Oaxaca, Mexico Two Activists Killed in Paramilitary Ambush

No to Impunity! End the Assassinations, Disappearances and Intimidation!

TML expresses its outrage at the assassination of Beatriz Cariño Trujillo, coordinator of the Mexican Network of People Affected by Mining (REMA) and member of the Center for Community Support Working Together (CACTUS), and Tyri Antero Jaakkola, a Finnish human rights observer, in Mexico on April 27. They were shot to death by UBISORT, a paramilitary group with strong links to the state government, during an ambush of the Observation and Solidarity Caravan to the Autonomous Municipality of San Juan Copala. Beatriz and Tyri were participating in the caravan along with other members of REMA and CACTUS, members of Oaxacan Voices Building Autonomy and Liberty (VOCAL) and several international human rights observers from Italy, Belgium and Germany. The caravan was organized by VOCAL and the Popular Assembly of Peoples of Oaxaca (APPO). Several people were also injured during the ambush of the caravan, while some were able to escape while the paramilitary soldiers were reloading their AK-47s. The paramilitary soldiers also shot on an ambulance that appeared at the scene and prevented it from helping the injured people, while they forced others into the forest and subjected them to interrogations and death threats before abandoning them on the road. It took several days before some of those who were taken away by the UBISORT could make their way home, causing great anxiety as they were counted amongst the disappeared. The caravan was heading to the municipality of San Juan Copala in the region of Triqui to provide aid to the community which has been subjected to a paramilitary blockade and forced into isolation since declaring its autonomy. The encirclement of the autonomous Triqui community is part of the state repression of the struggles of the people to take control of their own destiny, with the paramilitary UBISORT, led by Rufine Juarez Hernandez, enjoying the full sanction of the state government. Due to the paramilitary blockade, the children in the municipality are not able to go to school, the community is without electricity, drinking water, and medical services and it is facing food shortages as shipments from outside are blocked. The April 27 caravan was attempting to break this encirclement and deliver supplies to the people. After the announcement of the caravan, the head of UBISORT, Rufine Hernandez Juarez had declared that he would prevent the passage of the caravan at any cost, but state officials did nothing to avert the assault on the caravan.

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source : cpcml.ca

Reflections by Comrade Fidel : THE BROTHERHOOD BETWEEN THE BOLIVARIAN REPUBLIC AND CUBA

source : cuba.cu

I had the privilege of having a conversation for three hours last Thursday the 15th with Hugo Chávez, the president of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela: he had the courtesy to visit our country once again, this time en route from Nicaragua.

On just a few occasions, perhaps never, have I known a person who has been capable of leading a real and profound Revolution for more than 10 years; with not a single day of rest, in a territory under a million square kilometres, in this region of the world colonized by the Iberian Peninsula which for 300 years dominated an area 20 times greater than itself, a territory having immense wealth, where it imposed its beliefs, language and culture.  One could not today write about the history of our species without mentioning what occurred in this hemisphere.

As for Bolívar, he did not fight for Venezuela alone.  At that time, the water and the land was much purer; the natural species were varied and in abundance; the energy contained in its gas and oil was unknown.   Two hundred years ago, when the struggle for independence in Venezuela began, he did not do it just for the independence of that country, he did it for that of all the still colonized peoples of the continent.

Bolívar dreamed of creating the greatest Republic that had ever existed and whose capital would be the Isthmus of Panama.

In his insuperable greatness, The Liberator, with true revolutionary genius, was capable of predicting that the United States –originally limited to the territory of the Thirteen Colonies of England – seemed destined to sow misery over the Americas on behalf of liberty.

A factor that contributed to Latin America’s struggle for its independence was the invasion of Spain by Napoleon who, with his boundless ambition, contributed to creating the right conditions for the beginning of the independence struggles on our continent.  The history of humankind is sinuous and full of contradictions; in its turn it becomes ever more complicated and difficult.

Our country speaks with the moral authority of a small nation that has resisted more than fifty years of brutal repression by that empire foreseen by Bolívar, the most powerful empire that ever existed.  The immense hypocrisy of its policy and its disdain for other peoples has led it into very serious and dangerous situations.  Among other consequences is the day by day evidence of its cowardliness and cynicism, converted into daily practice in international policy, since the vast majority of honest persons on this Earth don’t have any possibility of making their opinions known, nor of receiving trustworthy information.

The policy of principles and honesty with which the Cuban Revolution has always exposed successes and errors – and especially determinate norms of behaviour that have never been violated throughout more than fifty years, such as never torturing any citizen – knows no exception.  Likewise, it has never yielded, nor will it ever yield, to the media-inspired blackmail and terror.  These are historical facts that have been clearly demonstrated.  We are dealing with a subject that I could expound upon at length; today we merely mention it to explain the reason for our friendship and admiration for the Bolivarian President Hugo Chávez, a topic I could go into considerably.  Suffice it to quote a few elements on this occasion to explain why I stated that it constitutes a privilege to talk for hours with him.

He had not yet been born when the attack on the Moncada Barracks took place on July 26^th of 1953. He wasn’t even five years old when the Revolution triumphed on the first of January of 1959. I met him in 1994, 35 years later, when he had turned 40 years old.  Since then I have been able to observe his revolutionary development for almost 16 years.  Endowed with exceptional talent, an insatiable reader, I can offer testimony of his capacity for developing and intensifying revolutionary ideas.  As in every human being, fate and circumstances play a decisive part in the advancement of his ideas.  His capacity to remember any concept and repeat it with incredible precision much later is remarkable.  He is a true master in the development and dissemination of revolutionary ideas.  He has command of these ideas and of the art of transmitting them with astounding eloquence.   He is absolutely honest and sensitive in regards to persons, and incredibly generous in his nature.   He requires no praise and, in turn, is accustomed to be generous in giving it.  Whenever I do not agree with any of his points of view or any of his decisions, I merely tell him about it sincerely, at the proper time and with the due respect of our friendship.  By doing so, I especially bear in mind that today he is the person about whom the empire is most worried, due to his capacity to influence the masses and due to the immense natural resources of a country that they have pillaged mercilessly, and the person they rigorously strike and attempt to take away his authority.  Both the empire and the mercenaries at its beck and call, intoxicated by the lies and the consumerism, once more run the risk of under-estimating him and his heroic people, but I haven’t the slightest doubt that again they will be taught an unforgettable lesson.  More than half a century of struggle indicates that to me with total clarity.

Chávez carries the dialectic within himself.  Never, at any time, has any government done so much for its people in such a short time.  I am especially delighted to send his people warm congratulations upon the celebration of the 200^th anniversary of the beginning of the struggle for the independence of Venezuela and Latin America.  As fate would have it, on April 19^th we are also celebrating the victory of the Revolution over imperialism at the Bay of Pigs, exactly 49 years ago.  We would like to share that victory with the Homeland of Bolívar.

I am also pleased to send a greeting to all our brothers and sisters in ALBA.

Fidel Castro Ruz

Abril 18, 2010

Yankees: Remember April

source: cpcml.ca

Nidia Díaz, Granma International, April 14, 2010

History has its caprices which, as time passes, become symbols. On April 19, 1961, the Cubans defeated the mercenary invasion on the sandy beaches of Playa Giron. The Bay of Pigs invasion was backed and paid for by the U.S. government, in an attempt to reverse the revolutionary process and halt the initial steps of our socialism. Meanwhile, we celebrated the victory. In Venezuela, it was the 150th anniversary of the meeting of residents from the province of Caracas in Cabildo to begin the independence struggle that has found continuity in the triumphant Bolivarian Revolution.

Those were sufficient reasons for the empire to convert the war against Cuba and Venezuela into a kind of medieval crusade. They are so forgetful and obtuse that on this April 19, the 200th anniversary of Venezuela’s independence struggle and the eve of the 50th anniversary of the empire’s major defeat in Latin America at the Bay of Pigs, they have organized a meeting of “freedom activists, human rights and internet experts,” directed at coordinating a strategic cyber-war on Cuba and Venezuela, in addition to Iran, Russia, China, Serbia, and other nations. The meeting is sponsored by the George W. Bush Institute and Freedom House.

They do not want to leave any loose ends. For its part, the Obama administration has launched, with the old cold war arsenal, a demented campaign against both nations, trying to avert the advance of the new regional organization, the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA), from which it is excluded and thus unable to exert its unwholesome policies from within against national liberation movements that have begun to consolidate and extend into its coveted backyard. It cannot bear the idea of being excluded.

This is what it is about. This is its current priority. The discredited Organization of American States (OAS) will not be allowed to die and the U.S. government will interrupt, in any way possible, the new regional organization. In order to achieve this it is willing — as is always the case when something is not to its convenience — to use brute force to destroy it, because the ALBA’s strong development makes it nervous. The administration is aware that its friends in the media will later justify its actions.

On this occasion Obama and his team are going after what is to become a new hemispheric organization, born from the incapacity and genuflection of the current OAS, but the empire’s objective has a longer reach: to get rid of the nightmare and insomnia prompted by the Cuban Revolution since that morning of January 1, 1959, which has resulted in the multiplication of Cuba’s example. Now, they are going after Chávez, leader of the Bolivarian Revolution, that Revolution which arose from the particular characteristics of Venezuela and is advocating an eclectic socialism, with the aggravating quality — for the United States — that it is a country with enormous natural resources, possessing great hydrocarbon, gas and water deposits, resources that Washington needs like a vampire needs blood.

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Argentina Reiterates Claim over Malvinas

Source: cpcml.ca

On Friday, April 2, Argentina commemorated the 28th anniversary of the Falklands War, when it deployed troops to the Malvinas/Falkland Islands in defence of its sovereignty and territorial claim on the islands against British colonialism. 649 Argentine troops died in the 74-day conflict that began on April 2, 1982.

Speaking on April 2 from Ushuaia, capital of the Argentine province of Tierra del Fuego at the main commemoration, Argentine President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner laid a wreath at the plaque bearing the names of all those who lost their lives during the war. Accompanied by Defence Secretary Nilda Garré, Tierra del Fuego governor Fabiana Rios, the three commanders of the armed services and hundreds of veterans, she gave a national address in which she spoke to the British colonial claims on the territory, most recently manifest by British oil exploration in the region. She called allegations that Argentina will launch a military raid to recover the Malvinas Islands “ridiculous” and “old intelligence” from “an old colonialist power.” “Don’t try to scare us with the spectre that we are going to take Malvinas militarily,” she said.

Fernández de Kirchner called on other countries to pressure Britain to agree to negotiate the territorial sovereignty of the Malvinas: “With intelligence and perseverance we must execute this task on all fronts and in all international fora to expose the injustice, the incoherence of a country that [says it] wants to live in peace and respect borders, but it has a seat in the United Nations Security Council and does not respect UN resolutions,” Fernández de Kirchner said. Argentina’s claim to the disputed territory has been bolstered by the unanimous backing of 32 Latin American and Caribbean nations, including Brazil, Mexico and Colombia.

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Coup and Countercoup, Revolution

Source: cpcml.ca

Eva Golinger, Postcards from the Revolution, April 11, 2010

On April 13, 2010, Venezuela commemorated the eighth anniversary of the coup d’etat backed by Washington that changed the Bolivarian Revolution forever.

In just 47 hours, a coup d’etat ousted President Chávez and a countercoup returned him to power, in an extraordinary showing of the will and determination of a dignified people on a revolutionary path with no return. The mass media played a major role in advancing the coup and spreading false information internationally in order to justify the coup plotters’ actions. CIA documents revealed U.S. government involvement and support to the coup organizers

When Hugo Chávez was elected President in 1998, the Clinton administration maintained a “wait and see” policy. Venezuela had been a faithful servant to U.S. interests throughout the twentieth century, and despite the rhetoric of revolution spoken by President Chávez, few in Washington believed change was imminent.

But after Chávez followed through on his first and principal campaign promise, to initiate a Constitutional Assembly and redraft the nation’s magna carta, everything began to change.

The new Constitution was written and ratified by the people of Venezuela, in an extraordinary demonstration of participatory democracy. Throughout the nation in early 1999, all Venezuelans were invited to aid in the creation of what would become one of the most advanced constitutions in the world in the area of human rights. The draft text of 350 articles, which included a chapter dedicated to indigenous peoples’ rights, along with the rights to housing, healthcare, education, nutrition, work, fair wages, equality, recreation, culture, and a redistribution of the oil industry production and profit, was ratified by national referendum towards the end of 1999 by more than 70% of voters.

Elections were immediately convened under the new constitutional structure, and Chávez won again with an even larger majority, around 56%. Once in office in 2000, laws were implemented to guarantee the new rights accorded in the Constitution, and interests were affected. Venezuela assumed the presidency of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), with oil at approximately $7 USD a barrel. Quickly, under Venezuela’s leadership, which sought to benefit oil producing nations and not those supplied, oil rose to more than $25 USD a barrel. Washington was uneasy with these changes, but still was “waiting to see” how far the changes would go.

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Bay of Pigs and the Anti-Cuba Campaign

source: cpcml.ca

The fierce anti-Cuba media campaign currently underway by the U.S. and its European allies brings to mind the similar public relations campaign Washington launched prior to the Bay of Pigs invasion.

In those days, just like this month, April 1961 witnessed a well-orchestrated media campaign against the then emerging Cuban Revolution, using the U.S. control over the mass media.

The decision to overthrow the Cuban government by force had been long before made by the highest U.S. governmental spheres.

Those who had traditionally controlled the Cuban economy and society never imagined that the small neighboring country could make its own decisions and set its own direction.

As early as April 1959, after the interview with Fidel Castro, then U.S. Vice President Richard Nixon decreed it was imperative to eliminate the Revolution saying it posed a threat to U.S. interests.

Florida-based groups in charge of terror actions against Cuba were given increasing support, while a media campaign was developed aimed at ensuring future direct aggression.

In that media drive, the U.S. spared no effort to convince the world, with false news, of an internal rebellion on the island and of the support for a “government in exile” of traditional, corrupt politicians.

The strategy has not changed much with the passing of years, and a torrent of lies about the Cuban reality is being unleashed against Cuba, including the same support for those who prefer to be in the service of the enemy power.

Despite this campaign, [they cannot change that] the Bay of Pigs invasion has gone down in history as the humiliating defeat in less than 72 hours of a paid army which not even their costly media campaign could save.

49th Anniversary of Defeat of Bay of Pigs Invasion Hands Off Cuba!

source: cpcml.ca

On April 17, 1961, CIA-trained anti-Cuba mercenaries invaded Cuba at Playa Giron, also known as the Bay of Pigs, where they met an overwhelming defeat in their unsuccessful attempt to overthrow the young Revolution. On this occasion, TML sends its warmest greetings to the Cuban people and their leadership and wishes them every success in further strengthening their Revolution.

The decisive victory over the enemy forces at the Bay of Pigs is regarded as the first defeat of U.S. imperialism in Latin America, where the U.S. imperialists had by that time already caused so many tragedies through coups, military interventions and other interference in Latin America and the Caribbean.

In 1961 the CIA was completing the details of its Plan Pluto, to establish a beachhead on Cuban territory and create a situation where the U.S. could provide itself a pretext to self-righteously intervene and place a puppet regime in power. To carry out this plan, it assembled the infamous Brigade 2506 — made up mostly of henchmen of the former U.S.-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista, as well as mercenaries, terrorists and overthrown oligarchs.

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Media Disinformation: The Cuban Five and the Assassination of Fabio di Celmo: Washington’s Double Standards

source: Global Research, April 13, 2010 bye Arnold August

The alternative media in countries such as the USA and Canada are trying their utmost to further break the silence regarding the Cuban Five. One such media is Radio-Montréal in Quebec. The host of the weekly program in French, Le Monde, cette semaine (the World this Week), André Pesant, invited me once again to exchange views with him about this case and inform the listeners of this popular radio station. André has consistently offered his program to allow guests to tell the truth about the Cuban Five.

He opened the show by outlining some of the history of the case, complemented by my input.

Together we provided the following information. The five Cubans were sent to south Florida in the 1990s in order to infiltrate terrorist organisations operating for decades with impunity against Cuba from that area in the USA. Over 3,000 Cubans were killed and 2,000 seriously maimed by terrorists activities in Cuba since the revolution of January 1, 1959. The Cuban authorities have continuously pressed upon Washington to stop this action emanating from their territory, but to no avail. The only choice open to Cuba was to gather the information and provide it to the US authorities so that action is taken against those responsible. This is what the five Cuban citizens did. However, when all the evidence was presented to the FBI representatives in Havana, instead of arresting the perpetrators of these crimes, they arrested the five Cubans.

André showed a great deal of interest in the kangaroo courts proceedings held in Miami despite the objections of their lawyer to the impossibility of having a free, fair and impartial trial in that city. Miami is the hot-bead for violent anti-Cuban action. The Five were also held in solitary confinement (the “hole”) for 17 months after their arrest in Miami on September 12, 1998, unable to communicate with each other or their families. Their confinement prevented them from properly preparing for their defence.

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Hillary Clinton and Lifting the Blockade against Cuba: “Try It”

source: Global Research, April 14, 2010

On April 10 one of the most important alternative radio stations on the Canadian west coast (near Vancouver) interviewed me on the current media campaign against Cuba and in this context the latest statement by Hillary Clinton. The moderator of the Latin Waves program Stuart Richardson read to the listeners part of Secretary of State Clinton’s April 9 comment; she says that the “Castro brothers”  “do not want to see an end to the embargo and do not want to see normalization with the United States because they would then lose all the excuses for what hasn’t happened in Cuba in the last 50 years.” I pointed out that this is the latest in a string of lies and disinformation about Cuba. The fact is that the Cuban leadership has always striven and strives now for the normalization of relations with the USA. Just in this current period since the arrival of Obama as president, this objective was explicitly and forcefully raised on many occasions by the President of the Council of State and Council of Ministers Raúl Castro. For his part Fidel Castro in his many Reflections on the subject of US-Cuba relations and on Obama, has been writing most eloquently and openly with the goal to attract the Obama Administration towards taking significant steps towards standardizing dealings with the island.

If there are conditions imposed by Washington for the normalization of relations such as those Clinton reiterated on April 9, that is a change in the political system of Cuba, then this cannot be considered a step towards regularization of interaction. Why should Cuba agree to normalization of relations on the basis of these imposed preconditions, I asked? The right to self-determination and sovereignty is an inalienable right of all countries in the world, big or small, rich or poor. Does Cuba dictate that the US has to change its political and economic system before the two countries sit down to talk? No. On the contrary, the Cuban leaders have publicly stated time and again that they are willing to discuss “everything, everything, everything”, but on the basis of equality between two states, that is mutual respect. If the US has so far refused to interact on this basis, the blame falls on the US and not on Cuba.

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U.S. and Colombia Cover Up Atrocities Through Mass Graves

source: cpcml.ca

The biggest human rights scandal in years is developing in Colombia, though you wouldn’t notice it from the total lack of media coverage here. The largest mass grave unearthed in Colombia was discovered by accident last year just outside a Colombian Army base in La Macarena, a rural municipality located in the Department of Meta just south of Bogota. The grave was discovered when children drank from a nearby stream and started to become seriously ill. These illnesses were traced to runoff from what was discovered to be a mass grave — a grave marked only with small flags showing the dates (between 2002 and 2009) on which the bodies were buried.

According to a February 10, 2010 letter issued by Alexandra Valencia Molina, Director of the regional office of Colombia’s own Procuraduria General de la Nacion — a government agency tasked to investigate government corruption — approximately 2,000 bodies are buried in this grave. The Colombian Army has admitted responsibility for the grave, claiming to have killed and buried alleged guerillas there. However, the bodies in the grave have yet to be identified. Instead, against all protocol for handling the remains of anyone killed by the military, especially those of guerillas, the bodies contained in the mass grave were buried there secretly without the requisite process of having the Colombian government certify that the deceased were indeed the armed combatants the Army claims.

And, given the current “false positive” scandal which has enveloped the government of President Alvaro Uribe and his Defense Minister, Juan Manuel Santos, who is now running to succeed Uribe as President, the Colombian Army’s claim about the mass grave is especially suspect. This scandal revolves around the Colombian military, most recently under the direction of Juan Manuel Santos, knowingly murdering civilians in cold blood and then dressing them up to look like armed guerillas in order to justify more aid from the United States. According to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pilay, this practice has been so “systematic and widespread” as to amount to a “crime against humanity.” And sadly, when Ms. Pilay made this statement, she literally did not know the half of it.

To date, not factoring in the mass grave, it has been confirmed by Colombian government sources that 2,000 civilians have fallen victim to the “false positive” scheme since President Uribe took office in 2002. If, as suspected by Colombian human rights groups, such as the “Comision de Derechos Humanos del Bajo Ariari” and the “Colectivo Orlando Fals Borda,” the mass grave in La Macarena contains 2,000 more civilian victims of this scheme, then this would bring the total of those victimized by the “false positive” scandal to at least 4,000 — much worse than originally believed.

That this grave was discovered just outside a Colombian military base overseen by U.S. military advisers — the U.S. having around 600 military advisers in that country — is especially troubling, and raises serious questions about the U.S.’s own conduct in that country. In addition, this calls into even greater question the propriety of President Obama’s agreement with President Alvaro Uribe last summer to grant the U.S. access to 7 military bases in that country.

The Colombian government and military are scrambling to contain this most recent scandal, and possibly through violence. Thus, on March 15, 2010, Jhonny Hurtado, a former union leader and President of the Human Rights Committee of La Cantina, and an individual who was key in revealing the truth about this mass grave, was assassinated as soldiers from Colombia’s 7th Mobile Brigade patrolled the area. Just prior to his murder, Jhonny Hurtado told a delegation of British MPs visiting Colombia that he believed the mass grave at La Macarena contained the bodies of innocent people who had been “disappeared.”

The discovery of this mass grave by sheer accident raises the prospect that there are more yet to be found. Certainly, it is the consensus of human rights groups in Colombia that this is only be the tip of the iceberg. In any case, the discovery of this grave, on top of the large magnitude of the “false positive” scandal already known, justifies a serious rethinking of U.S. policy toward Colombia — a policy pursuant to which the U.S. has sent over $7 billion of military aid to Colombia since 2000 and still counting. This policy, which President Obama is only deepening, has continued the U.S.’s long-standing practice of giving the most military aid to the worst human rights abusers. The time is way overdue for this practice to end.

* Daniel Kovalik is a human and labor rights lawyer living in Pittsburgh. The information in this article about the mass grave at La Maracena was based on research provided by Justice for Colombia in London and by two brave Colombian human rights leaders, Edinson Cuellar and Carolina Hoyas, who are working tirelessly to spread the truth about this mass grave.