[News] Colombia, the death squads & the US’ human rights double standard

[Anti-Imperialist News]

https://www.rt.com/op-ed/429036-colombia-venezuela-us-nato/amp/?__twitter_impression=true 



  Colombia, the death squads & the US’ human rights double standard

7 Jun, 2018 - /Dan Kovalik/
------------------------------------------------------------------------

Nearly every day, we are bombarded with “news” about problems in 
Venezuela. And certainly, there are problems, such as food and medicine 
shortages and skyrocketing inflation. But there is something that is 
downplayed.

What the press downplays, if it mentions it at all, is the very real and 
significant ways that US sanctions have contributed to these problems 
facing Venezuela and how these sanctions are making it nearly impossible 
for Venezuela to solve these problems.

What the press also fails to mention is the even greater humanitarian 
issues confronting Venezuela’s next-door neighbor, Colombia – the US’ 
number one ally in the region and, quite bizarrely, the newest /“global 
partner”/ of NATO from Latin America. And, the US is very much 
responsible for these issues as well, but in quite different ways.

The fact is that, by a number of measures, Colombia has one of the worst 
human rights situations on earth, but you would never know this from 
watching the nightly news.

First of all, Colombia has the largest number of people forcibly 
disappeared 
<http://pacifista.co/colombia-tiene-mas-desaparecidos-que-todas-las-dictaduras-del-cono-sur/> 
in all of the Americas – even more than all of the Southern Cone 
countries combined during the infamous ‘dirty war’ years – at over 60,000.

In addition, Colombia has one of the largest internally displaced 
populations on earth at well over 7 million 
<http://www.unhcr.org/en-us/news/briefing/2017/3/58c26e114/forced-displacement-growing-colombia-despite-peace-agreement.html> 
– second <http://www.internal-displacement.org/countries/colombia> only 
to Syria. And, a disproportionate number of these internally displaced 
are indigenous and Afro-descendants.

Moreover, Colombia ranks 5th in the world 
<http://m.eltiempo.com/vida/educacion/cifra-de-ninos-asesinados-en-colombia-225124> 
for the number of children internally displaced by conflict, with two 
million boys and girls internally displaced. Quite shockingly, Colombia 
ranks 3rd in the world 
<http://m.eltiempo.com/vida/educacion/cifra-de-ninos-asesinados-en-colombia-225124> 
for the number of children murdered, with 715 children murdered just 
last year. Such statistics have led Save The Children to conclude that 
Colombia is /“one of the worst countries to be a child and adolescent in 
the world.”/

Colombia is also one of the worst countries in the world to be a social 
leader, such as a human rights defender, union leader, indigenous or 
Afro-Colombian leader. Thus, even after the signing of a peace deal 
between the Colombian government and FARC guerrillas in 2016, social 
leaders are being murdered at an alarming rate. Indeed, over 200 social 
leaders have been killed 
<https://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/4-Social-Leaders-and-Activists-Killed-in-24-Hours-in-Colombia-20180603-0013.html> 
just since January of 2017. Last year was in fact the worst year on 
record for human rights defenders 
<https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2018/may/01/2017-deadliest-year-on-record-colombian-human-rights-defenders> 
in Colombia, with 120 killed in 2017.

Of course, the US has a large responsibility to bear for this awful 
situation in Colombia, as it has been the intellectual author behind 
Colombia’s brutal, decades-long war against its own people and has 
provided billions of dollars of material aid to this war effort. Indeed, 
since 2000, the US has given Colombia $10 billion 
<http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/02/08/15-years-and-10-billion-later-u-s-efforts-to-curb-colombias-cocaine-trade-have-failed/> 
in mostly military assistance as part of its counter-insurgency program 
known as ‘Plan Colombia.’ During the Plan Colombia years, the Colombian 
military attempted to boost US military assistance by murdering 
civilians in cold blood and passing them off as left-wing guerillas. It 
is now believed that the military killed 10,000 civilians 
<https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/may/08/colombia-false-positives-scandal-casualties-higher-thought-study> 
in this grisly /“false positive”/ operation.

But the US is also behind an even darker force than the Colombian 
military – that is, the Colombian paramilitary death squads. While those 
who live in the more remote parts of Colombia are painfully aware of the 
paramilitaries’ presence and brutality, the paramilitaries are now a 
well-kept secret in the more well-to-do parts of Colombia’s big cities 
and even more so outside of Colombia. Indeed, the Colombian and US 
governments deny the very existence of these paramilitary groups, and 
the compliant press is happy to oblige in keeping this dirty secret.

Recently, Colombia’s most prominent human rights defender, Father Javier 
Giraldo, S.J., spoke about the paramilitary phenomenon 
<http://m.lapatria.com/manizales/el-paramilitarismo-sigue-vivo-asegura-el-sacerdote-javier-giraldo-experto-en-derechos> 
of which he is an expert.   As he explains, /“There are clandestine or 
semi-clandestine arms of the State, which are the paramilitary groups. 
Today, it is not tolerated that you refer to them as such, but I still 
call them paramilitaries, because that is the appropriate term.”/

Father Giraldo describes the origin of the paramilitary death squads, a 
force developed by the United States before the left-wing guerrillas 
even came into existence in 1964. As Father Giraldo explains:

/“In 1962, when Guillermo León Valencia was president, a mission of the 
North American army, of a special school of war in North Carolina, 
created after the Second World War to maintain the security of the 
United States, arrived in Colombia... They analyzed the situation in 
Colombia and left secret instructions, ordering the Colombian government 
to begin training mixed groups of civilians and the military, and 
preparing them for paramilitary terrorist activities to combat the 
sympathizers of communism.”/

/“...President Valencia, on Christmas day of the year 1965, issued 
Decree 3398 with which he changed the name of the Ministry of War to 
[the Ministry of] Defense, and authorized forming groups of civilians as 
auxiliaries of the armed forces, the legal basis of paramilitarism.”/

/“...The United States began to direct the entire security apparatus in 
Colombia and its agencies... first with 400 officers of the US Army; 
today there are at least 800. The paramilitarism that was created at 
that time, with all the legal support, has been reaffirmed.”/

Of course, as Father Giraldo has explained on numerous occasions, the 
ostensible /“sympathizers of communism”/ targeted by the paramilitaries 
are trade union leaders, human rights defenders, peasant leaders, and 
Catholic priests who advocate on behalf of the poor. As for Catholic 
priests, over 80 have been murdered since 1984 
<https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/colombian-priest-killed-in-continuing-trend-of-violence> 
for the crime of advocating on behalf of the poor.

It is now becoming more evident than ever from the fact that there is 
now a rise in the murder of such social leaders, as well as mass forced 
displacement, after the disarming of the FARC guerrillas, that it, is 
the paramilitaries which are responsible for the lion’s share of such 
human rights abuses in Colombia. But again, you would have no idea about 
this from reading the newspapers or watching the nightly news. And, 
Colombians who are suffering at the hands of the paramilitaries are 
painfully aware of the conspiracy of silence around this issue.

Indeed, when I was recently in Colombia for the first round of the 
presidential elections, our delegation met with a number of residents of 
the small town of Suarez (Cauca Department) which had just lost three 
members of their community to paramilitary violence. One of the members 
of the community desperately asked us, /“what can we do to let the world 
know of the continued existence of the paramilitaries?”/ I answered that 
we have been trying to do just that for many years, though few will hear 
us out on this issue.

While we were in Colombia, a campaign coordinator for Gustavo Petro, a 
Colombian presidential candidate, was murdered 
<https://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Five-Scandals-that-Marked-the-Colombian-Presidential-Campaigns-20180527-0013.html> 
by paramilitaries the day before the election, and the paramilitary 
group known as ‘Aguilas Negras’ (Black Eagles) issued a general threat 
against the supporters of Petro for president just a few days before the 
May 27 vote.

If Colombia’s very real human rights and humanitarian crises were given 
nearly the attention that the problems in neighboring Venezuela 
receives, the US and Colombian government would at least have some 
incentive to improve the situation in Colombia and to go after the 
paramilitary groups which continue to haunt that country. The near 
complete silence about the staggering violence in Colombia is critical 
in allowing that violence to continue. Indeed, the paramilitaries have 
always depended upon being able to operate in the shadows, and the US 
press is more than happy to oblige them in this effort.

/Dan Kovalik for RT/

/Dan Kovalik teaches International Human Rights at the University of 
Pittsburgh School of Law. He is the author of 'The Plot to Attack Iran.'/

-- 
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