The latest provocation of Colombia against
Venezuela – support the Venezuelan revolution!
Written by Jorge MartínMonday, 26 July 2010
On Thursday, July 22, Venezuelan president Chávez decided to put the border with Colombia on maximum military alert, after Colombian president Alvaro Uribe made accusations that Venezuela was harbouring FARC guerrillas and demanded an “international commission of enquiry”.
President Chávez also announced that Venezuela was breaking off diplomatic links with Colombia and gave Colombian diplomats 72 hours to leave the country.
The whole presentation of the Colombian ambassador the meeting of the OEA (Organization of American States) in Washington on Thursday was farcical. He presented pictures and satellite maps which were supposed to prove the presence of FARC and ELN guerrilla leaders in Venezuelan territory, as well as the existence of FARC and ELN camps inside Venezuela.
He claimed that these images had obtained from the computer of Raul Reyes, the FARC leader killed during an illegal incursion of Colombian troops in Ecuadorean territory in March 2008. Already at that time, a report from Interpol made it clear that no proper computer forensic methods had been used in handling the seized computer and that its contents had been changed between its seizure on March 1 and March 3 when its contents were made public. In other words, this “proof” is as good as the “proof” that there were Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq.“There is no evidence, not a single piece of proof, of where those photographs were taken”, responded Venezuelan ambassador to the OAS Roy Chaderton. He added that the Venezuelan army had verified and thoroughly inspected the locations and coordinates provided by the Uribe administration on Thursday and had found none of the alleged “terrorist sites”, “camps” or “guerilla presence” claimed by Colombia.
Furthermore, one asks, why has the Colombian government waited for more than two years to release this “information”? Some are saying that one of the reasons could be that Uribe is about to hand over power to Santos who is said by some to be a more “reasonable” president who wishes to build “good relations” with Venezuela. This, however, is an illusion. Santos was Uribe’s defence minister and was the spokesperson for many earlier provocations against Venezuela. We should be under no illusion that he will be any better than Uribe when it comes to his internal and external policies.
It is reasonable to suppose that this latest provocation from the Uribe government, just a few days before it has to hand over power to its successor and former Defence Minister Santos, is linked to a wider campaign against Venezuela in the run up to the very important September 26 National Assembly elections.
On June 3rd, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton launched a public attack on Venezuela, saying that its “leaders have tried to silence independent voices that seek to hold that government accountable”, while announcing additional funding for NGOs operating in countries where democracy is allegedly “under threat”.
At the beginning of July, Cardinal Jorge Urosa, the archbishop of Caracas, lashed out against Chavez saying that he was leading the country towards a “Marxist-communist dictatorship” based on a “foreign model” copied from the former Soviet Union, and that he had a “violent, exclusive totalitarian tendency.” The Cardinal conveniently forgot that the hierarchy of the Catholic Church (and the Cardinal himself) participated and openly supported the April 2002 coup against the democratically elected president. Some democratic credentials!
There have also been tensions around the presence of US military aircraft in the Dutch island of Curaçao, just off the Venezuelan coast, which Venezuela has on several occasions accused of having violated her own airspace. To this we have to add the recent deployment of US troops in Costa Rica, a country which has no army. On July 1, the Costa Rican government authorized the presence of 46 US war ships and 7,000 marines into its territory.
National Assembly elections
It is clear that every time the Venezuelan people are called to elections or referenda, a carefully orchestrated campaign is immediately put in place. This campaign includes media manipulation, diplomatic pressure and attacks, attempts to brand the Venezuelan revolution as a dictatorship, or linking it to “terrorism” and narco-trafficking etc. It also involves economic sabotage, attempts to create chaos and disruption in Venezuela itself, etc. These are the “democratic” methods of the Venezuelan oligarchy and imperialism, and Colombia is a key player in these plans.Washington is very selective in its condemnations of human rights violations. Under the government of Uribe Colombia has accumulated an appalling record of human rights violations, including the assassination of trade unionists and social activists, kidnapping, torture, etc. Recently a mass grave containing more than 2,000 bodies from the dirty war was discovered in Macarena, the largest ever found in Latin America. Human rights organizations fear that many of those might be “false positives”, i.e. ordinary people who were killed by the army and branded “insurgents” in order to boost the “successes” in the war against the guerrillas, and so that soldiers and officers could be rewarded.
However, despite the recent victory at the polls by Uribe’s successor, Santos, the Colombian ruling class is facing a growing militancy of the trade union, peasant and indigenous movements. During the celebration of 200 years of independence, social and indigenous organizations organized a march and mass assembly (cabildo abierto) in Bogotá, with more than 25,000 participating.
The right wing government of Uribe signed a deal with the US, allowing its military full access to 7 key strategic basis in Colombia, as well as full access to the country’s civilian infrastructure. US military personnel in Colombia are also immune from prosecution. The call to send “international observers” to the Colombian-Venezuelan border is therefore an outright provocation, to which president Chavez has responded with the necessary firmness.
As one might expect, Washington rushed to back up Uribe’s allegations, which had been prepared in the US in any case. State Department spokesman, P. J. Crowley called the dispute unfortunate and said it was a “petulant response by Venezuela to cut off relations with Colombia.” “Venezuela has clear responsibilities,” he said. “Colombia has put forward serious charges. They deserve to be investigated.”
Not surprisingly, this provocation received the full support of the Venezuelan counter-revolutionary opposition. In a joint press conference, the “United Platform for Democracy” (MUD) supported Colombia’s allegations and attacked Chavez’s “irresponsible foreign policy”.
Meanwhile, there has been a lot of talk of taking this dispute to the forthcoming UNASUR summit. The Brazilian government has already tried to pour water on the flames. “We don’t want to favour Venezuela or Colombia. We’re after an agreement and it would be excellent if we had distension signals before Santos takes office”, said Marco Aurelio García, president Lula’s foreign affairs advisor. He also insisted that he thought that the dispute would be resolved quickly “once Santos takes office”. But how can the dispute between revolution and counter-revolution be solved with diplomatic niceties?
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