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A group of seven MPs from the Kingdom of Spain (mostly Catalans, one Spaniard and one Basque too) traveled to Colombia recently to assess the situation there, invited by the Platform for Peace and Human Rights in Colombia in the context of the negotiations on a free trade treaty between the South American nation and the European Community.
One of the things that impressed me most was that even the Supreme Court itself admitted that the Executive Power does not allow the Judicial Power to work, there is no independent Justice, declared Francesc Canet.
60% of labor unionists murdered worldwide are Colombians. If a worker joins a union or tries to create a workers' committee, he is fired right away, declared senator Josep Nuet. Human Rights activists are similarly attacked: they are stigmatized and accused of belonging to armed groups.
14,700 people are accounted to have been murdered extra-judicially in Colombia. At least 2100 of them were killed arbitrarily only to pretend victories against the guerrilla and hence produce medals and honors for the commanders involved, these innocent victims of the army are called false positives.
Inés Sabanés tells of their painful experience with this issue: we were meeting with mothers of the false positives and that same day newspapers reported the liberation of several of the commanders who had commited such crimes. Worst of all was that the government organized a party to celebrate it, with spa, clowns and music. A shame.
Source: Tercera Información.
3 comments:
The largely fictional war against armed groups is a good cover for a actual war against popular organisations. The same was true of Guatemala and El Salvador, in both the army was trained by Israelis just as it is in Columbia.
I would not say that the war is "largely fictional", though the "war against drugs" is of course: the DEA and Uribe are the proverbial fox put to watch the chicken.
What we should ask is what fuels the guerrilla? Obviously it's the very existence of a fascist state and specially of widespread injustice and abuses at all levels what does. Therefore militarization can't solve the conflict, only justice and democracy can.
I know that Germany is largely a police state but you can't compare with Colombia.
In Colombia, you, Michael, could be dead now for saying what you said here. No legal procedure whatsoever: just a bullet on your head.
A local human rights activist who dared to speak to the UK committee recently visiting the country was killed a few days after he spoke. That's real terror of a kind we can't not yet imagine in Europe.
Except in Chechnya probably.
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