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Colombia Leader Gives $1M To Victims of Conflict
By Frank Bajak
MONTERIA, Colombia (AP) — President Alvaro Uribe
delivered reparations totaling nearly $1 million on
Sunday to 279 victims of Colombia's long-running
conflict.
It was the second disbursement from $100 million
that his government has earmarked this year for
10,000 survivors of crimes by leftist rebels and
far-right death squads known as "paramilitaries,"
both of which have been fed by drug trafficking.
Some 240,000 people have registered since the law
facilitating the payments took effect last August.
Victims of state security forces are not eligible
for any of the estimated $3.3 billion that the
government says it expects to pay out over the
coming decade.
Uribe acknowledged that the payments — the highest
amount per victim or family is about $9,150 — can't
compensate for the loss of a loved one.
The reparations will instead help prevent the pain
of loss from "becoming converted into hate and
vengeance," the president told recipients who were
bused in from five states for a ceremony in this
northwestern ranching region where the
paramilitaries first arose in the 1980s.
Besides relatives of people murdered, those eligible
include victims of torture, rape, forced recruitment
and people driven from their homes by illegal armed
groups. Recipients can still go to court to pursue
damages directly from their tormenters.
Critics of Uribe, who disbursed the first payments
on July 5, say he should back more extensive
reparations, to include abuses by security forces.
But his allies in Congress have blocked a bill for
expanded payments. Uribe has estimated that
legislation's price tag at $40 billion, which he
says Colombia can ill afford, especially given the
global recession.
Among the recipients of reparations Sunday was
Zoraya Silgado.
She said her then-35-year-old brother Ricardo was
among six people killed in 1998 when rebels threw a
grenade into a discotheque in San Onofre, a nearby
town that was under a paramilitary reign of terror
at the time.
He wasn't a party to the conflict, Silgado said. "He
was just dancing."
Teofilo Racini Ortiz, 63, personally received his
check from Uribe. He said his son Davis, 26, was
"forcibly disappeared" in 2002 by thugs working for
local paramilitary boss Salvatore Mancuso, who was
extradited last year to the United States on
drug-trafficking charges.
"He was a beauty of a kid," Racini said of his son,
who drove a taxi owned by his father. Racini said he
searched half of Colombia for Davis but never found
a trace.
He laughed when asked about the indemnization.
"It doesn't replace a human being. No way. No how,"
Racini said.
"But it's a marvelous gesture." |
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