Amnesty International: Colombia turning blind eye to attacks on human righ

[Judi Lynn]

Amnesty International: Colombia turning blind eye to attacks on human rights workers
The Associated Press

Published: September 6, 2006

BOGOTA, Colombia The first death threat arrived by e-mail — a day after human rights activist Ivan Cepeda took aim at the government's poor record of defending victims of Colombia's violent civil war in an op-ed column for a national newspaper.

The cryptic message in April was signed by the New Generation of Self-Defense Peasants. Within weeks, the threats intensified and started arriving by phone. Despite a complaint to authorities, Cepeda says nothing has been done to uncover the perpetrators behind the threats.

"Unfortunately, in this line of work in Colombia, you get used to the risks," said Cepeda, whose father, a former leftist senator, was slain by paramilitary gunmen in 1994.

Colombia is one of the deadliest places on earth for human rights workers, journalists and labor leaders — the result of four decades of unabated fighting between leftist rebels, right-wing paramilitary groups and government forces.
(snip)

That campaign appears to start from the top.

President Alvaro Uribe incensed the public when he lashed out against human rights groups in a 2003 speech, calling them "politickers for terrorism" and "communists in disguise." He later apologized.
(snip/...)

http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2006/09/07/america/LA_GEN_Colombia_Human_Rights.php



Alvaro Uribe and American friend

[Judi Lynn]

1. Colombia: Government gives “green light” to attacks against human rights a

AI Index: AMR 23/038/2006 (Public)
News Service No: 220
7 September 2006

Embargo Date: 7 September 2006 10:00 GMT


Colombia: Government gives “green light” to attacks against human rights activists
(Madrid) In a new report released today, Amnesty International criticizes the Colombian government for giving a “green light” to attacks against human rights defenders in the country and called on the international community to support local activists more effectively.
(snip)

“Attacks against human rights activists in Colombia have a double purpose: they aim to silence individuals and prevent others from continuing with their work,” said Sofia Nordenmark, Amnesty International human rights defenders coordinator.
(snip)

Luis Torres, a human rights campaigner from the community of El Salado, has represented his community before the authorities in relation to two massacres allegedly carried out by army-backed paramilitary groups. He also campaigned on the conditions for the safe return to El Salado of community members who had fled following threats from the guerilla group FARC. On 26 May 2005, he was charged with rebellion and detained. He was conditionally released on 8 June 2005. However, the investigation remains open despite obvious flaws in the evidence.

Cases received by Amnesty International also reveal that individual attacks, such as killings and threats, are part of a wider strategy to clamp down on reports of human rights violations and on the links between paramilitary groups and the army.
(snip/...)

http://www.amnestyusa.org/news/document.do?id=ENGAMR230382006

[Judi Lynn]

2. Fear and Intimidation: The dangers of human rights work

Colombia
Fear and Intimidation: The dangers of human rights work

7 September 2006

~snip~
Álvaro Uribe Vélez took office as President for a second term on 7 August 2006, after winning the elections of 28 May 2006. In June 2002, before taking office the first time, he met with civil society organizations to discuss human rights issues including the situation of human rights defenders. He promised to open a dialogue between these organizations and the Ministries of the Interior, Justice and Defence on how to ensure effective protection for defenders under threat and how to deal with collusion between state actors and paramilitary groups. Many human rights defenders feel that these promises have not been kept. As well as the attacks and threats documented in this report defenders have also been verbally attacked in public by the President himself and other high-ranking government and state officials who have labelled them "subversive".

Generalized public statements that undermine the legitimacy of human rights defenders have undercut measures taken by the government to improve their protection. In fact such statements have given indirect approval to the security forces to target human rights defenders and community leaders during intelligence and counter-insurgency operations.

Human rights defenders have been subjected to detention and arbitrary legal proceedings designed to discredit their work. Such proceedings, which are often given considerable publicity in the media, have also had the effect of assisting paramilitary groups to single out defenders for attack. Amnesty International has documented several cases where defenders have been threatened or attacked by paramilitary groups after having been released and cleared of unfounded criminal charges. In some cases human rights defenders have been killed shortly after their release.

Amnesty International considers that there is a coordinated strategy by the security forces and paramilitary groups to undermine human rights defenders by discrediting the legitimacy of their work and through intimidation and attacks. As this report shows, defenders working at a local level are often at even greater risk.
(snip/...)

http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/ENGAMR230332006



(Who wouldn't feel desperately nauseous standing next to Republican Rep. Dan Burton?)

[MrPrax]

3. That shithole should be sanctioned...completely

Many Workers Killed Each Year in Colombia—Bush Wants Trade Deal Anyway

Some 4,000 trade unionists have been murdered in Colombia in the past 20 years—29 dead this year alone. That hasn’t stopped the Bush administration from pushing for a trade deal with that country.

Given such a ghastly record, members of Congress might want to ask whether they really want yet another pact that fails to protect workers’ rights.

A new report, Justice For All: The Struggle for Worker Rights in Colombia, the latest in a series of reports on workers’ rights around the world, released today by the AFL-CIO Solidarity Center, documents the deadly threats workers face from employers, paramilitary gangs, drug lords, guerrillas and the government—which provide weak or non-existent oversight.

“The report reveals a reality for Colombian workers that is riddled with threats, violence, illegal detentions, impunity, legal limitations, abuses of hiring laws, illegal dismissals and a system of governmental authorities that fails to protect workers from further violations or to remedy the existing ones,” says AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Linda Chavez-Thompson. Chavez-Thompson also is president of the Inter-American Regional Organization of Workers (ORIT) of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU), which includes the Colombian trade union federations.

AFL-CIO

Jeez...where are the anti-Castro crowd...they are so concerned about human rights and all. Where are all the Freepers who love to talk about the 'freedom and democracy' in Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan...here's a country that has been flooding the US with noxious killer drugs for decades, inspite of billions spent by the US to take care of the problem or profiting from it.

The problem of course is another dictatorial US-client state that seems to always fly below the radar regardless of it's atrocities...

[Bacchus39]

4. I was in Colombia last month

lovely country and people

[Judi Lynn]

5. This link you posted should be read by EVERYone. Superior info.

Perception Management and the US Terror War in Colombia

~snip~
Media requests for interviews with Colombian government officials went through Sawyer/Miller. They steered sympathetic reporters to key government ministries and made sure that critics of Colombia’s appalling human rights record were kept away. In one instance, after a meeting with Warren Hoge, the editor of the New York Times Magazine, the Times printed a long and inaccurate story glorifying the then Colombian President, Cesar Trujillo, whose campaign had been heavily funded with drug money. The Colombian government bought the reprinting rights to the article and sent thousands of copies to US Journalists and Embassies. Sawyer/Miller group regularly use the American press to distribute pro-Colombian government propaganda with the routine production of pamphlets, letters to editors signed by Colombian officials, and ads placed in The New York Times and The Washington Post. However, it is the transformation of the armed protagonists in Colombia’s conflict that has had the most effect. In recently declassified documentation, the US Ambassador to Colombia in 1996, Myle Frechette, admits that the perception of the FARC as narco-guerrillas, “was put together by the Colombian military, who considered it a way to obtain U.S. assistance in the counterinsurgency.” The PR job seems to have worked as the US has now made Colombia the third largest recipient of US military aid in the world today. This aid is allegedly for a counter-offensive against what have been constructed as the primary narco-terrorists in Colombia, the FARC.
(snip)

Why is the US doing these things? Underlying US policy are a number of factors which include the importance of Colombian and Venezuelan oil to US energy needs. The regional destabilisation that may occur as a result of a potential rebel victory could seriously alter the balance of forces within the region and threaten the interests of the US’s big oil transnationals. The Bush administration’s new request for $98 million for a specially trained Colombian military brigade devoted solely to protecting Occidental Petroleum’s 500-mile long Cano Limon oil pipeline in Colombia makes this even clearer. Paul D. Coverdell, a Republican Senator explained that the “destabilization of Colombia directly affects bordering Venezuela, now generally regarded as our largest oil supplier. In fact, the oil picture in Latin America is strikingly similar to that of the Middle East, except that Colombia provides us more oil today than Kuwait did then. This crisis, like the one in Kuwait, threatens to spill over into many nations, all of which are allies”. The war on the rebels then, forms part of a classic counter-insurgency strategy of destroying nationalist forces that threaten US hegemony and elite interests throughout Latin America. The military aid both strengthens and grants legitimacy to the repressive apparatus of the Colombian state and its clandestine arm, the paramilitaries. In so doing, the Colombian state can continue to silence and murder those who dare question the status-quo in Colombia, a status-quo that currently sees the majority of Colombia’s people in poverty, with 25% of all Colombians living in abject misery. The US thus destroys the potential of an alternative model of socio-economic organisation, and escalates the costs of organising or speaking out in favour of potential alternatives. In prosecuting the war the US and Colombian elites rely on both coercive and consensual means. For US and international audiences there are vast PR propaganda campaigns to manage perceptions. In Colombia however it is a very different story where to get off you knees and stand on your feet is a risky business which all too often leads to a bullet made in the US.
(snip/)

http://www.zmag.org/content/Colombia/stokes_perception-management.cfm

[MrPrax]

6. I am blushing...

To get a compliment like that from one of the Greats is flattering to say the least...

Aw shucks ;-)

[Judi Lynn]

7. Ah, phooey! I've NEVER seen a wasted post with your name attached.

I've envied your ability to focus so accurately every time. Enormous admiration. Always great to see your posts, in every instance!