COLOMBIANS CAUGHT IN THE CROSSFIRE

'Defenceless' Civilians Attacked By Military And Rebel Fighters

BOGOTA (AP) -- A waitress who kissed a government soldier is suspected of
being a government collaborator and is shot.

Rebels, angry that people of one village wouldn't join their ranks, return
and butcher residents.

Paramilitaries storm a southern town and execute rebel sympathizers.

More than ever, non combatants are being caught up in Colombia's decades
long civil war.

With tales of atrocities becoming more frequent and civilians doing most of
the dying the situation is looking more and more like "La Violencia," a
frenzy of bloodletting that convulsed this South American nation in the
1940s and '50s, leaving 200,000 people dead.

Residents of one community, the western village of Ortega, took the unusual
step of resistance and paid dearly for it on the weekend.

Their tragic story began Sept. 12 when leftist rebels of the Revolutionary
Armed Forces of Colombia entered Ortega to recruit young people. Angry
villagers wielding shotguns and machetes chased them off, according to El
Liberal, a local newspaper.

On Saturday, the rebels returned to Ortega and took revenge, killing as
many as 13 villagers.

Their decapitated bodies were strewn along the roadside.

It recalled an incident that occurred a half century earlier and just 64
kilometres to the north.

In the town of Puerto Tejada, supporters of the opposition Liberal Party
massacred backers of the Conservative Party, decapitated them and played
soccer with their heads. That incident came during La Violencia, or "The
Violence".

The current war has not reached the level of La Violencia.

That orgy of killings was carried out by uneducated peasants who believed
followers of the rival political party "were somehow in league with the
devil", according to David Bushnell's book, The Making Of Modern Colombia.

But today's war being waged by two leftist rebel groups against government
security forces and their right wing paramilitary allies has gotten so bad
that a young woman can die merely for kissing the wrong man.

Such was the fate that befell a waitress at a cafe in the southern village
of La Dorada.

She said goodbye to a government soldier by giving him a peck on the cheek.

Suspected of being a government collaborator, she was shot and killed last
month.

Even priests are not immune. In the southern town of Puerto Caicedo, the
Rev. Alcides Jimenez was delivering a sermon when he was shot and killed by
two suspected armed forces rebels in 1998.

Nearby, in Puerto Asis, the paramilitary United Self Defence Forces of
Colombia accused the Rev. Luis Alfonso Gomez of being a rebel sympathizer.

To save his life, Gomez had to convince the group that he does not take sides.

This year alone, 50 of Gomez's 3,400 parishioners have been killed, the
Roman Catholic priest said.

The right wing self defence forces commonly executes rebels or suspected
rebel collaborators. Sometimes they get the wrong person, as when they
recently shot and killed a young man in La Dorada whom they mistook for a
rebel commander, according to a report Sunday in El Tiempo, a Bogota daily.

There is a striking difference between La Violencia and this war, notes
historian and author Arturo Alape.

"During La Violencia, the civilian population participated directly in the
killings," Alape said.

"Today, they are being attacked by three sides by the rebels, the
paramilitaries and the military and they are defenceless."