Archive for 2003
The Weaknesses of U.S. Human Rights Monitoring in Colombia
The Leahy Amendment is intended to restrict the flow of U.S. military aid to any foreign military units shown to have committed gross violations of human rights. Since its inception in 1997, it has been expanded to encompass all forms of U.S. global military funding. In particular, the Leahy Amendment has been used to monitor U.S. military aid to Colombia, the third-largest recipient of U.S. military aid in the world, and a country with a long-standing civil war between insurgent groups and the Colombian military and its clandestine paramilitary allies. In justifying military aid to the Colombian military, Washington argues that its human rights monitoring prevents U.S. aid from being used to commit human rights violations. The Leahy Amendment is the principal mechanism for ensuring this commitment. However, there are dangerous weaknesses in the implementation of this law that render it effectively useless. Read more»
A Terror State Called Democracy
Despite the horrors faced by those fighting for better societies across the world, there are few countries on earth where trade union leaders can only access their offices by climbing out of a bulletproof jeep surrounded by bodyguards holding semi-automatic weapons and walking through a metal room equipped with electronic steel gates in order to start work in a bomb-proof office. This is not a description of a poverty-stricken central African state but one of Latin America’s “oldest democracies,” a country with some of the most desirable commodities and richest soils in the world, and in which the U.S and British governments have extensive investments. This is Colombia. Read more»
The Massacre at Betoyes
The turmoil that rural Colombian communities experience on a daily basis is exemplified by a recent incident at the indigenous reserve of Betoyes, composed of a number of small hamlets near Tame, in the southwest corner of the eastern Arauca department. In early May this year, an armed group attacked the indigenous Guahibo community at Betoyes. Three Guahibo girls, ages 11, 12, and 15, were raped by the assailants. A pregnant 16-year-old, Omaira Fernández, was also raped, and then the attackers reportedly cut her womb open to pull out the fetus, which they hacked apart with machetes, before dumping her body and the fetus in a river. That same day, three indigenous men were shot and disappeared. Some 327 of the remaining Guahibos fled the reserve for Saravena, a town in the northwest corner of the Arauca department. Once there, the Guahibos took up residence in an abandoned school, protesting their displacement by occupying a church. Read more»
Blair Hands Blank Check to Uribe
Despite significant protests from British trade union leaders, MPs and campaigners, and especially the Guardian’s detailed revelations of British military involvement, as well as energetic opposition from Colombian NGOs, as the dust settles on last week’s London Meeting on International Support for Colombia one point is clear: British Prime Minister Tony Blair has orchestrated an international breakthrough on behalf of Colombian President Alvaro Uribe’s ultra-right government. With the UK already the number two supplier of miltiary aid to Colombia, Blair has opened the door for the worst human rights offender in the Western Hemisphere to receive a new round of international loans. The gathering of senior representatives from the EU, USA, UN, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Japan, Mexico, Norway, Switzerland, IMF, World Bank, Andean Development Bank, and Inter-American Development Bank was brought together on Blair’s personal initiative and fully-backed by Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar of Spain. With this duo once again working in tandem as the pro-U.S. axis within Europe, the details of the initiative were worked out by the British Embassy in Bogotá in close consultation with Uribe’s team. Read more»
What Cease-fire?
Last week, the Colombian government and the country’s largest right-wing paramilitary organization, the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), announced an agreement to begin peace talks that will lead to the demobilization of the AUC by 2005. This decision evolved out of six months of exploratory talks and a corresponding unilateral cease-fire called by the AUC in December 2002. The cease-fire was a requirement demanded by President Alvaro Uribe before the government would enter into discussions with any of the armed groups. The U.S. government has also held discussions with the paramilitaries and have endorsed the peace process. But what the Uribe and Bush administrations, as well as the Colombian and U.S. mainstream media have conveniently ignored is the fact that, in reality, there is no cease-fire. Since the alleged cease-fire was initiated, right-wing paramilitary death squads, often aided by the U.S.-backed Colombian military, have killed countless numbers of unarmed Colombians they suspected of being guerrilla sympathizers. Read more»
U.S. Policies Consistently Undermine Human Rights
On Tuesday, July 1, the Bush administration announced it was banning military aid to some 50 countries because of their refusal to grant U.S. citizens immunity from prosecution by the International Criminal Court (ICC). President Bush signed waivers exempting 22 of these countries from the aid ban, but Colombia was not one of them. While it initially appears that such a ban would be catastrophic to a country that is the third-largest recipient of U.S. military aid, in reality it will have little effect on Colombia. The huge majority of Colombia’s military assistance actually falls under counternarcotics programs and therefore is not affected by the aid ban. In fact, Colombia was only scheduled to receive $98 million in military aid in 2003 as part of the war on terror and most of it has already been spent, leaving only $5 million frozen under the new aid ban. Consequently, it was not necessary for the Bush administration to issue a waiver in order to continue its support for the Colombian military. Washington’s response to ICC signatory countries such as Colombia that refuse to exempt U.S. citizens is consistent with other Bush administration policies that also undermine human rights. Read more»
The Referendum in Colombia: Democratic Participation or Endorsement of Dictatorship?
Now more than ever, the referendum proposed by the government of President Alvaro Uribe Vélez and approved by the Colombian Congress is a heated topic of discussion. The recent declaration by the Procurador General that proclaimed 15 of the 19 points of the referendum as unconstitutional have the government on edge, despite Minister of Justice Fernando Londoño’s best attempts to minimize the impact of the pronouncements. According to a recent survey, a mere 3.7 percent of the population claim to have a good understanding of what this referendum is all about. Researchers have also determined that an average person needs 27 minutes to thoroughly read all 19 points of the referendum. If you combine this with the restricted conditions in which the vote is taking place (voters cannot cast partial ballots or declare that they are in agreement with only some of the government’s proposals and not with others), it is hard to consider this vote a strictly democratic act. Read more»