Quebec fortress prepares for FTAA summit

Quebec, Canada, Jan. 7— Normand Houle’s finger traces a line around the historic ramparts of this European-style fortress on the bluffs above the St. Lawrence River, showing the plan for a new barrier.

The towers and walls built to repel invaders of centuries past no longer suffice for protecting 34 heads of state coming for the Summit of the Americas in April.

So another wall will be built, this one of metal fencing around several square miles of old Quebec City, says Houle of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP).

Riot police will stand guard along the fence in an old-fashioned show of force intended to prevent a burgeoning protest movement from disrupting the three-day summit that likely will be the first foreign trip for US President George W. Bush.

It will be one of the largest security operations in Canadian history, with a perimeter security fence similar to the 10-foot wall of metal wire that surrounded the Organization of American States gathering in Windsor, Ontario, in June.

“If somebody comes up with a better idea, we’re going to take it,’’ says Houle, the RCMP spokesman for the Summit of the Americas. “But so far, that is the best.’’

Preventing street clashes like the ones that derailed World Trade Organization talks in Seattle in December 1999 is the main goal, say police officials at the federal, provincial and local level.

The planned security zone covers much of old Quebec City’s upper town — both inside and outside the fortress walls. It will include six hotels, the Congress Center meeting site, the Quebec Parliament buildings and familiar tourist stops like the Terrasse Dufferin boardwalk, the Chateau Frontenac hotel and the Plains of Abraham.

Access will be tightly controlled, with special passes required to enter the security zone and additional photo identification badges for each summit venue, including hotels.

All the Western Hemisphere’s heads of state except Cuba’s Fidel Castro are coming to discuss expanding the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and other issues.

Organizers expect more than 4,000 delegates and 2,000 journalists, along with thousands of protesters seeking to publicize their anti-free trade, pro-environment messages.

“It’s the big event of the year’’ for activists in eastern Canada and the northeastern United States, says Michael Morrill of the Pennsylvania Consumer Action Network.

A veteran of demonstrations around the world, Morrill is helping organize a “Free Trade Caravan” that will makes it way to Quebec informing people about what the protesters contend are the ills of expanding NAFTA. Morrill predicts police will harass demonstrators traveling to the summit and provoke violence, a charge protesters have leveled at other international gatherings since Seattle.

Houle says police will identify and contact protest organizers before the summit. The goal, he says, is to block the small percentage of protesters who come to incite violence.

“We don’t have the intent to disrupt protests. That’s a free right in Canada,’’ he says.

Representatives of the RCMP, Quebec Provincial Police and Quebec City police have been meeting for months to study security tactics at other meetings such as the recent European Union summit in Nice, France.

“We’re not bothered by 40 people demonstrating inside. That’s easy to control,’’ Houle says. “We’re concerned about thousands and thousands protesting.’’

Mayor Jean-Paul L’Allier is troubled by the tough security plan. Speaking in his richly decorated office at town hall, L’Allier complains it could hinder city residents from moving freely, prevent peaceful protesters from being heard and make his city police look bad.

“Summits have turned sour,’’ he says with a sigh, noting such meetings now are being remembered mostly for televised images of street violence rather than agreements and diplomacy.

Houle insists security forces will be ready for anything, even protesters trying to repeat the British tactic from 1759 of climbing the cliffs along the St. Lawrence to attack the bastion of what was then called New France.

“If 2,000 people try to scale the cliff, we’ll be there,’’ he says.

Source: Associated Press

Chile: Pinochet defies judge’s orders

Santiago, Chile, Jan. 7-- Jose Maria Eyzaguirre, a lawyer for Chilean ex-dictator Augusto Pinochet Ugarte, announced at a Jan. 4 press conference that Pinochet had accepted the advice of his defense team and would defy a judicial order to undergo medical tests to determine his neurological and mental fitness for trial. On Jan. 2, investigative judge Juan Guzman Tapia had scheduled the medical exams for Jan. 7-8, and an interrogation of Pinochet for Jan. 9; the timeline would have allowed both events to be completed within deadlines set by the Supreme Court. Following three years of investigations, Guzman is pursuing kidnapping and murder charges against Pinochet in connection with the October 1973 Caravan of Death, in which 74 political prisoners were murdered by Pinochet’s military government. Guzman is also investigating more than 200 other cases against Pinochet.

Guzman, who had ordered the medical tests to be carried out at the Santiago Military Hospital, ruled on Jan. 2 that independent doctors could take part in the process, and that the test results must be confirmed by outside facilities. Guzman’s move came in response to objections from lawyers for the plaintiffs, who had argued that personnel at the military hospital could be biased, given the military’s unwavering support for Pinochet, who served as commander-in-chief of Chile’s military forces from September 1973 until March 1998.

On Jan. 4, Pinochet’s attorneys filed a request with Guzman to amend his Jan. 2 ruling; at the same time they submitted a petition to the Supreme Court asking that Guzman be removed from the case because he is “harassing” their client. On Jan. 5, the Supreme Court voted 15-2 to reject the motion to remove Guzman from the case. The Supreme Court also gave Guzman approval to continue with the scheduled medical exams and interrogation. The same day, Guzman denied the request by Pinochet’s defense to amend his Jan. 2 ruling on outside confirmation of the exam results.

Judge Guzman must go to the Santiago Military Hospital on Jan. 7 for the scheduled medical exams; if Pinochet does not show up, as is expected, Guzman must issue a formal confirmation of the defendant’s failure to appear. The same process must be repeated during the medical exams on Jan. 8. Guzman may then issue an arrest order against Pinochet, or he may choose to invoke article 341 of Chile’s Penal Code, which allows the judge to issue a ruling against the accused, as long as there is sufficient evidence, even without first carrying out the interrogation.

On Jan. 6, lawyers for the plaintiffs moved forward with a formal request for Pinochet’s house arrest, arguing that he was already in defiance of Guzman’s orders. The request was based on Pinochet’s failure to inform Guzman, by midnight on the night of Jan. 5, at which residence his Jan. 9 interrogation would take place. The request asks that Pinochet be detained at his vacation home in Bucalemu, some 130 kilometers south of Santiago, where he arrived on Jan. 4.

Source: Weekly News Update on the Americas: wnu@igc.org

Colombia: police, army join paramilitaries in oil port city

Barrancabermeja, Colombia, Dec. 28-- According to a report from Sistema de Informacion Patria Libre (SINPAL) in Barrancabermeja, from December 21 to 28 urban guerrilla commandos were fighting combined forces of army, police and paramilitaries in the southeastern section of Barrancabermeja, an oil port city on the Magdalena river, in the heart of the Magdalena Medio region. The military-paramilitary operations involve the special police intelligence force Sijin, the Administrative Security Department (DAS), the National Police and the Army; they are being led by Joaquin Correa Lopez, former commander of the Operational Commando of the Magdalena Medio Police.

On Dec. 21, reports SINPAL, members of the Sijin and the National Police dropped off 30 paramilitaries into the Simon Bolivar and Miraflores neighborhoods of Barrancabermeja. On Dec. 23, combined units of the ELN’s Yariguies Urban Resistance Front and of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) entered the same neighborhoods; a clash occurred in which one paramilitary was killed and another wounded. Ten minutes later the Sijin and the National Police arrived to rescue the paramilitaries. Later the same night, the paramilitaries and the Sijin entered the Primero de Mayo (May 1) neighborhood and clashed with urban guerrilla forces until just before dawn the next morning; one paramilitary and one guerrilla were wounded. Two civilians were killed by the paramilitaries: Edwin Bayon, a minor; and Gustavo Lobo Salcedo.

Since then, the paramilitaries have been staked out in three homes in the Primero de Mayo neighborhood, supported and guarded by the National Police and the Sijin. Every time the urban guerrillas attack the paramilitaries, reports SINPAL, troops come from the “45 Heroes del Majagual” Counter-Guerrilla Batallion, along with an armored vehicle of the National Police.

Two civilians were reported killed in a bomb explosion in Barrancabermeja on January 6. The explosion left more than 15 people injured, including civilians and police agents. Police say ELN members set off the 30-kilo bomb as an armored tank passed through the city on a routine patrol [the source did not say in which neighborhood the attack took place]. The ELN has been seeking to establish a peace process with the government, and on Dec. 23 it released 42 police agents and soldiers who it had captured in combat over the past two years.

Source: Weekly News Update on the Americas: wnu@igc.org

Twelve dead in second Colombia massacre in two days

Bogota, Colombia, Jan. 6— Gunmen killed at least 12 peasants on Friday in a mountainous region of northwestern Colombia where leftist guerrillas and far-right paramilitaries are fighting for territorial control, police said.

The killing, the second in the area in two days, happened between the towns of El Penol and Guatape in the department of Antioquia, regional police commander Col. Guillermo Aranda told reporters. Police blamed paramilitaries for killing 11 people on Wednesday near the town of Yolombo but did not know who was responsible for Friday’s attack.

Several shotgun-toting men in combat uniforms went from house to house killing suspected collaborators with rival groups, Aranda said.

“We don’t know who is to blame for this massacre — we don’t know if it was paramilitaries or guerrillas,” he said.

“They came murdering peasants ... these people did not have anything to do with the conflict in which these outlawed groups are engaged,” he added.

Colombia, an Andean nation with 40 million inhabitants, is mired in a four decades-old conflict involving leftist rebels the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and National Liberation Army (ELN), paramilitary forces that rights groups allege have links to the military and the state security forces. Colombia’s army denies paramilitary links.

The conflict, which has claimed more than 35,000 civilian lives and displaced 2 million people in the last decade alone, has intensified in recent months despite President Andres Pastrana’s peace efforts with leftist rebels.

Police recorded 205 massacres in Colombia in 2000 in which 1,226 people were killed. Most were attributed to paramilitaries, whom rights organizations allege commit the worst human rights violations in a “dirty war” against guerrillas.

Source: Reuters

Ecuador police arrest 44 in student protest

Quito, Ecuador, Jan. 3— Police used tear gas Wednesday to disperse about 300 students protesting government subsidy cuts that have driven up fuel prices.

Police said 44 high school and university students were arrested after they tried to disrupt traffic around the state-run university in central Quito and six nearby public high schools.

One student suffered minor injuries when he was struck by a tear gas canister, according to radio reports.

Meanwhile, some 200 students marched peacefully through the streets of Cuenca, an Andean city 183 miles south of the capital. No arrests were reported.

The government last week doubled home cooking fuel prices, increased gasoline prices by 25 percent and upped bus fares by as much as 75 percent, from 8 cents to 14 cents.

The National Transportation Council on Wednesday halted the fare hike after a judge ruled it unconstitutional.

The subsidy cuts are part of President Gustavo Noboa’s economic recovery program. Multinational lenders, led by the International Monetary Fund, have pledged a three-year, $2 billion aid package contingent on the cash-strapped nation carrying out austerity measures.

Source: Associated Press