Uribe promotes US-Colombia FTA at Georgetown .

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Colombia Reports

Uribe promotes US-Colombia FTA at Georgetown .
Thursday, 09 September 2010 16:38 Kirsten Begg

Former Colombian President Alvaro Uribe stressed the importance of Colombia's free trade agreement (FTA) with the U.S. during his first lecture to students of the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Washington D.C.'s Georgetown University Thursday, according to news source Efe.

Despite a protest mounted against the Colombian leader prior to the lecture, Uribe entered the school escorted by body guards in order to give his first conference on economics in Latin America to a group of thirty students.

Attending students reportedly agreed to a "pact of honor" not to disclose specific details about what was discussed in the lecture. However students did reveal that Uribe "focused more on theory and what the country has done to open up the market," such as negotiating FTAs with countries such as the U.S.

Colombian student Cristina Botero said that Uribe "did not speak about Colombia's internal politics" but instead examined "the implications for Colombia if a neighbor country doesn't agree with Colombia wanting to open markets with other countries like the U.S."

Botero said that one student had made awkward comments to Uribe during the lecture, but was forced to leave.

Read more: http://colombiareports.com/colombia-news/news/11769-uribe-fta-georgetown.html

[Judi Lynn]

1. Ex-Colombian President Uribe’s arrival to SFS sparks protests

Ex-Colombian President Uribe’s arrival to SFS sparks protests
Written by Cole Stangler on September 9, 2010

On Wednesday afternoon, Georgetown students, faculty, and local human rights activists gathered in Red Square to protest the hiring of former Colombian President Álvaro Uribe.

Georgetown hired Uribe this summer as a Distinguished Scholar in the Practice of Global Leadership in the School of Foreign Service. The group said that Uribe, who will begin teaching classes this week, had a poor human rights record while he was president of Colombia and is unfit to teach at Georgetown.

“On what basis was this man appointed to Georgetown?” Mark Lance, director of Georgetown’s Peace Studies Program, asked the group of about fifty protestors and onlookers. “He’s not a scholar of anything. … This is a man who shows contempt for the very idea of human rights work.”

Nico Udu-gama, a member of the D.C.-based School of the Americas Watch who was at the protest, said there were numerous humans rights abuses during Uribe’s eight-year presidency, including the displacement of roughly three million citizens, and the deaths of union leaders and journalists. His group had intended for the rally to coincide directly with Uribe’s arrival on campus, but he said that the University refused to disclose the details of Uribe’s arrival.

~snip~
Several protestors said that Uribe’s human rights record puts him at odds with the University’s Jesuit identity and dedication to social justice.

Gonzalez noted that last November, the University had commemorated the 1992 assassination of six Jesuit activists working in opposition to the U.S.-backed El Salvador regime. For activists like Gonzalez, the University is sending mixed messages about its commitment to human rights.

“I feel very strongly about the matter. Uribe is a killer,” David Bow, a professor of anthropology and development at George Washington University, said. “I think Georgetown should be embarrassed. I hope students can organize, make a lot of noise and bring attention to the authorities.”

More:
http://georgetownvoice.com/2010/09/09/ex-colombian-president-uribes-arrival-to-sfs-sparks-protests/

[Selatius]

2. What kind of fucking lecture is that if you are not free to ask certain questions?

No academic freedom? No justice.

[martymar64]

3. Of course he does. More money to murder trade unionists with.

I hope he gets cancer of the dick.

[rabs]

4. How macabre ....

After the lecture, Uribe went to to have a cheeseburger and Coca Cola at a nearby restaurant popular with Georgetown students and faculty.

The name of the restaurant -- The Tombs.

His bodyguards at the lecture were Georgetown campus security police.

At the beginning of his lecture, a young woman from Ecuador named Laura Andreade approached Uribe. "I told him that he had been a human rights violator and that he was a despicable man," Andrade said.

A Georgetown security officer asked her for identification, and because she did not have a student card, he escorted her from the classroom.

Report by Semana magazine of Bogota (Spanish):

http://www.semana.com/noticias-mundo/uribe-dicto-clase-recibio-insultos-ecuatoriana/144279.aspx

----------------------

And speaking of tombs, down in Uribe's Colombia


An opposition member of Congress named Iván Cepeda today denounced that graves in a cemetery thought to contain 78 unidentified bodies are being dug up and the dirt and remains are being carted away.

The Colombian human rights organization Peace and Justice has reported that in the past two decades, 32,348 people have been "disappeared" and buried as NN -- No Names. Uribe was president for the past eight of those years.

(Spanish story from El Espectador newspaper of Bogota

http://www.elespectador.com/noticias/politica/articulo-223500-crece-debate-de-los-nn

[naaman fletcher]

5. The tombs

The tombs is probably the best known university hangout in Georgetown, FYI.

[Judi Lynn]

6. How fitting, however. He'll have to take any of his fellow killer visitors from Colombia there, too.

That girl was right to protest.

She'll probably start getting threats on her cell phone. That happens to everyone his paras go after. They've even chased people down hiding in the wilds of Canada under witness protection programs, with new names, and start telling them they know where they live, work, their kids go to school, etc.

They want people to be paralyzed with fear, and unable to protest any more, if they don't just go ahead and kill them first.

Hope he meets more opposition at Georgetown.

Over 32,000 people disappeared. Sounds like Argentina, or Chile, doesn't it?

[Judi Lynn]

7. Georgetown students are missing the point

Georgetown students are missing the point
Friday, 10 September 2010 09:01 Sebastian Castaneda

The news that Colombian former president Alvaro Uribe was to be appointed as a distinguished scholar at Georgetown University surprised many, especially his Colombian critics. But what is more surprising is the level of criticism among faculty members and students at the university, which has even led to protests on campus. This outcry misses the real significance that a political leader of Uribe’s standing has for their education as future leaders.

In August, soon after Uribe ended his eight years as tenant of the Nariño Palace in Bogota, Georgetown University named him "Distinguished Scholar in the Practice of Global Leadership" at the university's Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service. Information about his specific role in lectures and topics to be covered have been kept under wraps. What is clear is that Uribe will only be a guest speaker, rather than a full-time lecturer.

On Wednesday September 8, the day before Uribe was to hold his first lecture, there was a widely-publicized protest on campus organized by lecturers and students under the name "Coalition Adios Uribe." This coalition will continue protesting outside the halls where Uribe is speaking, denouncing the Colombian's lack of moral and ethical authority to lecture on global leadership. They highlight the various negative aspects, and abuses, of Uribe’s presidency.

The most problematic aspect that all his critics in the university have agreed on is his miserable track record on human rights: illegally wiretapping judges, politicians and journalists; extrajudicial killings; widespread murders of trade unionists. Another key component triggering the ire of the coalition stems from Uribe's alleged links to paramilitary armies that wreaked havoc in the countryside and were instrumental in his ascent to power, if judged by the more than 30% of Congress members that had links with the paramilitaries.

These protesters, however, are mistaken in believing that they will gain by preventing Uribe from delivering his lectures, or even throwing him out of Georgetown University altogether. The opposite is true. With Uribe on campus delivering lectures the students have a great opportunity to question Uribe and get the answers that the millions of Colombian affected by his policies have never been able to ask.

More:
http://colombiareports.com/opinion/cantonese-arepas/11780-georgetown-students-are-missing-the-point.html