..Uruguay to apologize over alleged rape by UN peacekeepers

[Judi Lynn]

..Uruguay to apologize over alleged rape by UN peacekeepers
By Malena Castaldi | Reuters – 1 hour 38 minutes ago..

MONTEVIDEO (Reuters) - Uruguay will apologize to Haiti and compensate an 18-year-old Haitian man allegedly raped by Uruguayan U.N. troops in the poor Caribbean state, the Uruguayan defense minister said on Tuesday.

Public outrage in the earthquake-ravaged nation has simmered over a video shot by a cellphone camera and circulating on the Internet that shows laughing Uruguayan marines pinning the young Haitian face down on a mattress and apparently assaulting him sexually.

"Our biggest concern is to apologize to Haiti's government as soon as possible and to compensate the victim," Defense Minister Eleuterio Fernandez Huidobro told reporters after meeting with lawmakers on Tuesday.

"We want to be thorough with the investigations and apply the harshest of sanctions," Fernandez Huidobro said.

More:
http://in.news.yahoo.com/uruguay-apologize-over-alleged-rape-un-peacekeepers-012916467.html

[Peace Patriot]

1. The good thing about this is that it IS possible to believe Uruguayan

officials when they speak. If it were our Defense Secretary or State Department, we would (wisely) immediately assume that they were lying and try to figure out what was really going on. Uruguay, however, has a wonderful LEFTIST president (a former leftist guerrilla who lives on a tiny flower farm and drives an old VW--his only assets--and who was imprisoned and tortured by the U.S. supported fascist dictatorship in Uruguay). He succeeded yet another great president (Tabare Vasquez) who established Uruguay as a full partner in the New South America--allied with Brazil, Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Nicaragua and other New Left countries with the common goals of independence of the region, peace and prosperity for all. José Mujica getting elected president, following Tabare Vasquez, doesn't guarantee honesty and good leadership everywhere in the government--no government or military is ever perfect--but at least the basis is there for truthfulness, protection of human rights and the redresss of wrongs such as this.

One hazard of having such horribly bad government as we do--with not only a decade of torture and unjust war, but IMPUNITY for our war criminals, failure to disavow or even speak of their crimes (let alone investigate and prosecute) and on-going crimes (drone-bombings of civilians, entry into a third war by presidential fiat)-- is that you can become very, very cynical. Skepticism is one thing. We MUST always be skeptical of government officials, everywhere, of whatever political persuasion. But cynicism is corrosive and destructive. We have good reason not to believe our government, ever. But to lose the expectation of good government is to lose belief in democracy itself. That is cynical--and also typical of the dark and gloomy atmosphere created by fascism (or, in our case, corpo-fascism). They WANT us to be cynical--to forget about good government altogether and to believe that government cannot address wrongs and cannot correct evils, when it clearly can. We have seen it in our lifetimes and we are seeing it now in Latin America. Government CAN end poverty. Government CAN achieve justice. Government "of, by and for the people" CAN work.

Just wanted to say what my complicated reaction to this article was. One can never predict anything for sure, but I have good confidence that the Mujica government will address this crime with honesty and strong action, and will likely go further, to investigate the command of these troops in Haiti, to try to insure that such a thing never happens again.