Colombia Seeks to Rein in Rights Watchdog

[Eugene]

Colombia Seeks to Rein in Rights Watchdog

By JOSHUA GOODMAN
The Associated Press
Wednesday, July 12, 2006; 8:46 AM

BOGOTA, Colombia -- President Alvaro Uribe's government is lobbying to restrict
a U.N. agency that has been the most trusted monitor of human rights violations
in Colombia, according to foreign diplomats and rights activists.

The diplomats say Colombian officials are trying to remove the agency's right
to publicly criticize human rights abuses and publish an annual report on one
of the hemisphere's worst rights records. And with the U.N. human rights office's
four-year mandate expiring in October, the agency is particularly vulnerable,
they say.

The U.N.'s Bogota office, one of 34 such missions around the world, has verified
8,100 human rights abuses in Colombia since it was founded in 1997, implicating
rebels, paramilitaries and government forces alike in Colombia's four-decade
old civil war.

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Full article: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/12/AR2006071200511.html

The U.S. State Dept. has been asked to support the agency. It refuses to get involved.