US students take complaints about Uribe to the Department of Justice

[Judi Lynn]

US students take complaints about Uribe to the Department of Justice
Monday, 01 November 2010 15:13 Manuela Kuehr

A group of students at Washington D.C.'s Georgetown University "alerted" the United States Department of Justice about former Colombian President Alvaro Uribe's violations of human rights, Caraco Radio reports.

Under the name of "Coalition Adios Uribe," protesters criticized Uribe's human rights records during his eight years as president. The students decided to present their complaints in front of the U.S. Department of Justice, which is seeking information on human rights abusers who have entered the United States.

"Uribe has to be brought to justice .... rather than be given a platform to promote a distorted version of his presidency," Charity Ryerson, a law student said. "The victims deserve better policies."

The group highlighted the number of rights violations that occurred during Uribe's presidency at the Department of Justice, including the "Operation Genesis" and the displacement of thousands of Colombians.

More:
http://colombiareports.com/colombia-news/news/12676-us-students-complaints-uribe-department-justice.html

[Peace Patriot]

1. And guess who heads the USDJ? Eric Holder. And guess what he did, as a private attorney?

He got Chiquita International execs off with a handslap for hiring death squads who murdered union leaders on Chiquita farms in Colombia.

Talk about a deaf ear!

I applaud these Georgetown U. students for their protest. They seem to have more conscience than the Jesuits who gave this killer a cushy academic sinecure at Georgetown, no doubt at the behest of alumni George Tenet and other CIA influences. And that's the other part. I'm pretty sure that Uribe is a CIA "made man"--that is, like Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and others, he is protected from prosecution, and really has to be--he knows too much--as the CIA cleans Junior's bloody trail through Colombia. (CIA headed by Daddy Bush pal Leon Panetta.) So there ain't much hope that Uribe will ever sit in the dock for his many crimes. As we know, though, to protest this magnitude of corruption--wherever it arises, in this case, not only in Colombia but in the U.S. government with its multinational corporate/war profiteer commanders-in-chief--is a matter of necessity to those with a conscience.

[rabs]

2. Heads-up on uribito/Georgetown tomorrow (Wednesday)

uribito is scheduled to give a lecture.

Protest planned in Red Square, the Hyde Park of Georgetown.

Hollman Morris is one of the Colombians who is scheduled to join the protest.

In case you did not read, Fernando Garavito was killed in an auto accident in Texas last week. He was forced into exile in the United States during alvarito's presidency because of death threats. He was living in Santa Fe.

Anti-uribe conspiracy people wonder if it could have been uribito's sicarios.

---- snip -----------

Garavito struggled to keep his voice, write what he thought was important, communicate in a language foreign to him and find a venue.

"In the U.S. what happens, when it is an intellectual of a similar vein — like a Noam Chomsky — they don't kill you, they just ignore you," Lannan said. "In Mexico or Colombia, they just kill you."

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

Learn about Garavito here:

http://www.santafenewmexican.com/Local%20News/Fernando-Garavito-1944-2010-Exiled-Colombian-journalist-known-f

[naaman fletcher]

3. thanks for heads up

Should be plenty of time now for the students to organize the mass anti-uribe rally that this forum has been expecting.

[Judi Lynn]

4. Thanks so much for informing us on this writer. I have no doubt whatsoever

there's a total chance sicarios just pushed him off the road and killed him in his fatal "one car accident." As long as Garavito lived, such a powerful voice was a potential threat to the scum who drove him out of Colombia.

I've read articles on a paramilitary who testified in a trial who went to Canada with a new identity, and was living far north, far away, and started getting death threats there, even on his cell phone. He contacted the government to ask for help. I haven't heard if he got re-located before they killed him or not.

Those guys are completely dirty, completely murderous.

I'll just bet the writer in New Mexico who fled to find a safer life for himself and his loved ones didn't just run off the road and die as a really lousey driver.

In that area around Santa Fe, are there mountainous, or otherwise difficult roads? I wondered about that reading the article. It would be so easy for people in a car to drive straight at someone who would try to swerve to avoid getting smashed. If there are crappy roads around it would make it almost a very easy task to kill him that way.

[rabs]

5. Garavito

Fyi Garavito was killed in a single-car accident about 1:30 p.m on a flat stretch of highway near the tiny town of Valentine, Texas (west Texas, not New Mexico). He was returning to Santa Fe from Texas where he had attended a conference. Texas cop report said car (a rental) went off the highway and hit a culvert. Apparently no witnesses (that the cops know about).

He wrote a letter to the president of Georgetown last month protesting uribito's presence at the university.

The letter: (with copy to a slew of important people)

http://uribe-georgetown.org/blog/letter-from-fernando-garavito-colombian-journalist/

[Judi Lynn]

6. I kept this for my files immediately after reading it. Rabs, the timing says everything.

Retribution, revenge, murder. Nothing else.

Hope this will not be the last we hear of the man. I hope the Texas cops will do the right thing and investigate.

Thank you for bringing this news here for those of us who would never have known otherwise. It's a story which needs attention.

[Judi Lynn]

7. Rabs. just discovered an article on Fernando Garavito:

Fernando Garavito, man of letters, dies in exile
By Karen Phillips/CPJ Guest Blogger

It's hard to trace things to their origin. But had I not met exiled Colombian journalist Fernando Garavito in early 2004, I don't know that I would have chosen to work, professionally, as a defender of freedom of expression.

And Fernando and I wouldn't have met had he stuck to safer topics. As it was, his 2002 biography, Álvaro Uribe, El Señor de las Sombras, that drew connections between then-presidential candidate Álvaro Uribe Velez and Colombia's drug cartels and paramilitary groups, led to death threats and his eventual exile to the United States with the help of CPJ's Journalist Assistance program.

When I met Fernando, I was a recent college graduate who had stumbled into writing bilingual features on immigrant issues for the Santa Fe New Mexican. On a snowy January morning, the Spanish-language editor had invited me to attend a talk given by Fernando, newly arrived in Santa Fe from Maine, and beginning to contribute to the paper. When his interpreter didn't appear, I volunteered to translate. I remember his talk distinctly. He discussed the political situation in Colombia, and the political and business interests that exerted control on the media. When he described how his own reporting and commentary had provoked death threats, I was aghast. Our media was controlled by corporate interests as was our politics, but I couldn't remember a reporter threatened with death for reporting on it.

After that talk I became involved with New Mexico's PEN chapter, which, along with the Lannan Foundation and the Coalition of Cities of Asylum, had helped to get Fernando and his family settled in Santa Fe. I witnessed firsthand the community support and solidarity required to ease the transition to exile, and the struggle of a high-profile journalist forced to reinvent himself in a foreign land. Through PEN New Mexico, I was given the opportunity to translate some of Fernando's political essays. So began my work as a translator, work I continue to this day. Translating such hard-hitting political and social commentary opened my eyes to the critical role of translators in amplifying critical voices from around the world.

More:
http://cpj.org/blog/2010/11/remembering-fernando-garavito.php

Thanks, again, for alerting us to to this man's life and career and sudden death.