Last Wednesday (December 10) the UN Human Rights Council convened to examine Colombia's human rights record as part of the Universal Periodic Review. There, the "Israel of Latin America" received what by all accounts was a thrashing.
Far more damning than the delegates' statements, though, were the submissions by numerous international and local human rights organisations.
Amnesty International [.pdf], for example, warns that "the human rights and humanitarian situation [in Colombia] remains critical, and has even deteriorated in some regions", expressing "particular concern about increases in extrajudicial executions committed by the security forces". It reports that "[i]n recent years, there have been increasing reports of extrajudicial executions carried out directly by the [Colombian] security forces", adding that "[m]ost of the victims are campesinos or community leaders who the security forces falsely claimed were guerrillas killed in combat." Colombia continues to be the most dangerous country in the world for labour organisers, with 2008 seeing "an increase of killings of trade union members". Amnesty cites the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU) to the effect that 26 trade unionists have been murdered so far this year, "most of them by paramilitary groups" - a rise of 70% compared to 2007. The vast majority (96.8%) of these killings, according to the WFTU, go unpunished.
Human rights defenders are another target, facing
"a range of attacks and forms of intimidation, such as smear campaigns and break-ins, surveillance, death threats, physical assaults, kidnapping, assassination attempts and other types of attacks, such as unfounded criminal prosecutions and stigmatization as terrorist sympathizers".
According to human rights organisations cited by Amnesty, 75 human rights workers were killed between July 2002 and December 2007.
Human Rights Watch [.pdf] similarly observes that "[k]illings, kidnappings, threats, enforced disappearances, and internal displacement of civilians are frequent occurences". "Accountability for serious crimes is almost non-existent", with 97% of the more than 400 killings of trade unionists during President Uribe's government resulting in no conviction.
Paramilitary groups, HRW reports, have "consolidated their control and political influence regionally and even, as has recently been discovered, on a national level". These armed thugs "enforce their control through killings, enforced disappearances and threats", with reformed paramilitary groups "recruiting new troops and ... committing widespread abuses, including extortion, threats, killings and enforced displacement".
Both AI and HRW observe the strong ties between the Colombian state and the supposedly "demobilized" paramilitaries. According to Amnesty they have "infiltrated the political system", while HRW reports that they "exert influence at some of the highest levels of government". HRW describes how,
"[k]ey institutions like the Colombian Congress are now undergoing a major crisis of legitimacy - one that is unprecedented not only in Colombia but in all of Latin America - as more than 20% of Congress has come under investigation for collaborating with the paramilitaries. Indeed, more than 60 members of President Alvaro Uribe’s coalition in Congress - including his cousin and closest political ally, Senator Mario Uribe, who used to be President of Congress - have come under criminal investigation for rigging elections and collaborating with paramilitaries, and more than 30 of them are already under arrest. Uribe’s former intelligence chief is also under investigation for colluding with paramilitaries". [my emph.]
Both Amnesty and HRW also praise Colombia's "institutions of justice" and Supreme Court for showing "remarkable independence and courage" (HRW), standing "almost alone in bravely facing down the paramilitary threat" despite having to "constantly struggle for their independence" (Amnesty). They both condemn Uribe for "undermin[ing]" the Court's investigations, for example by openly threatening to "seek the prosecution of all the members of the criminal chamber of the Supreme Court when they issued a decision he did not like".
The Army, meanwhile, "has increasingly been carrying out extrajudicial executions of civilians, who they later claim were combatants killed in action". The killing of civilians has, according to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, "been increasing sharply in recent years", with the respected Colombian Commission of Jurists citing "236 reports of extrajudicial executions between June 2006 and June 2007, a substantial increase over the 127 reports between June 2002 and June 2003, at the start of the Uribe administration." Many of these executions follow a "similar pattern", in which,
"army members apparently take civilians from their homes or workplaces, kill them, and then dress them as combatants."
The OIDHACO network, cited by Amnesty, indicates that,
"from January to December 2007, human rights organizations collected information on 131 cases of 'false positives' [civilians murdered and then presented as if they were combatants], in which 211 persons were killed, 20 tortured, 15 injured and 22 arbitrarily detained".
Earlier this year Uribe was forced to fire the chief of the Army and other top officers in response to outrage over these "false positives", but his replacement, Gen. Óscar Enrique González, was himself an apologist for extrajudical executions perpetrated by the armed forces (dismissing them as "subversive" propaganda) and the head of one of the units most strongly suspected of engaging in the practice. (via BoRev)
The submission [.pdf] from the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center noted that Colombia has the second largest internally displaced population in the world (behind Sudan), and observed that the Colombian state is "held directly responsible for the extrajudicial executions and forced disappearances of a total of 955 people between January 2002 and June 2007". In 2002 the state (as distinct from both the paramilitaries and the guerrillas) was "held responsible for 17 percent of all human rights violations" compared to "56 percent by mid-2006".
There was a lot more like that, but you probably get the picture. Unless, that is, you get your news from the mainstream press, which thus far has, true to form, completely ignored the story (serial Chavez-basher Rory Carroll's silence is particularly conspicuous). This despite the fact that Colombia is a recipient of British military aid [.pdf] and arms (according to one recent report, the "security forces" trained by the US and Britain are responsible for 90% of the torture in Colombia). Needless to say, were multiple human rights organisations to accuse the Venezuelan government of complicity (to put it charitably) in the widespread murder, kidnapping and torture of political opponents, the level of coverage would be rather different. This contrast in media reporting of Uribe's Colombia and Chavez's Venezuela is a textbook example of the propaganda model at work.
Cross-posted at The Heathlander