From http://www.state.gov/www/global/human_rights/1999_hrp_report/colombia.html >>>The article is quite long so I just am posting the first little bit. This is what the government provides (for 1999) as its analysis of the situation in Columbia. It is a sub-site of a larger site that lists other sub-sites for each continent and the countries thereon. A<>E<>R }}>Begin excerpt 1999 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices Released by the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor U.S. Department of State, February 25, 2000 COLOMBIA Colombia is a constitutional, multiparty democracy, in which the Liberal and Conservative parties have long dominated politics. Citizens elected President Andres Pastrana of the Conservative Party and a bicameral legislature controlled by the Liberal Party in generally free, fair, and transparent elections in 1998, despite attempts at intimidation and fraud by paramilitary groups, guerrillas, and narcotics traffickers. The civilian judiciary is largely independent of government influence, although the suborning or intimidation of judges, witnesses, and prosecutors by those indicted is common. The Government continued to face a serious challenge to its control over the national territory, as longstanding and widespread internal armed conflict and rampant violence--both political and criminal--persisted. The principal participants were government security forces, paramilitary groups, guerrillas, and narcotics traffickers. In some areas government forces were engaged in combat with guerrillas or narcotics traffickers, while in others paramilitary groups fought guerrillas, and in still others guerrillas attacked demobilized members of rival guerrilla factions. Paramilitary groups and guerrillas attacked at increasing levels unarmed civilians suspected of loyalty to an opposing party in the conflict. The two major guerrilla groups, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the National Liberation Army (ELN), consist of an estimated 11,000 to 17,000 full-time combatants organized into more than 100 semiautonomous groups. The FARC and the ELN, along with other smaller groups, exercised a significant degree of influence and initiated armed action in nearly 1,000 of the country's 1,085 municipalities during the year, compared with 700 municipalities in 1998. The major guerrilla organizations received a significant part of their revenues (in the hundreds of millions of dollars) from fees levied on narcotics production and trafficking. Guerrillas and paramilitary groups supplanted absent state institutions in many sparsely populated areas of the national territory. In July 1998, then- President-elect Pastrana met with the FARC's leader, "Manuel Marulanda Velez," and agreed to a demilitarized zone ("despeje") in which the two sides could pursue direct peace talks. In November 1998, the despeje was initiated in 5 southern municipalities, with a total population of approximately 100,000 persons. Security forces completed their withdrawal from the area the following month. In January Marulanda failed to appear for the scheduled formal inauguration of peace talks in the despeje. President Pastrana and Marulanda met again in May and agreed on an agenda for formal negotiations and on procedures for the creation of an international verification commission to monitor both sides' compliance with the terms of the despeje. However, the FARC refused to proceed with the establishment of the commission. Formal Government- FARC peace negotiations began in earnest in October and were underway at year's end, following the Government's concession to the FARC that, at least initially, there be no international verification commission. The Government also held a series of informal discussions with the ELN during the year, but insisted on the ELN's release of the victims of specific mass kidnapings as a condition for undertaking formal negotiations and for demilitarizing a zone in which the ELN could hold its national convention. At year's end, the ELN had not complied with the Government's request and still held captive several dozen of the specified kidnap victims. >>>Remainder at site <<< End exceerpt<{{ A<>E<>R Integrity has no need of rules. -Albert Camus (1913-1960) + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes. -Marcel Proust ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The libertarian therefore considers one of his prime educational tasks is to spread the demystification and desanctification of the State among its hapless subjects. His task is to demonstrate repeatedly and in depth that not only the emperor but even the "democratic" State has no clothes; that all governments subsist by exploitive rule over the public; and that such rule is the reverse of objective necessity. He strives to show that the existence of taxation and the State necessarily sets up a class division between the exploiting rulers and the exploited ruled. He seeks to show that the task of the court intellectuals who have always supported the State has ever been to weave mystification in order to induce the public to accept State rule and that these intellectuals obtain, in return, a share in the power and pelf extracted by the rulers from their deluded subjects. [[For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto, Murray N. Rothbard, Fox & Wilkes, 1973, 1978, p. 25]] <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. 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