That this will be an uphill task was demonstrated by another such incident in the Perijá mountains, when a Venezuelan national guard unit engaged a column of unidentified armed men close to the border (there were no casualties), and by a report, picked up by President Hugo Chávez , that explosives were being smuggled into Venezuela from Colombia.
Venezuela has decided to change its policy of repatriating Colombians fleeing the armed conflict in their country. In early February the regional representative of the UNHCR, María Virginia Trimarco, announced that Caracas has started granting refugee status to a first batch of 47 such people and would consider the cases of another 2,300 applicants.
ECUADOR | Call for new antikidnap law. Responding to media outrage over a high-profile kidnapping, Eduardo Mera, chief of Ecuador's anti-kidnap unit, Unase, has called publicly for new legislation that would raise the maximum penalty for kidnapping (set at a standard 25 years, with 10 more for aggravating circumstances, in the most recent review, in 2001), do away with lower tariffs for extenuating circumstances, lift constraints on electronic eavesdropping and access to records, and temporarily freeze the assets of the victims' relatives.
Mera also wants the law to declare kidnapping a `crime against humanity' — a plea surprisingly endorsed by a spokesman for a leading local rights organisation.
Kidnapping in Ecuador, previously dominated by gangs with Colombian links, is now mainly carried out by local criminals. Leaving aside the so-called `express kidnappings', which most police forces prefer to classify together with armed robbery, Ecuador's rate of reported kidnappings has been falling. By Unase's own tally, last year's total of 32 cases was 11% lower than the average for the previous two years. Mera reckons that about half of all kidnaps go unreported.
PERU | Emergency extended. The state of emergency declared last year in five departments of Peru to confront a resurgence of guerrilla activity by Sendero Luminoso (SL) has been extended for a further 60 days (until late March), but embracing a narrower territory, defined by the government as covering the `transit zones' used by SL and by drug-trafficking organisations that sometimes work together with the guerrillas.
The focus has been narrowed to the provinces of Huanta and La Mar in Ayacucho, Andahuaylas and Chincheros in Apurímac, La Convención in Cusco, Tayacaja in Huancavelica, and Satipo, plus the districts on Andamarca and Santo Domingo de Acobamba, in Junín. Not included is the base area of the SL group which reemerged in mid-January with an ultimatum to the government [SSR-04-01].
The government has been warning against the possibility that Peruvian coca growers, scheduled to hold a congress in Lima in mid-February, might try to launch a protest `mobilisation' similar to the one that unseated Bolivian President Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada last year [SSR-03-03]. The leaders of the coca growers have disavowed any such intention.
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