A-Infos (en) Colombian Oil Town Hit by Protests After Massacre

[Tom Burghardt <tburghardt@igc.apc.org>]

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        COLOMBIAN OIL TOWN HIT BY PROTESTS AFTER MASSACRE
_________________________________________________________________
 
     09:15 p.m May 18, 1998 Eastern
     By Karl Penhaul
 
     BOGOTA, May 18 (Reuters) - Oil workers launched a 48-hour
strike and Marxist rebels clashed with security forces in
Colombia's main oil town on Monday, to protest an attack there by
a right-wing death squad over the weekend.
   
     A spokeswoman for City Hall said the bullet-riddled bodies
of 11 victims had so far been found and that 42 other people were
missing and feared dead after Sunday's pre-dawn paramilitary raid
in Barrancabermeja, in northeast Santander province.
   
     Police declined to confirm radio reports that six other
bodies had been found in the outskirts of the city.
   
     Military sources said soldiers fought sporadic battles with
urban guerrillas through the day close to the neighborhoods where
the death squad struck. No casualties were reported.
   
     As night fell, the powerful, fiercely nationalistic oil
workers union, USO, said it launched a citywide strike, backed by
other labor organizations and grass-roots movements, aimed at
halting business and transport in the oil-refining center.
   
     USO leaders accused the security forces of complicity in the
weekend attack.
   
     In a strongly worded letter issued on Monday, Amnesty
International condemned President Ernesto Samper for allegedly
failing to hunt down the ``dark forces'' behind the surge in
human rights abuses in the lead-up to the May 31 presidential
election.
   
     ``Unless the government demonstrates its sincere political
will to confront these dark forces, those sectors that have
pushed Colombia to the edge of the abyss will continue to prosper
in their efforts to substitute the rule of law with the force of
arms,'' Amnesty Secretary-General Pierre Sane wrote.
   
     In a three-page response on Monday night, Samper rejected
the Amnesty comments as ``unfounded generalizations lacking in
objectivity.''
   
     Local media reported that some of those kidnapped by the
paramilitary gang were freed early on Monday.
   
     One witness told the Radionet radio network that he and 13
others were released but that at least 31 others were still being
held, some of them strung up in trees, in a mountainous area
close to Barrancabermeja.
   
     The gang of about 50 hooded paramilitary fighters, armed
with high-powered assault rifles, swept through four working-
class neighborhoods in the south and northeast of Barrancabermeja
aboard two trucks and a jeep early on Sunday.
   
     The areas attacked are considered hard-core support bases
for National Liberation Army (ELN) guerrillas, suggesting the
paramilitaries were looking for suspected rebel sympathizers.
   
     Gustavo Triana, a member of the USO's national directorate,
told Reuters that police and army roadblocks were set up around
the city on Saturday night, but were withdrawn from key points
shortly before the paramilitary raid.
   
     But in a speech to police in Bogota on Monday, Samper
rejected suggestions the security forces might be linked to the
killings.
   
     International human rights groups frequently accuse the
military of backing Colombia's ultra-right death squads.
 
     Copyright 1998 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.
 
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