The LSE is wrong to give Uribe a platform

[Judi Lynn]

The LSE is wrong to give Uribe a platform
The LSE and London Business School risk legitimising state terror by inviting Colombia's former president to visit
Andy Higginbottom guardian.co.uk,
Friday 20 May 2011 10.00 BST

One might have thought that the London School of Economics at least would have learned the wisdom of caution after getting its fingers burnt for other dubious guests. And yet the LSE and the London Business School are both hosting the visit of Colombia's notorious rightwing former president Álvaro Uribe Vélez on Monday.

Uribe was George Bush's favourite Latin American leader, seen as the model of a "war on terror" style stabilisation in the region, and he arrives in London days after the debate in Colombia's Congress over a proposed victim's law. Uribe's former defence minister Juan Manuel Santos is now president and he promised reparations for all victims of political violence, significantly including victims of state forces, as well as leftwing guerrillas and the rightwing paramilitary groups generally seen as state proxies. In his heated interventions, Uribe has objected to defining the confrontations as an "internal armed conflict", insisting on his preferred Bush-era formulation of a "war on terror". Uribe refuses to identify the guerrilla movements as anything other than "terrorists". Santos has been at pains to find common ground with his former boss – neither would grant "belligerent status" to the guerrillas – but the spat highlights how the government is trying to move on from Uribe's own unrepentantly belligerent presence.

With the smugness of a petty tyrant, Uribe claims that the successes of his eight years in government were based on the three pillars of security, social cohesion and investor trust. Is it the case? Let us examine Uribe's record by his own criteria.

Starting with security, the obvious question is "for whom"? Not for the 565 trade unionists, nor the much less reported 1,400 indigenous people assassinated during the Uribe years. While the guerrillas are not free from culpability, social organisations consider that state forces and their associated paramilitary groups are mainly responsible for this slaughter. Uribe supposedly demobilised the paramilitaries, yet all the evidence is that these groups have recreated themselves as a new generation of "Black Eagles" and "Rastrojos" drug traffickers. Three thousand paramilitary grave sites have been identified, as well as specific locations where they used ovens to cremate their victims' remains.

More:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/may/20/lse-uribe-london-business-school