is-violence/

ctrpunch no lnx

jaNUARY 24, 2020

What the Right Wing in Latin America Means by Democracy Is Violence

by VIJAY PRASHAD

It was a curious exchange. Frustrated by the attacks on his party—the Movement for Socialism (MAS)—former president of Bolivia Evo Morales made an audio recording in which he called upon his supporters to form militias. Maximilian Heath of Reuters went to Argentina to speak with Morales about this leaked recording; Morales said, “In Bolivia, if the armed forces are shooting the people, killing the people, the people have the right to organize their security.”

Morales’ anxiousness is rooted in fact. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights—a body of the pro-U.S. Organization of American States—reported in December 2019 that there have been a series of massacres conducted by the armed forces of the current interim government in Bolivia. The use of the word “massacre” in this report is significant; these were not clashes or conflicts, but the targeted murder of civilians who supported MAS and Morales.

The interim president of Bolivia, Jeanine Áñez Chávez, has made inflammatory statements about the indigenous support base of MAS and Morales. She has frequently spoken of them with derision, even saying that she dreams of a Bolivia without “satanic indigenous rites” and that “the city is not for the Indians.” Áñez signed Supreme Decree no. 4078 that exempted the military from any criminal responsibility for its use of force; she wants to ban MAS, and her interior minister has filed a warrant for the arrest of Morales. This is a rapid and disturbing attack on the political fabric of Bolivia.

Apology

Morales’ statement about militias came merely as a way to say that he worried about the repression and violence occasioned by the interim government and the military, now immune from prosecution. U.S. President Donald Trump’s main envoy to Latin America—Mauricio Claver-Carone (who organized the bankrupting $57 billion loan to Argentina when he was the U.S. director at the International Monetary Fund)—went to Bolivia and attacked Morales. Morales, Claver-Carone said, is fomenting insurrection from Argentina. This is a bizarre statement.

Morales was re-elected in 2014. There was not a whiff of impropriety in that election. He had a mandate to remain in office until January 2020. Even if there was a problem in the 2019 election, he should have remained in office until this month. But he was removed by a U.S.-backed military coup. That coup is not the insurrection that worries Claver-Carone. What worries him is that Morales is concerned about his supporters who are being intimidated and killed. It was not the coup, but Morales’ statement of anguish that became the scandal. Morales then apologized for his statement.

Elections

Bolivia will face an election on May 3. The Movement for Socialism Party nominated Luis Arce Catacora, Bolivia’s former minister for the economy, as its presidential candidate, and David Choquehuanca, Bolivia’s former foreign minister, as its vice-presidential candidate. MAS has been deeply bruised. More than 100 government officials from the MAS party are either in detention or face criminal charges, while a handful are in the Mexican embassy in La Paz (they have been denied safe passage to the airport).

The anti-coup uprising in Chapare province led the interior minister Arturo Murillo to make a statement that he would perhaps disenfranchise the entire province if the rebellion continues (the rebels burned down a hotel that he owns). Supporters of MAS and its party workers are afraid to leave their homes, let alone campaign in the election. Morales’ statement came as a mirror of their own anxiousness.

No one imagines that there is going to be a “fair election.” The Trump administration has said it will send a USAID team to Bolivia to monitor the situation, and then to resume U.S. aid to the country; the U.S. will also monitor the elections. Between the U.S. monitors and Supreme Decree no. 4078, the conditions for a fair election simply do not apply.

And not many outside the region seem to have any problem with this attack against democracy.

‘Staggering Number’

On January 14, the UN’s human rights body released a brief statement on the killings of human rights activists in Colombia. The UN said that a “staggering number of human rights defenders” were killed last year in Colombia; by the UN’s count, between 107 and 120 activists were murdered. In 2018, 115 human rights defenders were killed, and in the first two weeks of January of this year, 10 human rights defenders have already been murdered. Most of them are from left-wing people’s organizations.

The UN numbers are conservative. For 2018, the Center for Research and Popular Education Peace Program, based in Colombia, documented 1,151 death threats, 648 assassinations, and 304 cases of physical injuries. But the UN’s trendline is correct. Of the murders last year, 98 percent took place in very poor rural areas. The killers, the UN suggests, are “criminal groups and armed groups linked to illicit economies in areas vacated by the FARC-EP.” In other words, right-wing paramilitary groups and their affiliated drug gangs have taken advantage of the peace treaty signed by the Left to terrorize the countryside.

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In the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research dossier on Colombia (December 2019), the argument is made that the Colombian oligarchy does not want to move toward peace because this would shift the needle of Colombian politics toward the people’s movements and the Left. The continuation of the war—now as assassination and intimidation—favors the oligarchy. They prefer this violence to democratic politics.

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These targeted murders and this targeted intimidation is only one part of the problem in Latin America. The other is that this region—with its outrageous social inequality—experiences violence at extreme levels. While Latin America is home to only 8 percent of the world’s population, 33 percent of all homicides occur in the region. This includes high violence against young men, and it includes the highest rates of femicide in the world. None of the right-wing governments are interested in addressing this fundamental problem for the hemisphere.

What the government of Iván Duque is doing in Colombia is what the interim government of Jeanine Áñez is doing in Bolivia—both are using extreme state violence against trade unionists and peasant organizers, against socialist leaders and indigenous leaders. This extreme violence undermines the possibility of democracy and allows the oligarchy to be re-elected in polling booths where the Left not dare enter.

Héroes del Ñancahuazú

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https://www.democracynow.org/2019/7/29/colombia_protests_against_social_leader_assassinations

Tens of thousands of demonstrators took to the streets on Friday in more than 50 cities and towns across Colombia to protest a surge of lethal attacks on indigenous, Afro-Colombian and environmental leaders in recent years. Solidarity marches were held in dozens of cities around the world, from Mexico City to Athens. In 2016, the Colombian government and FARC rebels signed a historic peace accord to move the country forward after a half-century of armed conflict.But since then, nearly 500 human rights activists, many from the Afro-Colombian community, have been killed, targeted for their work combating illegal mining, drug trafficking, and land restitution and environmental causes.Friday’s protests came after a heartbreaking video went viral showing the child of renowned community activist, María del Pilar Hurtado, screaming and crying after witnessing a gunman shoot down his mother. We speak with Luis Gilberto Murillo, former governor of the Colombian department of Chocó and former Colombian minister of environment and sustainable development.

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https://twitter.com/hashtag/humanrights?src=hash

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4x/week kia

https://www.unenvironment.org/news-and-stories/press-release/photo-series-highlights-plight-environmental-rights-defenders

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https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/07/2017-deadliest-year-environmental-activism-report-180722174539780.html

2017 was deadliest year for environmental activism: report

At least 207 activists were killed, with Brazil, the Philippines and Colombia named as the most dangerous countries.

arly four land and environmental activists were killed each week in 2017, making it the deadliest year on record, according to a new report by Global Witness.

In the report, published on Tuesday, the UK-based watchdog said 207 people lost their lives last year in their fight against companies and governments that seize land and harm the environment.

Latin America was once again the most dangerous region for environmental activism, accounting for nearly 60 percent of the total killings.

Brazil remained the country with most registered deaths, the report said.

At least 57 people were killed in 2017, marking the most deaths of land and environmental defenders ever registered in one year in any country.

READ MORE

Colombia's social leaders 'very scared' amid surge in murders

President Michel Temer and his predecessor Dilma Rousseff weakened laws and institutions designed to protect environmental defenders and made it easier for industries to proceed with projects without consent from affected communities.

Despite the country's constitution recognising the rights of indigenous people to their ancestral land, there has been a drastic decrease in demarcations. Under Rousseff, the average number shrank from 13 to three per year. There have been none since she was removed from office in August 2016, the report found.

John Knox, the UN special rapporteur on human rights and the environment, said Latin America's population and endemic corruption make it a particularly dangerous area for environmental activists.

"You see indigenous peoples who are still directly dependent on natural resources in forests or sometimes fisheries who are already discriminated against or marginalised," he said.

"When conflicts between the companies and governments that want to profit from natural resources and the people who depend upon them occur in countries or regions that have a weak rule of law, then they are much more likely to result in violence and killing," he told Al Jazeera.

In Colombia, at least 24 environmental activists were killed in 2017, according to the report.

The 2016 peace agreement between the government and Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) has led to a worsening situation for environmental activists as rival actors vie to fill the power vacuum in the countryside, competing for land and natural resources once controlled by the FARC, the report said.

According to the country's ombudsman's office, more than 300 rights defenders - including environmental, land and human rights activists - have been killed since the beginning of 2016.

Mexico saw the largest year on year increase in deaths, surging from three in 2016 to 15 in 2017. The attacks took place in a context of impunity, with increased violence against activists in areas where drug cartels operate, according to the report.

...

ThePhilippines recorded the highest number of killings ever seen in an Asian country, Global Witness said.

The combination of bountiful natural resources, a large indigenous population and high levels of corruption, as well as the residue of colonial-era land disputes, provide fertile ground for violence against activists in the island nation, the report said.

"The Philippines has traditionally been the worst-hit country in Asia but there's a clear worsening of the situation under President [Rodrigo] Duterte," said Ben Leather, a senior campaigner at Global Witness and the author of the report.

"His aggressively anti-human rights discourse and his use of martial law, which has put the army into areas which are resource-rich, have meant that a bad situation in the Philippines has got drastically worse under his rule," Leather told Al Jazeera.

In December 2017, more than 200 people were forced to flee a village near the southern town of Lake Sebu, after the military killed eight people and wounded five others in a dispute over the expansion of a coffee plantation, according to an investigation by human rights groups.

In his annual State of the Nation address on Monday, Rodrigo Duterte, who has come under heavy criticism over his human rights record and deadly anti-drug crackdown, hit back at critics, claiming his tactics were justified as they were saving lives.

READ MORE

Intimidation and murder: Brazilians fight unequal land ownership

"Your concern is human rights, mine is human lives," he said.

Culture of impunity 

According to Global Witness, violence against activists is made possible due to impunity and corruption.

The report states that 92 percent of those responsible for these killings are never brought to justice.

Global Witness also found that that seven "massacres" - which it defines as any incident in which more than four people were killed at the same time - took place in 2017, more than ever before.

OPINION

Criminalising Standing Rock

by Frank Barat

"The fact that very few of the cases of past killings of defenders have ever been prosecuted gives would-be perpetrators the green light to attack without consequence, leading to increasingly flagrant attacks and massacres," Leather said.

"In many cases, governments and corrupt officials within them are colluding with big business to impose development projects and other business ventures onto communities without their consent.

"So, when those communities take a stand, both the interests of the business and the corrupt officials are threatened, which means there's less of an incentive for those governments to bring the killers to justice," he told Al Jazeera.

...

207

Environmental and land activists killed in 2017

60%

Of those killed were in Latin America

115

Killings linked to government security forces

25%

Of those killed were from indigenous groups

46

Killings linked to agribusiness

57

Activists killed in Brazil, the worst year on record for any country

92%

Of killings went unpunished

Source: Global Witness

==

===

dn

no longer left right but life death agw

In Colombia, right-wing politician Iván Duque has been sworn in as Colombia’s new president. Duque was hand-picked by former right-wing President Álvaro Uribe and has vowed to roll back key parts of Colombia’s landmark peace deal withFARCrebels. Just before Duque’s inauguration, Democracy Now! spoke to Gustavo Petro, who placed second in this year’s presidential race, receiving 8 million votes in his attempt to become Colombia’s first leftist president. In the 1980s Petro was jailed and tortured for being a member of the M-19 guerrilla movement. He later went on to lead efforts in Colombia’s Congress to investigate ties between paramilitary death squads and top politicians.

https://www.democracynow.org/2018/8/10/meet_gustavo_petro_colombian_former_guerilla

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===

https://www.ecowatch.com/environmental-activists-killed-2589828107.html

A Record 207 Environmental Activists Were Killed Last Year

More than 200 environmental activists were killed in 2017, according to the latest report from global rights watchdog Global Witness.

The troubling report revealed that 207 men and women across 22 countries were murdered last year defending their land and resources, making it the worst year on record.

Agribusiness was the industry most associated with these attacks—highlighting the devastating cost of the food we eat and the products we use.

"For the first time, agribusiness surpassed mining as the most dangerous sector to oppose, as 46 defenders who protested against palm oil, coffee, tropical fruit and sugar cane plantations, as well as cattle ranching, were murdered in 2017," the report said.

Global Witness cited Hernán Bedoya of Colombia, who was shot by a paramilitary group 14 times in December for protesting the expansion of palm oil and banana plantations in his community.

In the Philippines, during a December massacre near Lake Sebu, eight villagers were killed by the Philippine army over a coffee plantation expansion. Five more were wounded and another 200 were forced to flee.

"As global demand for these products increases, there's a scramble by business actors to get the massive amount of land they need to grow these products," Ben Leather, senior campaigner at Global Witness, told AFP. "When people dare to stand up for their rights and demand that the environment be protected they are silenced in the most brutal way."

The vast majority of murdered activists were from Latin America, accounting for 60 percent of those killed in 2017. Brazil was ranked the most dangerous with 57 murders alone.

...

==

==

omfg

https://theintercept.com/2017/12/04/trump-white-house-weighing-plans-for-private-spies-to-counter-deep-state-enemies/

THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION is considering a set of proposals developed by Blackwater founder Erik Prince and a retired CIA officer — with assistance from Oliver North, a key figure in the Iran-Contra scandal— to provide CIA Director Mike Pompeo and the White House with a global, private spy network that would circumvent official U.S. intelligence agencies, according to several current and former U.S. intelligence officials and others familiar with the proposals. The sources say the plans have been pitched to the White House as a means of countering “deep state” enemies in the intelligence community seeking to undermine Donald Trump’s presidency.

The creation of such a program raises the possibility that the effort would be used to create an intelligence apparatus to justify the Trump administration’s political agenda.

“Pompeo can’t trust the CIA bureaucracy, so we need to create this thing that reports just directly to him,” said a former senior U.S. intelligence official with firsthand knowledge of the proposals, in describing White House discussions. “It is a direct-action arm, totally off the books,” this person said, meaning the intelligence collected would not be shared with the rest of the CIA or the larger intelligence community. “The whole point is this is supposed to report to the president and Pompeo directly.”

North, who appears frequently on Trump’s favorite TV network, Fox News, was enlisted to help sell the effort to the administration. He was the “ideological leader” brought in to lend credibility, said the former senior intelligence official.

maguire

==

NERMEEN SHAIKH: So that’s Tillerson talking about the so-called war on drugs, in which thousands have been killed. Now, in your piece, Antonia, you talk about Exxon’s role in Aceh, Indonesia. Could you explain what Exxon is being accused of there?

ANTONIA JUHASZ: Yeah. Human rights was a big theme throughout the hearing, brought up by many, many senators. And, you know, as someone who’s spent a—you know, I’ve written three books about the oil industry. I’ve spent a lot of time studying ExxonMobil. To hear Rex Tillerson continually talk—and in that clip he didn’t, but he did mention, you know, the way that he—the ways that he would uphold human rights—was deeply disturbing, for one reason being this case that I highlight in my report, which is one of the more renowned because of the level of abuse, international human rights cases involving an oil company. And this is a case in which the complaint is actually now just getting ready to go before the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. They’re awaiting a trial date any day now. And this involves severe human rights abuses in Indonesia by security forces employed by ExxonMobil. And the complaint specifically names Rex Tillerson.

And what the charges are, they involve charges from 2000 to 2004 that ExxonMobil essentially, in the words of the complaint, privatized the Indonesian military to act as its own security force for its natural gas operations there. Aceh was in the midst of an independence movement. It was a violent and hectic independence movement. And ExxonMobil used a renowned-for-its-human-rights-abuse-record military to be its private security force. And in one of the cases, for example, John Doe number two—and they’re all John Does, because they’re all afraid for their lives—the person alleges that he was kidnapped by ExxonMobil’s private security forces. He was held for three months. He was severely tortured. He was shown a pile of human heads and warned that this is what was going to happen to him. He was eventually released, and then his home was burned down. But this is a case that involves charges of murder, sexual assault, you know, sort of the most horrific things you can imagine. And the case alleges that the decisions were being made to use this military force at the highest levels of ExxonMobil, in the executive level, at the—you know, not just in the subsidiary in Indonesia, but in corporate headquarters in the United States, and that the decision—even when it was known by executives that the Indonesian force was using these extreme human rights abuses, the decision was made to continue using that force and actually to intensify the use of that force.

And named in the complaint is Rex Tillerson in his role then as president of ExxonMobil, as someone who had met with Indonesian authorities.So this is a case that he, you know, I would imagine, at a minimum, is certainly aware of, and very important. You know, what ExxonMobil argues is not that the human rights abuses did not occur, but rather that it is not liable for them. And ExxonMobil stayed in Indonesia. You know, the only—the only thing that ended this conflict was the tsunami at the end of—in December 2004 that essentially wiped out Aceh. The ExxonMobil facility survived the tsunami. And so, ExxonMobil never chose to stop operating because of everything that was going on around it. It stayed. It stayed. It stayed. It stayed. And that is an example of choices made all around the world, where ExxonMobil has partnered with and propped up—right now in Angola, in Equatorial Guinea—worked with, propped up dictators, governments that are incredibly abusive to their people, so that they could get their oil. And that has been and continues to be the model that ExxonMobil follows.

AMY GOODMAN: Antonia, we want to thank you for being with us. Antonia Juhasz, oil and energy journalist, author of Black Tide: The Devastating Impact of the Gulf Oil Spill as well as The Tyranny of Oil: The World’s Most Powerful Industry—and What We Must Do to Stop It. We’ll link to your piece, "Rex Tillerson Could Be America’s Most Dangerous Secretary of State."

==

==

:{http://ecowatch.com/2016/03/17/honduras-murder-nelson-garcia/

}:

http://www.democracynow.org/2016/3/3/honduran_indigenous_leader_berta_caceres_assassinated

Honduran indigenous and environmental organizer Berta Cáceres has been assassinated in her home. She was one of the leading organizers for indigenous land rights in Honduras.

In 1993 she co-founded the National Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (COPINH). For years the group faced a series of threats and repression.

According to Global Witness, Honduras has become the deadliest country in the world for environmentalists. Between 2010 and 2014, 101 environmental campaigners were killed in the country.

In 2015 Berta Cáceres won the Goldman Environmental Prize, the world’s leading environmental award. In awarding the prize, the Goldman Prize committee said, “In a country with growing socioeconomic inequality and human rights violations, Berta Cáceres rallied the indigenous Lenca people of Honduras and waged a grassroots campaign that successfully pressured the world’s largest dam builder to pull out of the Agua Zarca Dam.”

==

==

http://www.alternet.org/print/world/torture-and-murder-colombian-union-leader-sparks-scrutiny-corporate-giant-nestle

===

2/15  the nation (note this is the same time about anchor 6 mos suspended for lie on helo attack)

Before Bill O’Reilly was, well, Bill O’Reilly, he worked for a time as a foreign correspondent for CBS Nightly News, anchored by Dan Rather. O’Reilly talks about that period of his career in two of his books, and in both mentions that in early 1982 he reported from northeastern El Salvador, just after the infamous El Mozote Massacre. “When the CBS News bureau chief asked for volunteers to check out an alleged massacre in the dangerous Morazán Territory, a mountainous region bordering Nicaragua, I willingly went.”

El Mozote is a small, hard-to-reach hamlet. The massacre took place on December 11, 1981, carried out by US-trained Atlacatl Battalion, which was not just trained but *created* by the United States as a rapid response unit to fight El Salvador’s fast-spreading FMLN insurgency. The killing was savage beyond belief: between 733 and 900 villagers were slaughtered, decapitated, impaled and burned alive.

The story of the massacre was broken on the front page ofThe New York Timesby the journalist Raymond Bonner and in *The Washington Post* by Alma Guillermoprieto; both stories were published on January 27, 1982, and accompanied by photographs taken by Susan Meiselas. Bonner and Meiselas got to El Mozote, after hearing about the massacre, by walking for days in from Honduras. Guillermoprieto wrote about seeing “countless bits of bones—skulls, rib cages, femurs, a spinal column” poking “out of the rubble.” Bonner noted the “charred skulls and bones of dozens of bodies buried under burned-out roofs, beams, and shattered tiles.” Later, Mark Danner reported on the massacre in detail, first in a lengthy New Yorker essay and then in a book.

Aside from the brutality of the killing, El Mozote is distinguished by the fact that Washington moved quickly to cover it up. It was, in a way, the first massacre of the “second Cold War,” the Reagan administration’s drive to retake the third world; what My Lai was to the 1960s, El Mozote was to the 1980s (later, in 1989, Atlacatl would commit another infamous crime: the execution of six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper and her daughter).

In addition to describing the massacre, Danner documents the cover-up in detail: the US embassy in El Salvador immediately disputed Bonner’s and Guillermoprieto’s reporting, as did New Right organizations like Accuracy in Media. Thomas Enders, Reagan’s assistant secretary of state for inter-American Affairs, and Elliott Abrams, assistant secretary of state for human rights, denied the killing. Abrams said “it appears to be an incident that is at least being significantly misused, at the very best, by the guerrillas.” The Wall Street Journalcalled Bonner “overly credulous” and “out on a limb” and placed the word massacre in “scare quotes.” The Timessided with the critics, and Bonner eventually left the paper, after first being transferred to the business section.

O’Reilly doesn’t give an exact date for when he travelled to El Salvador, but he writes that it was just before the Falklands War. In other words, probably in March 1982, between the first reports of the “alleged massacre,” in late January, and Argentina’s early April invasion of the Malvinas. Here’s O’Reilly’s account, from his book, The No Spin Zone:

A few weeks after taking the CBS job I was flown to El Salvador to report on the war going on there at the time. I drew an assignment that sent me to the Morazán province in the mountainous northeastern part of that beautiful country. This was ‘Indian country,’ a place where the communist guerrillas (‘los muchachos’) operated with impunity. It was a dangerous place, and my crew—driver, producer, and cameraman—was not thrilled to be going there. It took us a full day to drive to Morazán from San Salvador, the capital city, because all the bridges had been blown up and we had to ford the rivers in our van. This was slow going, making us easy targets. Our only protection was a message painted in black letters over and over again on the sides of the van: periodistas—no dispare(Journalists—don’t shoot).

O’Reilly continues along these lines, emphasizing the danger he and his crew faced. He recounts being given the “local war news” by a Salvadoran army colonel: “The ‘muchachos’ had wiped out a small village called Meanguera a few miles to the south because its mayor was deemed friendly to the government. The atrocity had not been confirmed, though, because nobody in his right mind would go into the guerrilla-controlled areas.”

Note that O’Reilly doesn’t mention the massacre at El Mozote. He rather focuses on a supposed killing committed by leftist insurgents in nearby Meanguera (Meanguera, a municipal town center, is nine kilometers away from the hamlet of El Mozote). It is extremely unlikely that O’Reilly would not have known about the El Mozote massacre. Not only was it reported on in all the major papers, the Reagan administration’s denials had themselves become a story (The Wall Street Journalran its attack on Bonner on February 10).

In any case, O’Reilly went to Meanguera and not El Mozote. Leigh Binford, an anthropologist who wrote a great book on the larger context of the massacre, tells me that “all of these municipal centers sustained attacks by the FMLN; they were, after all, where the repressive forces (National Guard or Treasury Police) were housed, and from which they had been making forays into the countryside over the course of at least a year to kill, harass, capture, and torture for some time.” So it is very possible that Meanguera was attacked by the rebels. But it certainly wasn’t “wiped out.” In other words, going to Meanguera in early 1982 would be as if Seymour Hersh, when he first learned of the My Lai massacre, decided to investigate events the next town over.

Here’s what O’Reilly writes in his book about his report: when he finally arrived in Meanguera, “the place was leveled to the ground and fires were still smoldering. But even though the carnage was obviously recent, we saw no one live or dead. There was absolutely nobody around who could tell us what happened. I quickly did a stand-up amid the rubble and we got the hell out of there.”

He continues to emphasize his courage (writing that a Salvadoran military official said that he had “cojones” for having travelled to Meanguera). Then, having made it back to San Salvador safely, he filed his story: “I explained that while a scorched-earth policy was clearly in effect in remote village—the evidence was right there on tape—it was impossible to say just who was doing the scorching. Could be the muchachos[that is, the guerrillas], could be the government. The ninety-second package contained great video and a fairly impressive ‘on the scene in a very bad place’ stand-up by yours truly.”

O’Reilly tells a version of this story in two different books, since it supposedly captures a key moment in his personal narrative, a moment when he stood up to the “liberal establishment”—that is, CBS News—and eventually becomes who he is today. His editor apparently didn’t broadcast the report until O’Reilly forced him to do so.

I’ve located the broadcast and there are a number of problems with how O’Reilly tells the story in his book....

 ===

In 1983, Bill Bain asked Mitt Romney to launch Bain Capital, a private equity offshoot of the successful consulting firm Bain & Company. After some initial reluctance, Romney agreed. The new job came with a stipulation: Romney couldn't raise money from any current clients, Bain said, because if the private equity venture failed, he didn't want it taking the consulting firm down with it.

When Romney struggled to raise funds from other traditional sources, he and his partners started thinking outside the box. Bain executive Harry Strachan suggested that Romney meet with a group of Central American oligarchs who were looking for new investment vehicles as turmoil engulfed their region.

Romney was worried that the oligarchs might be tied to "illegal drug money, right-wing death squads, or left-wing terrorism," Strachan later told a Boston Globe reporter, as quoted in the 2012 book "The Real Romney." But, pressed for capital, Romney pushed his concerns aside and flew to Miami in mid-1984 to meet with the Salvadorans at a local bank.

It was a lucrative trip. The Central Americans provided roughly $9 million -- 40 percent -- of Bain Capital's initial outside funding, the Los Angeles Times reported recently. And they became valued clients.

"Over the years, these Latin American friends have loyally rolled over investments in succeeding funds, actively participated in Bain Capital's May investor meetings, and are still today one of the largest investor groups in Bain Capital," Strachan wrote in his memoir in 2008. Strachan declined to be interviewed for this story.

When Romney launched another venture that needed funding -- his first presidential campaign -- he returned to Miami.

"I owe a great deal to Americans of Latin American descent," he said at a dinner in Miami in 2007. "When I was starting my business, I came to Miami to find partners that would believe in me and that would finance my enterprise. My partners were Ricardo Poma, Miguel Dueñas, Pancho Soler, Frank Kardonski, and Diego Ribadeneira."

Romney could also have thanked investors from two other wealthy and powerful Central American clans -- the de Sola and Salaverria families, who the Los Angeles Times and Boston Globe have reported were founding investors in Bain Capital.

While they were on the lookout for investments in the United States, members of some of theseprominent families -- including the Salaverria, Poma, de Sola and Dueñas clans -- were also at the time financing, either directly or through political parties, death squads in El Salvador. The ruling classes were deploying the death squads to beat back left-wing guerrillas and reformers during El Salvador's civil war.

The death squads committed atrocities on such a mass scale for so small a country that their killing spree sparked international condemnation. From 1979 to 1992, some 75,000 people were killed in the Salvadoran civil war, according to the United Nations. In 1982, two years before Romney began raising money from the oligarchs, El Salvador's independent Human Rights Commission reported that, of the 35,000 civilians killed, "most" died at the hands of death squads. A United Nations truth commission concluded in 1993 that 85 percent of the acts of violence were perpetrated by the right, while the left-wing Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front, which was supported by the Cuban government, was responsible for 5 percent.

When The Huffington Post asked the Romney campaign about Bain Capital accepting funds from families tied to death squads, a spokeswoman forwarded a 1999 Salt Lake Tribune article to explain the campaign's position on the matter. She declined to comment further.

"Romney confirms Bain had investors in El Salvador. But, as was Bain's policy with any big investor, they had the families checked out as diligently as possible," the Tribune wrote. "They uncovered no unsavory links to drugs or other criminal activity."

Nobody with a basic understanding of the region's history could believe that assertion.

By 1984, the media had thoroughly exposed connections between the death squads and the Salvadoran oligarchy, including the families that invested with Romney. The sitting U.S. ambassador to El Salvador charged that several families, including at least one that invested with Bain, were living in Miami and directly funding death squads.Even by 1981, El Salvador's elite, largely relocated to Miami, were so angered by the public perception that they were financing death squads that they reached out to the media to make their case. The two men put forward to represent the oligarchs were both from families that would invest in Bain three years later. The most cursory review of their backgrounds would have turned up the ties.

The connection between the families involved with Bain's founding and those who financed death squads was made by the Boston Globe in 1994 and the Salt Lake Tribune in 1999. This election cycle, Salon first raised the issue in January, and the Los Angeles Times filled out more of the record earlier this month.

There is no shortage of unsavory links. Even the Tribune article referred to by the Romney campaign reports that "about $6.5 million of $37 million that established the company came from wealthy El Salvadoran families linked to right-wing death squads."

The Salaverriafamily, whose fortune came from producing cotton and coffee, had deep connections to the right-wing Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA), a political party that death-squad leader Roberto D'Aubuisson founded in the fall of 1981. The year before, El Salvador's government had pushed through land reforms and nationalized the coffee trade, moves that threatened a ruling class whose financial and political dominance was built in large part on growing coffee. ARENA controlled and directed death squads during its early years.

On March 24, 1980, Oscar Romero, the archbishop of San Salvador and an advocate of the poor, was celebrating Mass at a chapel in a small hospital when he was assassinated on D'Aubuisson's orders, according to a person involved in the murder who later came forward.

The day before, Romero, an immensely popular figure, had called on the country's soldiers to refuse the government's orders to attack fellow Salvadorans.

"Before another killing order is given," he advised in his sermon, "the law of God must prevail: Thou shalt not kill."

In 1984, Robert White, the former U.S. ambassador to El Salvador, named two Salaverria brothers -- Julio and Juan Ricardo -- as two of six Salvadoran exiles in Miami who had directly funded death squads, repeating in sworn congressional testimony a claim he'd made earlier as ambassador. The group became known as the "Miami Six." White testified that a source close to the Miami Six had notified the U.S. embassy of their activities in January 1981.

White was pushed out of his job by the incoming Reagan administration in 1981; he was considered insufficiently supportive of the Salvadoran ruling class. (D'Aubuisson endorsed Ronald Reagan in 1984.) When contacted by phone recently, White reiterated his claim about the Salaverria brothers, but said he couldn't reveal his source's identity in order to protect the source.

"The Salaverria family were very well-known as backers of D'Aubuisson," White told The Huffington Post. "These guys were big-money contributors. ... They were total backers of D'Aubuisson and the extremist solution, including death squads."

Alfonso Salaverria was a close associate of Orlando de Sola, a leading death-squad figure, and, like him, supported D'Aubuisson.

The Salaverria family also violently resisted land reform efforts. When the Salvadoran government seized about 140 of the country's largest farms in March 1980, 73-year-old Raul Salaverria was the only landowner to openly resist, the Washington Post reported at the time. A brief exchange of gunfire between government forces and Salaverria's people resulted in two injuries, and 1,500 weapons were allegedly found on the property.

Eight years later, workers in an agrarian reform co-operative whose land once belonged to the Salaverrias barely escaped an assassination attempt. "Members of the co-op suspect the former owners, the Salaverria family, were behind the violence," a 1988 Human Rights Watch report said. The family denied involvement.

Francisco de Sola and his cousin, Herbert Arturo de Sola, also invested early in Bain, according to the Los Angeles Times. Two other members of the de Sola family were "limited partners," according to the Boston Globe, but the Romney campaign declined to provide The Huffington Post with their names. The de Sola family was one of El Salvador's most powerful coffee growers and a financier of the ARENA party.

Herbert's brother was the notorious Orlando de Sola, who resisted the peace negotiations toward the end of the civil war. The Romney campaign acknowledges Orlando de Sola's connection to death squads but insists he is not representative of the de Sola family investors. While Romney told the Tribune in 1999 that the backgrounds of the families had been checked diligently, he had explained to the Boston Globe in 1994 that Bain's due diligence included only the backgrounds of the individual investors, not their family members. "We investigated the individuals' integrity and looked for any obvious signs of illegal activity and problems in their background, and found none. We did not investigate in-laws and relatives." Deflecting the association with Orlando, Strachan, whom Romney had charged with vetting the investors, described him that same year to the Globe as "the black sheep of the family. ... He was kicked out of the family business."

Yet there is strong evidence that Orlando was anything but a black sheep in the de Sola family. Indeed, he was a leading public face of the Salvadoran elites in Miami, speaking, for example, on behalf of the El Salvador Freedom Foundation, the organization which arranged a U.S. press conference for D'Aubuisson as part of its public relations activities on behalf of the oligarchs and ARENA. An Associated Press story from April 1981 includes Orlando de Sola and Alfonso Salaverria speaking on behalf of the oligarchs in exile. The story also makes reference to White's charges regarding the funding of death squads, indicating that the charges were already well known by that point.

But the ties run deeper still. In 1990, Orlando de Sola, D'Aubuisson and founding Bain investor Francisco de Sola allegedly assassinated two left-wing activists then in Guatemala, according to a report by that country's government, which cited its intelligence sources. The activists had just held a meeting with then-Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.), who was attempting to broker a Salvadoran peace deal.

Francisco de Sola later pleaded his and his cousin Orlando's innocence to the U.S. ambassador. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights looked further into the killings and concluded that elements of the Salvadoran right were indeed the mostly likely assassins, but said that it couldn't confirm the guilt of the de Solas or D'Aubuisson. It deemed the investigation incomplete and called for a deeper look. The three men were never charged.

Francisco de Sola is now president of the Salvadoran Foundation for Economic and Social Development. His assistant, Ada Chang, said that he was traveling and unavailable to comment, but she confirmed to HuffPost that he had been accused of murdering the two leftists in 1990. Whether he committed the crime or not, the fact that Guatemalan intelligence would associate him with Orlando de Sola and D'Aubuisson, and place them in Guatemala together, casts further doubt on Strachan's claim that Orlando de Sola was merely a "black sheep" who had been "kicked out of the family business."

UPDATE: Oct. 24 -- Francisco de Sola told The Huffington Post that his cousin Orlando was very much a "black sheep" and that D'Aubuisson spoke out against other members of the de Sola family for supporting dialogue as a way to resolve the conflict. Indeed, there is no evidence that Francisco de Sola himself financed death squads nor that he financed ARENA prior to 1988; he did so afterward in support of a more moderate direction for the party. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, which reviewed the Guatemalan government report that linked D'Aubuisson, Orlando de Sola and Francisco de Sola to the murder of the two left-wing activists, described the charges as "surprising and unsubstantiated."

Orlando de Sola, who is serving an unrelated prison sentence for fraud, told the Los Angeles Times that he did not personally benefit from the Bain investments. "I would say their relationship with Bain Capital was a step to diversify into foreign investments," he said of his family.

Ricardo Poma was the first investor Romney thanked when he traveled to Miami in 2007. The head of the Poma Group, he became one of the three members of the Bain Capital investment committee, according to Strachan's memoir. The Poma family were financiers of D'Aubuisson's ARENA party.

The Regalado-Dueñas family, like many of El Salvador's other powerful clans, amassed much of their wealth and political power through the coffee industry. Along with the Alvarez family, they also helped to found Banco Comercial, one of the biggest banks in El Salvador.

The Regalado-Dueñas and Alvarez families were leading supporters of ARENA. Arturo Dueñas "regularly supplied" the head of an ARENA-affiliated "paramilitary unit ... with a variety of official Salvadoran documents," according to a redacted 1984 CIA document, which uses the euphemism for death squad. (Salvadoran government documents were used by death squads to assemble lists of people to kill.)

Miguel Dueñasand Ricardo Poma did not respond to requests for comment. The Salaverria brothers are dead, according to Ambassador White.

Jeffery Paige, author of "Coffee and Power: Revolution and the Rise of Democracy in Central America" and a professor at the University of Michigan, has studied the political economy of Central American oligarchies. Romney's claim to have checked out the backgrounds of the families and come away satisfied befuddles Paige.

"These people benefited from one of the most exploitative and repressive agricultural systems in Latin America. That's why they had a revolution," Paige said. "This money, certainly there wasn't much concern where it came from and what these people had done to make that money." 

Sergio Bendixen, who now does polling for President Barack Obama, spent a significant amount of time in El Salvador in the early '80s, doing political polling for Univision. He said that he met D'Aubuisson on many occasions and found him to be one of the warmest, most charming and charismatic people he has ever met. But he said D'Aubuisson was also very upfront about what he saw as the justifiable use of death squads.

"There were 10 or 30 bodies in the street every morning," Bendixen recalled of his time there. "D'Aubuisson said it was necessary. The message needed to be sent [that] if you were associated with the communists or socialists, you had to be killed. He said it was an instrument in keeping the violence down, because others would see the consequences."

Bendixen suggested that a cursory look would have shown Romney what those families were involved with. "If anybody tries to tell you there was a line, a Chinese wall, between ARENA and the death squads, that's just not the way it was," he said.

The Salvadoran elite in Miami talked openly at the time, he said, of supporting the death squads battling the rebels. It wasn't a source of shame, Bendixen recalled, but a source of pride. "They were proud of the fact that they were supporting their country against the communists," he said.

As Romney now seeks support from the Latino community in his campaign for president, his knowledge of Bain's all-too-few degrees of separation from Salvadoran death squads may become a topic of interest.

"Under Ronald Reagan, the U.S. sent billions of dollars to the murderous regime, which utilized that aid to fund the military and death squads in an effort to preserve the unjust privileges of the Salvadoran oligarchy," said Arturo J. Viscarra, an immigration lawyer, who, like many other Salvadorans, emigrated to the United States in order to escape the civil war. He said his family left the country in 1980 after his father began receiving death threats.

"To now learn that a man that may become president of the U.S. deserves some of his success due to the incredible inequality that the U.S. helped to preserve in El Salvador is ironic," Viscarra said. "It's morbidly funny.”

The U.S. involvement in the bloodshed is now seen as a black mark on the nation's record. When President Obama visited Central America in March 2011, he made a symbolic stop at Romero's grave, lighting a candle for the archbishop.

Romney, however, has shown no public remorse for signing up such investors, although the concept of culpability is not foreign to him. When he returned to Miami in 2007, he condemned those who had financed torture and other human rights abuses during the Salvadoran civil war -- just not those he was connected to.

"These friends didn't just help me; they taught me," Romney said. "Ricardo's brother had been tortured and murdered by rebel terrorists in El Salvador. Miguel [duena] himself had been chained to a floor in Guatemala for weeks and tortured. And their torturers were financed by Fidel Castro. I learned from these friends about the human cost when Castro has money.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/08/mitt-romney-death-squads-bain_n_1710133.html

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U.S.-Funded War in El Salvador Casts Shadow over Romney/Ryan Campaign

by Brendan Fischer [1] — August 16, 2012 - 8:39am

• Topics: Election 2012 [2], Democracy [3], Politics [4]

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Amidst reports that Mitt Romney launched Bain Capital with funds from investors tied to 1980s Salvadoran death squads, his new running mate Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) is getting foreign policy briefings from a man who actively covered-up some of the worst atrocities committed by those same death squads. The GOP's vice-presidential candidate also earned his political stripes working under neoconservative Republicans who funneled billions in U.S. aid to those military hitmen. Though the war in El Salvador was just one chapter in history, Romney and Ryan's relationship with that war may provide a snapshot into their worldview.

Between 1979 and 1992, an estimated 75,000 people were killed in the conflict in El Salvador and countless others were "disappeared" or displaced, an astonishing number for a country the size of Massachusetts. A United Nations Truth Commission estimated [6] that the right-wing, military-led government was responsible for 85 percent of the violence while the left-wing insurgency fighting against vast economic and political inequality, including farmers, teachers, priests and union activists, was responsible for only 5 percent. Much of the violence was attributable to clandestine military or paramilitary death squads, which committed countless assassinations and acts of brutal violence against suspected political dissidents. 

Recent reports suggest that some of the same members of the Salvadoran oligarchy that backed the death squads gave Romney the startup funds for Bain Capital.

Romney's Early Bain Capital Funders Tied to Salvadoran Death Squads

Photo from El Salvador's civil warLast week, the Huffington Post's Ryan Grim and Cole Stangler reported [7] on how Romney went to Miami in 1983, at the height of El Salvador's civil war, to raise $9 million from Salvadoran expatriate families to start Bain Capital. This seed money amounted to 40 percent of Bain's startup funds. Although Romney claimed that he had vetted the backgrounds of the investors, some of their families had been identified by the U.S. ambassador and others as closely tied to either death squads or death squad leader and ARENA Party founder Roberto d'Aubuisson (known as "Blowtorch Bob" for his use of blowtorches to torture political prisoners).

Archbishop Oscar RomeroD'Aubuisson was later found responsible for ordering the assassination of Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero, a prominent advocate for the poor and critic of the Salvadoran government (who the Vatican has now placed in the process of canonization to become a saint). In the United States, though, the Reagan administration foreign policy team would actively deny d'Aubuisson's involvement in the assassination, as well as the Salvadoran government's involvement in other human rights atrocities, so as to justify a heavy flow of military aid to the country's government as part of Reagan's Cold War-era policy to suppress any chance of another Cuba emerging in Latin America. A key player in those official denials was Elliot Abrams, an Assistant Secretary of State under President Ronald Reagan who still boasts that he "supervised U.S. policy in Latin America and the Caribbean." [8]

In recent months, Abrams has been advising Romney's Vice Presidential candidate Paul Ryan on foreign policy.

Abrams Key Denier of Human Rights Abuses by Salvadoran Government

Of the Romero assassination, Abrams told the Washington Post in 1993 [9] that "anybody who thinks you're going to find a cable that says that Roberto d'Aubuisson murdered the archbishop is a fool." But as the Post noted in that same article, the U.S. Embassy sent at least two such cables to Washington fingering d'Aubuisson -- the December 21, 1981 cable, for example, describes: "A meeting, chaired by Maj. Roberto d'Aubuisson, during which the murder of Archbishop Romero was planned. During the meeting, some of the participants drew lots for the privilege of killing the archbishop."

Memorial at El MozoteBut Abrams is perhaps best known for denying one of the worst atrocities of the war, the massacre at El Mozote, where in December 1981 U.S-trained government soldiers marched into a village and murdered around 800 civilians, many of whom were women and children. The men were tortured before being shot, and girls as young as 10 were raped before having their throats slit. Abrams, who at the time was Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs, dismissed reports published in the New York Times and Washington Post about the massacre, telling a Senate committee tasked with certifying the Salvadoran government's human rights record that the reports of deaths "were not credible" and suggesting the guerrillas had "significantly misused" the stories for propaganda. The U.N. Truth Commission later confirmed the newspapers' reports on the massacre, and the Salvadoran government (which elected its first left-wing president ever in 2009) officially apologized for the event in December of last year.

These and other denials helped justify another ten years of United States funding for the Salvadoran military and its death squads. The tiny country would receive $6 billion from the U.S. over the course of its civil war, making it the second-highest recipient of U.S. aid behind Israel during that period, despite mounting death tolls and continued atrocities.

Elliot AbramsAbrams has remained unrepentant about U.S. policy in El Salvador, calling it [9] "one of fabulous achievement." He was convicted in 1991 of two misdemeanors for unlawfully withholding information from Congress during the Iran-Contra scandal but was pardoned by the first President Bush.

....

==

Pratt's Ties to White Supremacists

Pratt told [17] the Washington Post that he bought his first gun in 1968 when "there were some racial difficulties" in Washington DC. "I heard on the radio that the police weren't sure they could control the rioters coming north on 16th Street, so I went out and bought a shotgun."

Pratt founded Gun Owners of America in 1975 with H.L. Richardson, a benefactor of the Religious Right. Described as "eight lanes to the right" [18] of the National Rifle Association, GOA was one of the early "New Right" groups [19] to focus their political activity on the state level, rather than just on national issues. The group became a major donor to state legislative races, and "put the fear of death into a lot of Democrats" [19] when the group helped defeat several powerful Democratic incumbents in California in 1982.GOA's focus on the states meshed well with ALEC.

But Pratt and the GOA were involved in more than just state politics. In the early 1980s, Pratt and the Gun Owners of America were outspoken supporters [20] of the white rulers in South Africa during apartheid, calling a press conference in 1984 to present "evidence" that allegedly tied Bishop Desmond Tutu to an effort to violently overthrow the white minority regime in the country. "Bishop Tutu's idea of Christianity, rather than one of bringing reconciliation of the divisions within South Africa is one that would welcome the extension of the atheist slave state from Russia to his own country," Pratt said. Bishop Tutu was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize that same year.

At the time, Pratt was on the ALEC board.

Also in 1984, while he sat on the ALEC board, Pratt and GOA**presented a plaque** [21]to notorious El Salvador death squad leader Robert D'Aubuisson in 1984 for his "continuing efforts for freedom in the face of communist aggression which is an inspiration to freedom-loving people everywhere." D'Aubuisson, known as "Blowtorch Bob" for his use of a blowtorch to torture political opponents, also was involved in the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero.

In 1990 Pratt wrote a book titled "Armed People Victorious" based on his study of death squads in Guatemala and the Philippines, and advocated for similar "citizen defense patrols" in the United States. The idea reportedly caught on in 1992, when Pratt addressed [22] a three-day meeting of neo-Nazis and Christian Adherents organized by white supremacist Pete Peters. He shared the stage with a former Ku Klux Klan leader and an Aryan Nation official.

Pratt's lengthy ties to white supremacists forced him to step down [23] from his role as co-chairman of Pat Buchanan [24]'s 1996 presidential campaign, after his racist connections were publicized by the Center for Public Integrity and others.

==

By continent

South America

Argentina

Alianza Anticomunista Argentina, a far-right death squad mainly active during the "Dirty War". Amnesty International reports that “the security forces in Argentina first started using “death squads” in late 1973. By the time military rule ended in 1983 some 1,500 people had been killed directly by “death squads”, and over 9,000 named people and many more undocumented victims had been “disappeared”—kidnapped and murdered secretly—according to the officially appointed National Commission on Disappeared People (CONADEP).^[39]

Brazil

The Esquadrão da Morte ("Death Squad" in Portuguese) was a paramilitary organization that emerged in the late 1960s in the context of the Brazilian Military Dictatorship. It was the first group to received the name "Death Squad" in Latin America, but its actions sometimes resembled traditional vigilantism as several executions were not exclusively political-related. The greater share of the political executions during the 21 years of Military Dictatorship (1964–1985) were done by the Brazilian Armed Forces itself. The purpose of the original "Death Squad" was, with the consent of the military government, to persecute and kill suspected criminals regarded as dangerous to society. It began in the former State of Guanabara led by Detective Mariscot Mariel, one of the "Twelve Golden Men of Rio de Janeiro's Police", and from there it spread throughout Brazil in the 1970s. In general, its members were politicians, members of the judiciary, and police officials. As a rule, these groups were financed by members of the business community.^[40]

In the 1970s and 1980s, several other organizations were formed modeled after the 1960s Esquadrão da Morte. The most famous of such organizations was the "Scuderie Le Cocq," named after Detective Milton Le Cocq. The group was particularly active in the Brazilian Southeastern States of Guanabara, Rio de Janeiro, and Espírito Santo. In the State of São Paulo, the work of Death Squads and individual gunmen called "justiceiros" was a common practice during the period. Here the executions were almost exclusively a work of off-duty policemen. One of them, a police officer nicknamed "Cabo Bruno", was convicted in 1983 for the killing of more than 50 victims.^[41]

The "Death Squads" that were active under the rule of the Military Dictatorship have left a lasting legacy in the culture of the Brazilian police as in the 2000s police officers were still being linked to Death-Squad-type executions. In 2003 alone roughly 2,000 people were killed in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, with Amnesty international claiming the numbers are likely far higher.^[42][43]

Chile

Further information: Dirección de Inteligencia Nacional, Chile under Pinochet, Operation Condor, and Caravan of Death

One of the most notorious murder gangs operated by the Chilean Army was the Caravan of Death, whose members travelled by helicopter throughout Chile between 30 September and 22 October 1973. During this foray, members of the squad ordered or personally carried out the execution of at least 75 individuals held in Army custody in these garrisons.^[44] According to the NGO Memoria y Justicia, the squad killed 26 in the South and 71 in the North, making a total of 97 victims.^[45] Augusto Pinochet was indicted in December 2002 in this case, but he died four years later without having been convicted. The trial, however, is on-going as of September 2007, other militaries and a former military chaplain having been indicted in this case. On 28 November 2006, Víctor Montiglio, charged of this case, ordered Pinochet's house arrest^[46] Between 5,000 and 30,000 people are believed to have been killed in the operations of Pinochet's regime. In June 1999, judge Juan Guzmán Tapia ordered the arrest of five retired generals.

Colombia

In Colombia, the terms "death squads", "paramilitaries" or "self-defense groups" have been used interchangeably and otherwise, referring to either a single phenomenon, also known as paramilitarism, or to different but related aspects of the same.^[47] In 1993, Amnesty International (AI) reported that clandestine military units began covertly operating as death squads in 1978.

According to the report, throughout the 1980s political killings rose to a peak of 3,500 in 1988, averaging some 1,500 victims per year since then, and "over 1,500 civilians are also believed to have “disappeared” since 1978."^[9] The AUC, formed in 1997, is the most prominent paramilitary group.

A report from the country's public prosecutors office at the end of 2009 reported the number of 28,000 disappeared by paramilitary and guerrilla groups. As of 2008 only 300 corpses were identified and 600 in 2009. According to the prosecutor's office it will take many more years before all the bodies recovered can be identified.^[48]

Peru

Further information: Grupo Colina and Rodrigo Franco Command

Peruvian government death squads carried out massacres against civilians in their fight against Shining Path and Túpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement.^{[49][50][51][52]}

Bolivia

Similarly to Tupac Amaru's rebellion, Tupac Katari lead similar rebellion against the oppressive Spanish regime in the nations capital of La Paz, Bolivia. Tupac Katari was able to rally up 40,000 indigenous Aymara to lay siege to the city of La Paz which was built in place of the Aymara city of Chuqiago Marka. The siege failed and resulted in thousands of lost lives and millions of spirits crushed. Tupac Katari was later captured and killed by the Spanish government.

Venezuela

In its 2003 and 2002 world reports, Human Rights Watch reported the existence of death squads in several Venezuelan states, involving members of the local police, the DISIP and the National Guard. These groups were responsible for the extrajudicial killings of civilians and wanted or alleged criminals, including street criminals, looters and drug users.^[24][25]

Central America

El Salvador

Main articles: Ita Ford, Maura Clarke, Dorothy Kazel, Jean Donovan, Oscar Romero.

During the Salvadoran civil war, death squads (known in Spanish by the name of Escuadrón de la Muerte, "Squadron of Death") achieved notoriety when far-right vigilantes assassinated Archbishop Óscar Romero for his social activism in March 1980. In December 1980, three American nuns and a lay worker were raped and murdered by a military unit later found to have been acting on specific orders. Death squads were instrumental in killing thousands of peasants and activists. Funding for the squads came primarily from right-wing Salvadoran businessmen and landowners.^[53] Because the death squads involved were found to have been soldiers of the Salvadoran military security forces, which were receiving U.S. arms, funding, training and advice during the Carter, Reagan and Bush administrations, these events prompted some outrage in the U.S. Human rights activists criticized U.S. administrations for denying Salvadoran government links to the death squads. Veteran Human Rights Watch researcher Cynthia J. Arnson writes that "particularly during the years 1980–1983 when the killing was at its height (numbers of killings could reach as far as 35,000), assigning responsibility for the violence and human rights abuses was a product of the intense ideological polarization in the United States. The Reagan administration downplayed the scale of abuse as well as the involvement of state actors. Because of the level of denial as well as the extent of U.S. involvement with the Salvadoran military and security forces, the U.S. role in El Salvador- what was known about death squads, when it was known, and what actions the United States did or did not take to curb their abuses- becomes an important part of El Salvador’s death squad story.”.^[54] Some death squads, such as Sombra Negra, are still operating in El Salvador.^[55]

In the 1984 expose entitled, "Behind the Death Squads: An exclusive report on the U.S. role in El Salvador's official terror", award winning investigative journalist, Allan Nairn reported that the CIA routinely supplied ANSESAL, the security forces (National Guard, National Police, Treasury Police), and the general staff with electronic, photographic, and personal surveillance of suspected dissidents and Salvadorans abroad who were later assassinated by death squads; and trained Salvadoran intelligence operatives in the use of investigative techniques which included, according to a former Treasury Police agent, "instruction in methods of physical and psychological torture."^[56]

Lawrence Korb, Assistant Secretary of Defense from 1981 to 1985 was quoted in 2005 by Jonathan D. Tepperman, Senior Editor of the main establishment journal, Foreign Affairs of the Council on Foreign Relations: "We did back the guys who went after the bad guys. And [we] defined 'bad guys' pretty broadly."^[57]

Honduras

Honduras had death squads active through the 1980s, the most notorious of which was Battalion 3–16. Hundreds of people, teachers, politicians, and union bosses were assassinated by government-backed forces. Battalion 316 received substantial support and training from the United States Central Intelligence Agency.^[58] At least 19 members were School of the Americas graduates.^[59][60] Seven members, including Billy Joya, later played important roles in the administration of President Manuel Zelaya as of mid-2006.^[61] Following the 2009 coup d'état, former Battalion 3–16 member Nelson Willy Mejía Mejía became Director-General of Immigration^[62][63] and Billy Joya was de facto President Roberto Micheletti's security advisor.^[64] Another former Battalion 3–16 member, Napoleón Nassar Herrera,^[61][65] was high Commissioner of Police for the north-west region under Zelaya and under Micheletti, and also became a Secretary of Security spokesperson "for dialogue" under Micheletti.^[66][67] Zelaya claimed that Joya had reactivated the death squad, with dozens of government opponents having been murdered since the ascent of the Michiletti and Lobo governments.^[64]

Guatemala

Throughout the Guatemalan Civil War, both military and "civilian" governments utilized death squads as a counterinsurgency strategy. The use of "death squads" as a government tactic became particularly widespread after 1966. Throughout 1966 and the first three months of 1967, within the framework of what military commentators referred to as "el-contra terror," government forces killed an estimated 8,000 civilians accused of "subversive" activity.^[68] This marked a turning point in the history of the Guatemalan security apparatus, and brought about a new era in which mass murder of both real and suspected subversives by government "death squads" became a common occurrence in the country. A noted Guatemalan sociologist estimated the number of government killings between 1966 and 1974 at approximately 5,250 a year (for a total death toll of approximately 42,000 during the presidencies of Julio César Méndez Montenegro and Carlos Arana Osorio).^[69] Killings by both official and unofficial security forces would climax in the late 1970s and early 1980s under the presidencies of Fernando Romeo Lucas Garcia and Efrain :{Rios Montt}:, with over 18,000 documented killings in 1982 alone.^[70]

Greg Grandin remarks that "Washington, of course, publicly denied its support for paramilitarism, but the practice of political disappearances took a great leap forward in Guatemala in 1966 with the birth of a death squad created, and directly supervised, by U.S. security advisors."^[71] An upsurge in rebel activity in Guatemala convinced the US to provide increased counterinsurgency assistance to Guatemala's security apparatus in the mid to late 1960s. Documents released in 1999 details how United States military and police advisers had encouraged and assisted Guatemalan military officials in the use of repressive techniques, including helping establish a "safe house" from within the presidential palace as a location to coordinate "death squad" activities.^[72] In 1981, it was reported by Amnesty International that this same "safe house" was in use by Guatemalan security officials to coordinate counterinsurgency activities involving the use of the "death squads."^[73]

According to a victims brother, Mirtala Linares', testimony, “He wouldn’t tell us anything; he claimed they hadn’t captured [Sergio], that he knew nothing of his whereabouts – and that maybe my brother had gone as an illegal alien to the United States! That was how he answered us.”^[74]

The United Nations sponsored Commission for Historical Clarification concluded that "The United States demonstrated that it was willing to provide support for strong military regimes in its strategic backyard. In the case of Guatemala, military assistance was directed towards reinforcing the national intelligence apparatus and for training the officer corps in counterinsurgency techniques, key factors which had significant bearing on human rights violations during the armed confrontation."^[75]

The National Security Archive released declassified US documents relating to Guatemala's 36-year civil war which show that Washington was aware of the Guatemalan military's excesses against civilians and continued to support it throughout the bloodiest days of the conflict, which killed up to 200,000 people.^[76]

Asia

Cambodia

Main article: Khmer Rouge

The Khmer Rouge began employing death squads to purge Cambodia of non-communists after taking over the country in 1975 . They rounded up their victims, questioned them and then took them out to killing fields.^[77] The rebels, led by Bun Yom, rescued many thousands of Cambodian people. The rebels also captured thousands of Khmer Rouge soldiers, which they traded to the Thai government for food and munitions.^[78]

China

Main article: Red Guards (China)

Mao Zedong made use of the Red Guards to assassinate, imprison, and terrorise millions of suspected political opponents during the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s and 1970s.^[79]

South Korea

News reports on the use of death squads in Korea originated around the middle of the 20th century such as the Jeju Massacre^[80] and Daejeon.^[81] There were also the multiple deaths that made the news in 1980 in Gwangju.^[82]

Thailand

Many extrajudicial killings occurred during the 2003 anti-drug effort of Thailand's prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra.

Rumors still persist that there is collusion between the government, rogue military officers and radical right wing/anti-drugs death squads, [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] with both Muslim^[83] and Buddhist^[84] sectarian death squads still operating in the South of the country.

Philippines

Main articles: Extrajudicial killings and forced disappearances in the Philippines and Davao death squads

The New People's Army (NPA) groups known as "Sparrow Units" were active in the mid-1980s, killing government officials, police personnel, military members, and anyone else they targeted for elimination. They were also supposedly part of an NPA operation called "Agaw Armas" (Tagalog for "Snatch Arms – "), where they raided government armories as well as stealing weapons from slain military and police personnel. A low level civil war with south Muslims, Al-Qaeda sympathizers and communist insurgents has led to a general break down of law and order. The Philippines government has promised to curb the killings, but is itself implicated in many of the killings.^[29]

^...

Middle East

Iran

Further information: Chain Murders of Iran

Under the reign of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (1941–1979) the SAVAK (Security and Intelligence Service) was founded. During the 1960s and 1970s it has been accused of using death squads.^{[citation needed]} After the Islamic Revolution overthrew the Shah, Amnesty International continued to complain of human rights abuses in Iran.^[121] Suspected foes of the Ayatollah Khomeini, were imprisoned, tortured, tried by kangaroo courts, and executed. The most famous victim of the era's death squad violence remains Amir-Abbas Hoveida, Prime Minister of Iran under the Shah. However, the same treatment was also meted out to senior officers in the Iranian military. Other cases exist of Iranians opposed to the Islamic Republic who have been tracked down and murdered abroad. One of the most notorious examples of this remains the 1992 Mykonos restaurant assassinations in Berlin, Germany.

Among them were "death squads" in the form of killings of civilians by government agents that were denied by the government. This was particularly the case during the 1990s when more than 80 writers, translators, poets, political activists, and ordinary citizens who had been critical of the government in some way, disappeared or were found murdered.^[122] In 1983 the American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) gave one of the leaders of Iran Khomeini information on Communist KGB agents in Iran. This information was almost certainly used. The Iranian regime later used death squads occasionally throughout the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s however by the 2000s it has appeared to almost entirely if not all cease their operation. This partial Westernization of the country can be seen paralleling similar events in Lebanon, United Arab Emirates, and Northern Iraq beginning in the late 1990s.

Iraq

Iraq was formed by the British from three provinces of the Ottoman Empire following the empire's breakup after World War I. Its population is overwhelming Muslims but divided into Shia and Sunni Arabs and with a substantial Kurdish minority in the north. The new state leadership in the capital of Baghdad was composed mostly of the old Sunni Arab elite although this ethnic group was a minority.

This leadership used death squads and committed massacres in Iraq throughout the 20th century, culminating in the dictatorship of Saddam Hussien.^[123]

After Saddam was overthrown by the UK-US invasion in 2003 the secular socialist Baathist leadership were replaced with a provisional and later constitutional government that included leadership roles for the Shia and Kurdish. This paralleled the development of ethnic militias by the Shia, Sunni, and the Kurdish Peshmerga.

During the course of the Iraq War the country has increasingly become divided into three zones: a Kurdish ethnic zone to the north, a Sunni center and the Shia ethnic zone to the south.

While all three groups have operated death squads,^[124] in the national capital of Baghdad some members of the now Shia police department and army formed unofficial, unsanctioned, but long tolerated death squads.^[125] They possibly have links to the Interior Ministry and are popularly known as the 'black crows'. These groups operated night or day. They usually arrested people, then either tortured^[126] or killed them.^[127]

The victims of these attacks were predominantly young males who had probably been suspected of being members of the Sunni insurgency. Agitators such as Abdul Razaq al-Na’as, Dr. Abdullateef al-Mayah, and Dr. Wissam Al-Hashimi have also been killed. Women and children have also been arrested and or killed.^[128] Some of these killings have also been simple robberies or other criminal activities.

A feature in a May 2005 issue of the magazine of The New York Times accused the U.S. military of modelling the "Wolf Brigade", the Iraqi interior ministry police commandos, on the death squads used in the 1980s to crush the Marxist insurgency in El Salvador.^[129]

Lebanon

Death squads were active during the civil war from 1975 to 1990. The number of the disappeared is put around 17,000.^[130][131]

Oceania

Africa

Ivory Coast

Death squads are reported as active in this country.^[18][132]

This has been condemned by the US^[19] but appears to be difficult to stop. Moreover there is no proof as to whom is behind the killings^[20]

In an interview to the panafrican magazine "Jeune Afrique", Laurent Gbagbo accused one of the opposition leaders, Allasane Ouattara (ADO), to be the main organizer of the media frenzy around his wife's involvement in the killing squads. He also successfully sued and won, in French courts, in cases against the French newspapers that made the accusations.^[133]

^===

Banana massacre

See also: Banana massacre

One of the most notorious strikes by United Fruit workers broke out on 12 November 1928 on the Caribbean coast of Colombia, near Santa Marta. On 6 December, Colombian Army troops under the command of General Cortés Vargas opened fire on a crowd of strikers gathered in the central square of the town of Ciénaga. Estimates of the number of casualties vary from 47 to 2000. The military justified this action by claiming that the strike was subversive and its organizers were Communist revolutionaries. Congressman Jorge Eliécer Gaitán claimed that the army had acted under instructions from the United Fruit Company. The ensuing scandal contributed to President Miguel Abadía Méndez's Conservative Party being voted out of office in 1930, putting an end to 44 years of Conservative rule in Colombia. 

The first novel of Álvaro Cepeda Samudio, La Casa Grande, focuses on this event, and the author himself grew up in close proximity to the incident. The climax of :{García Márquez}:'s novel *:{One Hundred Years of Solitude}:* is based on the events in Ciénaga, though the author himself has acknowledged that the death toll of 3,000 that he gives there is greatly inflated.^{[^^12]^}(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Fruit_Company#cite_note-11)

General Cortés Vargas, who issued the order to shoot, argued later that he had issued the order because he had information that U.S. boats were poised to land troops on Colombian coasts to defend American personnel and the interests of the United Fruit Company. Vargas issued the order so the US would not invade Colombia. This position was strongly criticized in the Senate, especially by Jorge Eliécer Gaitán, who argued that those same bullets should have been used to stop the foreign invader.^{[citation needed]}

The telegram from Bogotá Embassy to the U.S. Secretary of State, dated December 5, 1928, stated: “I have been following Santa Marta fruit strike through United Fruit Company representative here; also through Minister of Foreign Affairs who on Saturday told me government would send additional troops and would arrest all strike leaders and transport them to prison at Cartagena; that government would give adequate protection to American interests involved.”^{[^^13]^}(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Fruit_Company#cite_note-12)

The telegram from Bogotá Embassy to Secretary of State, date December 7, 1928, stated: “Situation outside Santa Marta City unquestionably very serious: outside zone is in revolt; military who have orders "not to spare ammunition" have already killed and wounded about fifty strikers. Government now talks of general offensive against strikers as soon as all troopships now on the way arrive early next week.”^{[^^14]^}(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Fruit_Company#cite_note-13)

The Dispatch from US Bogotá Embassy to the US Secretary of State, dated December 29, 1928, stated: “I have the honor to report that thelegal advisor of the United Fruit Companyhere in Bogotá stated yesterday that the total number of strikers killed by the Colombian military authorities during the recent disturbance reached between five and six hundred; while the number of soldiers killed was one.”^{[^^15]^}(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Fruit_Company#cite_note-14)

The Dispatch from US Bogotá Embassy to the US Secretary of State, dated January 16, 1929, stated: “I have the honor to report that the Bogotá representative of the United Fruit Company told me yesterday that the total number of strikers killed by the Colombian military exceeded one thousand.”^{[^^16]^}(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Fruit_Company#cite_note-15)

The Banana massacre is said to be one of the main events that preceded the Bogotazo, the subsequent era of violence known as :{La Violencia}:, and the guerrillas who developed during the bipartisan :{National Front}: period, creating the ongoing armed conflict in Colombia.^{[citation needed]}

^=

In the case of Colombia, this meant paying an officially designated terrorist gang -- the vicious killers of the rightwing United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) -- to keep Chiquita's operations running smoothly in the war-torn nation. A whole sordid history could be written about the extensive intertwining of American government and corporate interests with AUC and the other rightwing Colombian militias, but for our purposes here it is enough to note that Chiquita not only paid AUC for protection from leftwing militias, it also took an active and direct role in "in smuggling thousands of arms for paramilitaries into the Northern Uraba region, using docks operated by the company to unload thousands of Central American assault rifles and ammunition," as the Post reports. In turn, the paramilitaries used these weapons "to fund operations against peasants, union workers and rivals."

"I regarded this as a murder investigation," says Roscoe Howard Jr., the former U.S. Attorney who spearheaded a prosecution of Chiquita for its death-squad collaboration, the Wall Street Journal reports. "Even though Chiquita didn't murder anyone, that's what the money was used for -- to buy weapons."

Earlier this year,Chiquitathe corporate entity paid a piddling $25 million to wash the blood from its gleaming office walls. But now the company's human entities are facing personal criminal charges for facilitating the murder, kidnapping, rape and robbery of innocent human beings. To counter this, they are offering a modified version of the Nuremberg Defense; it's not exactly that they were "just following orders" from Der Leader, but they say they did receive implicit permission from the Bush Regime to carry on funding the Colombian death squads after corporate officials notified the Justice Department in 2003 of their involvement with AUC. As the Post notes:

"... last week, lawyers for the former Chiquita executives sent letters to the Justice Department, asserting that their clients did not intentionally break the law but believed they were waiting for an answer from the highest levels of the Bush administration."

The man they sought out at the Justice Department the Assistant Attorney General, oneMichael Chertoff,now the gut-checking head of Homeland Security. As the Post reports:

"Chiquita, [company officials told Chertoff], would have to pull out of the country if it could not continue to pay the violent right-wing group to secure its Colombian banana plantations.Chertoff...affirmed that the payments were illegal but said to wait for more feedback, according to five sources familiar with the meeting...Sources close to Chiquita say that Chertoff never did get back to the company or its lawyers. Neither did Larry D. Thompson, the deputy attorney general, whom Chiquita officials sought out after Chertoff left his job for a federal judgeship in June 2003. And Chiquita kept making payments for nearly another year."

But as we all know, terrorism is in the eye of the beholder. And there were many in the Bush Regime who did not regard AUC as real terrorists; after all, they weren't Muslims, and they were only killing a bunch of piss-poor Latinos -- along with political opponents of Washington's much-favored Uribe administration in Bogata. What's not to like. As the Post reports:

"But legal sources on both sides say there was a genuine debate within the Justice Department about the seriousness of the crime of paying AUC. For some high-level administration officials, Chiquita's payments were not aiding an obvious terrorism threat such as al-Qaeda; instead, the cash was going to a violent South American group helping a major U.S. company maintain a stabilizing presence in Colombia."

As long as a "violent group" supports American policy or corporate interests, they can let rip. We see this dynamic in operation all over the world at the moment. It is part of a long-standing -- and open -- policy of the Bush Administration to arm and fund violent militias to do its dirty work. As I wrote here in Counterpunch back in 2004:

"Last month, in little-noticed testimony before Congress, the Bush Regime unveiled its plans to raise a host of warlord armies in the most volatile areas in the world, Agence France-Presse reports. Bush wants $500 million in seed money to arm and train non-governmental "local militias" – i.e., bands of lawless freebooters – to serve as Washington's proxy killers in the so-called "arc of crisis" that just happens to stretch across the oil-bearing lands and strategic pipeline routes of Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia and South America.

"Flanked by a gaggle of military brass, Pentagon deputy honcho Paul Wolfowitz told a rapt panel of Congressional rubber-stamps that Bush wants big bucks to run "counter-insurgency" and "counter-terrorist" operations in "ungoverned areas" of the world– and in the hinterlands of nations providing "sanctuary" for terrorists. Making copious citations from Bush's 2002 "National Security Strategy" of unprovoked aggressive war against "potential" enemies, Howlin' Wolf proposed expanding the definition of "terrorist sanctuary" to any nation that allows clerics and other rabble-rousers to offer even verbal encouragement to America's designated enemies du jour.

"Any rogue state that countenances such freedom of speech within its borders will become a prime target for "the path of action," said Wolf, quoting Bush's most ringing Hitlerian phrase from the 2002 manifesto. To relieve the overstretched U.S. military, the "action" will be carried out largely by Bush's new hired guns: religious and ethnic militias, tribal forces, mercenaries, cultists, insurrectionists, druglords, pirates – basically anyone willing to slit throats and terrorize populations at the order of the Oval One."

Of course, it is very good indeed that, against all odds, there remain some honest prosecutors in the federal justice system willing to do what should have been done a century ago: hold corporate chieftains responsible for the crimes they beget in their slavering pursuit of profit. But it also clear that the Chiquita executives were given the same kind of nod-and-wink for murky dealings that their illustrious predecessors have always received from Washington. That they may now be hoist on their own petar is their own tough luck; but they are certainly not the only ones who should be in the dock.

Chris Floyd is an American journalist based in the UK and a frequent contributor to CounterPunch. He is the writer of the political blog, Empire Burlesque, and author of the book, Empire Burlesque: High Crimes and Low Comedy in the Bush Imperium.

Sources:

Cry Havoc: Bush's Own Personal Janjaweed, Counterpunch, Sept. 7, 2004

Guatemala 1953-1954: While the world watched, from "Killing Hope," by William Blum

Fear Up Harsh: The Iraq Civil War in Context, Empire Burlesque, March 28, 2006

A Tiny Revolution, Jonathan Schwarz, July 21, 2007

In Terrorism-Law Case, Chiquita Points to U.S., Washington Post, Aug. 2, 2007

Chiquita Under the Gun, Wall Street Journal, Aug. 2, 2007

The New Turn, Antiwar.com, Aug. 2, 2007

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http://www.corporate-ethics.org/pdf/case_studies/BRI-1008_Chiquita_and_Department_of_Justice.pdf

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