Waiving Points of Order Against Conference Report on H.R. 3057, Foreign Operations, Export Financing, and Related Programs Appropriations Act, 2006
WAIVING POINTS OF ORDER AGAINST CONFERENCE REPORT ON H.R. 3057, FOREIGN OPERATIONS, EXPORT FINANCING, AND RELATED PROGRAMS APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2006 -- (House of Representatives - November 04, 2005)
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Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, I want to commend Chairman Kolbe, Ranking Member Lowey, and their respective staffs for consistently working in a bipartisan fashion and trying year after year to bring before the House a bill that all Members can support.
For those of us who care in particular about the contributions made by the United States in reducing global poverty and hunger, increasing educational opportunities, access to health care and food security in some of the poorest places on this Earth, we very much appreciate the time and the effort that they invest in making sure that this bill responds to these needs and priorities.
I must express, however, Mr. Speaker, my regret that the final conference report did not include the Leahy-McConnell language dealing with the paramilitary demobilization taking place in Colombia. I recognize the language in the conference report is the result of some compromise, but it appears to me that the majority of compromising had to be done on the Senate side.
Mr. Speaker, I am very concerned about news reports that demobilized paramilitary groups are regrouping into Mafia-like criminal organizations. New paramilitary groups seem to be springing up like daisies and their ranks are often made up of newly demobilized paramilitary troops.
Like all Members of Congress who follow Colombia, I want the demobilization process to work. I want it to succeed. But the process is not helped when the Congress or the administration turns a blind eye to serious failings in its implementation, as has been done over and over and over again.
For these reasons, I believe that the certification provision on Colombia's demobilization process in this bill, even though it is watered down, I think is important and needs to be faithfully implemented.
Last night during the Rules Committee hearing, I was very reassured when Chairman Kolbe told me that his committee would be vigilant in monitoring the demobilization of Colombia's paramilitary organizations and in overseeing the implementation of the certification conditions contained in the bill.
But, Mr. Speaker, I have often raised on the floor of this House my concerns about the long-standing ties between Colombia's armed forces and paramilitary forces and drug traffickers. I have constantly been told by the administration, by the Colombian Government, and even by some Members of this House, that these allegations also simply are not true.
Well, last week, on October 28, the New York Times reported how the top two directors of Colombia's intelligence agency, commonly called their secret police, have been forced to resign because the attorney general's office has finally begun an investigation into how the 7,100-member agency has been engaged in a money-making operation to sell intelligence and surveillance equipment to right-wing paramilitary groups.
Mr. Speaker, I will include the New York Times article in the RECORD at the conclusion of my remarks.
Mr. Speaker, I am very concerned by a new wave of threats, disappearances and murders of Colombian trade unionists, human rights defenders, legal advocates and community leaders which appears to be under way.
The violence in Colombia appears to be sharply escalating once again. I would like to mention in particular the murder of Mr. Orlando Valencia, an Afro-Colombian community leader who was forcibly captured off the street by paramilitary forces shortly after he was first briefly detained and then released by the Colombian police on October 15, which shows you the collaboration between the security forces and paramilitaries. His tortured and mutilated body was found a few days later along the side of a local road.
At the time of his disappearance, I wrote to our embassy in Bogota, asking them to do all they could to find Mr. Valencia before he was killed; and I am still waiting for a response from our embassy to that letter.
So let me say to those who continue to champion billions of dollars in additional aid to the Colombian military and security forces, please pay attention not only to the spokespeople of the Colombian government but to the realities in that country. We should be more concerned. For all that we have invested in that country, we should expect better.
I want to thank the gentlewoman from New York for allowing me the time to express these concerns. I support the rule, and I will support the bill.
[From the New York Times, Oct. 28, 2005]
Two Top Directors Leave Colombia's Secret Police as Scandal Mounts
(By Juan Forero)
BOGOTÁ, COLOMBIA, Oct. 27.--The top two directors of Colombia's secret police were forced out this week as the government investigated allegations that the agency was mounting a money-making operation to sell intelligence and surveillance equipment to right-wing death squads.
The scandal at the agency, the Administrative Department of Security, comes as human rights groups and some legislators have exposed heightened paramilitary activity, including infiltrations of Congress and the attorney general's office. The paramilitaries also continue trafficking in cocaine, despite disarmament talks that underpin President Álvaro Uribe's effort to pacify Colombia with billions in American aid.
The 7,100-member intelligence agency has long been dogged by allegations that its agents have worked with paramilitaries of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, an illegal antiguerrilla organization that the State Department has branded a terrorist group. But the latest scandal has been especially explosive, coming amid international criticism that the government has been overly generous with paramilitaries who disarm by treating them leniently in prosecutions.
On Tuesday, after consultations with Mr. Uribe, Jorge Noguera, the director of the agency, resigned and its sub-director, José Miguel Narváez, was dismissed.
The agency's internal affairs unit and the attorney general's office are investigating whether the Special Intelligence Group, controlled by Enrique Ariza, a close ally of Mr. Noguera, had been planning to sell phone-tapping equipment to Javier Montañes, one of several powerful paramilitary commanders who could then use the system to monitor police and military activity.
Mr. Noguera denied the accusations, calling them part of a smear campaign.
Mr. Narváez said in an interview that he and Mr. Noguera were not involved in a conspiracy with the militias. But he said there were agents at the agency ``who veered away from their mission and may have committed crimes.''
The allegations are particularly grave because they add to a string of revelations of paramilitary influence in everything from local governments and the health care system to provincial lotteries. Indeed, a former official at the intelligence agency, Rafael García, has been under investigation for having erased computerized case files containing information on paramilitaries and drug traffickers.
``This is more serious because this is not just having sources on the inside and knowing when they're coming against you,'' said Sergio Jaramillo, a former Defense Ministry official, referring to infiltration of the intelligence agency. ``It is something closer, having active help.''
A political scientist who closely studies the paramilitaries, Mauricio Romero, said the disclosures also showed that the paramilitaries were ``not playing clean'' in peace talks.
``It would be understandable if they were at war with the state,'' said Mr. Romero, a professor at Rosario University in Bogotá. ``The fact that there is infiltration and that they are mounting a parallel intelligence system is a security problem not just for the state, but for society.''
Though the paramilitaries have demobilized thousands of fighters, they continue to wreak havoc.
On Saturday, Hernando Cadavid, who owned a flower farm next to Mr. Uribe's ranch in northern Colombia, was dragged from his farm and hacked to death with machetes by former paramilitaries. Investigators are trying to determine if the order came from Diego Fernando Murillo, a paramilitary boss recently jailed on Mr. Uribe's orders.
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Mr. LINCOLN DIAZ-BALART of Florida. Mr. Speaker, we are also concerned about Colombia, and we are concerned about increased assistance from the terrorist network throughout the world, the Iranians, Chavez in Venezuela, Castro's Cuba. We are concerned about their support for the narcoterrorists in Colombia, and that is why it is so important to provide assistance to the democratically elected government of Colombia.
Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
Mr. LINCOLN DIAZ-BALART of Florida. I yield to the gentleman from Massachusetts.
Mr. McGOVERN. Two things. Is the gentleman saying that the President of Venezuela is a terrorist?
Mr. LINCOLN DIAZ-BALART of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I am saying that it is a dictatorship. It is a dictatorship, a dictatorship that supports the regime in Iran publicly; a dictatorship, the regime in Caracas. The first foreign head of State to visit Saddam Hussein while Saddam Hussein was in power after the Gulf War of the 1990s was the President of Venezuela. So, yes, I am concerned about the President of Venezuela's links to terrorism and his assistance to the FARC guerillas in Colombia.
One of the reasons why we continue to help and assist the democratically elected government of Colombia, elected by an overwhelming majority of the Colombian people, is because they face multiple challenges. That is one of the reasons why, in a bipartisan fashion, this Congress continues to help the democratically elected government.
Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will further yield, I appreciate his concerns about the violence by the FARC. I would also just appreciate it if he would also be concerned about the fact that we are supporting the Colombian military and security forces and they continue to be linked to right-wing paramilitary forces which commit crimes.
All I am simply saying is that we have certification language, we should enforce it and not continuously waive it because we want to continue to let the money flow. If we stand for human rights, then we need to put our actions where our rhetoric is, and we have not been doing that in Colombia.
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