Wednesday, June 24, 2015

Colombian top brass involved in extrajudicial killings says Human Rights Watch (June 24, 2015)

Colombian army generals and colonels were involved in the systemic and widespread extrajudicial killing of civilians between 2002 and 2008, according to a Human Rights Watch report released today.

The 95-page report, "On Their Watch: Evidence of Senior Army Officers’ Responsibility for False Positive Killings in Colombia," presents previously unpublished evidence "strongly suggesting that numerous generals and colonels knew or should have known about 'false positive' killings, and may have ordered or otherwise actively furthered them."

The "false positive" killings, as they are known in Colombia, refer to as many as 3,700 civilians killed by army troops under pressure to boost body counts in the war against guerrilla groups. Soldiers abducted drug addicts, homeless people and petty criminals, or lured people from low-income backgrounds with promises of jobs. They were then killed, disguised in combat fatigues and planted with weapons in order to be passed off as combat fatalities.

Prosecutors in Colombia are investigating at least 3,000 of these cases, and about 800 lower-ranking soldiers have been convicted, but few colonels and no generals have been accused, according to Human Rights Watch.

"False positive killings amount to one of the worst episodes of mass atrocity in the Western Hemisphere in recent years, and there is mounting evidence that many senior army officers bear responsibility," said José Miguel Vivanco, executive Americas director at Human Rights Watch. "Yet the army officials in charge at the time of the killings have escaped justice and even ascended to the top of the military command, including the current heads of the army and armed forces."

The practise came to light after the abduction and killing of 19 young men from a Bogota slum, reports the Washington Post. The army's top commander was forced to resign, and three army generals and nearly a dozen officers were fired. President Juan Manuel Santos, then defense secretary, pledged to investigate.
The scandal resulted in the resignation of the commander of the Colombian Army, the firing of a few high-level officers and stained the reputation of the president at the time, Álvaro Uribe, who aggressively escalated the campaign against the guerrillas, reports the New York Times.

But the report suggests the killings were far more systematic and widespread than previouslybelieved. Evidence from the report -- garnered from interviews of Army officials conducted by Human Rights Watch and testimony given to Colombian prosecutors -- shows that the tactics used were largely consistent across units, reports the New York Times. Commanders at the very least should have been suspicious of the killings which occurred in areas where guerrillas did not generally operate and were carried out by troops not typically engaged in combat operations. 

Civilians were lured to a place where waiting soldiers would shoot them and plant weapons on their bodies to make them look like guerrilla combatants. Commanders rewarded soldiers with vacation days.

Generals are off the hook, says Human Rights Watch, a charge denied by Colombian authorities. Chief Prosecutor Eduardo Montealegre said more than a dozen generals were under investigation, but so far none have been charged, reports the AP.

Yesterday, Montealegre's office ordered four retired generals, including former army commander Mario Montoya, to provide testimony to prosecutors investigating the killings of civilians. Should the investigations follow due course, they will no doubt ally the army with transitional justice initiatives. That is to say, the investigation will pressure army authorities to recognize if there were institutional incentives for the false positives. But this could also lead to beneficial deals for perpetrators at the peace talks, which would put the army firmly on the side of the peace process, explains Silla Vacía

This move is unprecedented, not only because it involves so many generals, but because it sends a message that the responsibility of a high officer can be established even without evidence that he ordered a crime. "It is enough to prove that despite the information that they had they did not do what was necessary to punish and avoid the commission of new extrajudicial killings," reports Silla Vacía. Montoya is being cited more for omission than because of something he actively ordered.

The report draws attention to a key issue in the ongoing peace talks between the FARC rebel guerrilla group and the Colombian government: how to punish human rights violations committed by both sides during the conflict.

In 2012, Colombia enacted the Legal Framework for Peace, a constitutional amendment that paves the way for impunity for atrocities by guerrilla groups, paramilitaries, and the military if a peace agreement is reached with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) guerrillas, reports Human Rights Watch. The amendment empowers Congress to limit the scope of prosecutions for atrocities.

Human Rights Watch notes that the ICC is monitoring false positive proceedings in Colombia and could open an investigation if it determines that national authorities are unwilling or unable genuinely to investigate and prosecute them. 

The New York Times notes that an important point raised by the original scandal and the report is the matter of U.S. oversight of the human rights track record of the Colombian army, which is the Latin America’s largest recipient of military aid from Washington.

Human Rights Watch calls on the Obama administration to suspend the portion of military aid, around $7 million a year, which is conditioned on Colombia's respect for human rights, reports theAP.

U.S. Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), author of the legislation which would permit the suspension of military aide due to human rights violations, told the Washington Post that he was "deeply troubled" by the report and that it should force a new look at U.S. security assistance. "As we provided billions of dollars in aid to the Colombian army over many years, its troops systematically executed civilians," Leahy said.

News Briefs
  • Jailed Venezuelan opposition leader Leopoldo López ended his month-long hunger strike yesterday, after government authorities announced a date for parliamentary elections, one of his key demands. In a letter read by his wife in press conference yesterday, López said the election date announcement was a victory for him and 100 others who joined his hunger strike, reports the Wall Street Journal. López has been detained since last year on charges to incite violence in the context of nationwide protests that resulted in 43 deaths. His trial has been questioned by human rights organizations, and his legal team says they are not allowed to present evidence and testimony in his defense, according to the WSJ. The announcement ended months of speculations over whether the vote would be held as legally mandated, though authorities denied the election was ever in question. The Los Angeles Times notes that the date for polls is usually set far earlier in the year, allowing for a longer campaign season. (See yesterday's post.)
  • Mexican police say they captured the son and alleged-second in command of the New Generation Jalisco Cartel, Rubén Oseguera González, alias "el Menchito," reports the AP. The Jalisco cartel is blamed for some of the bloodiest and boldest attacks on federal forces in years. (See May 4thsMay 13ths, and May 26ths postings.)
  • Twenty-two people were killed or found dead this weekend in Mexico's Nuevo León state, raising concerns over an increase in violence in the wealthy state, reports VICE. In Guerrero, 21 people were killed or found dead over the weekend. The independent governor-elect of Nuevo Leon, Jaime Rodriguez took to Facebook to display his anger over the violence, which he said had been unseen in the region in four years. "We should not allow the return of this wave of violence, which the current authorities claim everyday is under control," Rodriguez wrote, urging authorities to clarify the circumstances of the killings.
  • Guatemalan authorities arrested 12 people, including civilians and current and former police officers, suspected of corruption reports the AP. The case involves $6.4 million in contracts to maintain patrol cars and renovate police stations — work that was never carried out, according to prosecutors and the CICIG, the U.N. commission investigating criminal networks in the country.
  • Guatemala's embattled former vice president, Roxana Baldetti, reappeared in public for the first time in a month after stepping down as a millionaire corruption scandal implicated a close aide, reports the AP. She attended a legal hearing on her petition for the return of properties frozen during the investigation. The appeals court upheld a lower court's decision to embargo those assets while it is determined whether they were obtained illegally.
  • Haitian migrants fearing mass deportations from the Dominican Republic can hop on a complimentary bus service offered by DR authorities for the next two weeks, which will drop them off at the Haitian border, reports the AP
  • The Caribbean is facing the worst drought of recent years this summer, affecting crops, reservoirs and cattle reports the AP. There is strict rationing in Puerto Rico, among the Caribbean islands worst hit by the water shortage. Tens of thousands of people in Puerto Rico only receive water every third day.
  • Most of Brazil's audit agency -- the TCU -- favors rejecting President Dilma Rousseff's fiscal accounts, reports Bloomberg. The agency has decided to give her government a month to explain budget practices that it says violate the fiscal-responsibility law. The TCU has never before recommended lawmakers reject government finances. 
  • Former Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said his Workers' Party is old and out of touch. "We have to define whether we want to save our skins and our jobs or if we want to save our project," he said at seminar Monday, reports the Latin American Herald Tribune.
  • To invest or not to invest. The latest installment in a seemingly endless debate comes from a JLL report quoted in the Miami Herald. The report cautions investors to avoid jumping on the euphoric Cuba bandwagon (which might be a figment of the media's imagination anyway): "integration with Cuba, even if the embargo is fully lifted, will take decades." 
  • Despite business interest in a ferry connection between the Florida Keys and Cuba, there are still hurdles to be cleared. The next step is getting a ferry terminal in Key West where U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents can clear international travelers, reports the Miami Herald.
  • Cuba's economic and political reforms, key to the diplomatic thaw between the U.S. and Cuba, are not without tradeoffs, argues Valerie Wirtschafter at the Council on Foreign Relations. "... And reform has already brought a combination of good, bad, and necessary change to the island and its people." She gives an overview of the impact of different economic reforms for islanders and concludes that: "Though Cuba is on an irreversible path, so far reform has meant creating space for the good, letting some of the bad return, and above all, implementing what is necessary to survive as a nation."
  • Peru's Congress granted President Ollanta Humala extraordinary powers to pass new laws aimed at combating crime. The government wants to be allowed to tap into telephone conversations as a measure to cut down on contract killings, to toughen sentences for those who hire minors to carry out killings, and to be able to pay for information on suspects, among other things, reports the Wall Street Journal. Humala's approval rating is at a new low of 17 percent, with a majority pointing to government corruption and crime as their main concerns, according to the piece
  • Prosecutors in Peru say they found a mass grave with 17 bodies, believed to be victims of the Shining Path rebel group in the 1980s, reports the BBC.
  • It's time for LatAm to start looking towards India as well as China, argues Andrés Oppenheimer in the Miami Herald. India's economic growth is set to outpace China's this year, and business leaders like Carlos Slim are already taking notice, he says. It's a market that is virtually ignored by Latin America, but which could be very beneficial he argues. While China mostly buys raw materials, India trades more in technology services, which creates more and better jobs for Latin America.
  • A computer glitch that has stranded hundreds of Mexican migrant farmworkers on the U.S. border is threatening Washington State's cherry harvest, reports the New York Times.
  • Peruvian and Bolivian authorities dismantled an aerial drug smuggling route between the two countries. Bolivian and Peruvian drug enforcement agents have conducted 5,170 operations since January, seizing 34.8 tons of marijuana, 7.3 tons of cocaine and six tons of cocaine paste. Law enforcement officials destroyed over 50 clandestine airstrips have been destroyed in Peru and more than a dozen small planes have seized in the Bolivian Amazon, reports Reuters.
  • Colombia's Congress is perceived as the country's most corrupt government body, according to a Transparency for Colombia study covered by Colombia Reports.
  • Vicuñas are being slaughtered by poachers, motivated by the skyrocketing value of their wool. The killing of the wild Andean relatives of camels is endangering the livelihood of native Andean families in Peru, Chile, Bolivia and Argentina who maintain a centuries old tradition of corralling and shearing vicunas as they migrate from watering spots to higher elevation sleeping grounds, reports the Los Angeles Times.
  • Panama led the world in overall well-being for the second year straight, according to the Gallup-Healthways Global Well-Being Index. Fifty-three percent of residents report thriving in three or more areas of well-being, measures that include a person's sense of purpose, financial well-being and physical health, reports Reuters.
  • A ten percent tax on sugary soft drinks in Mexico, targeted at reducing the nation's obesity problem, succeeded in reducing consumption by six percent in the policy's first year and 12 in the second, reports The Guardian. A study by the Mexican National Institute of Public Health and the University of North Carolina found that the tax's impact appears to be similar to that of taxes on tobacco and other goods that are hard to give up, where the drop in sales increases over time.

1 comment:

  1. Finance loans for immediate respond contact us
    Are you looking for Finance?
    Are you looking for a money to enlarge your business?
    We help individuals and companies to obtain loan for business
    expanding and to setup a new business ranging any amount. Get a
    loan at affordable interest rate of 2%, Do you need this cash/loan
    for business and to clear your bills? Then send us an email now
    for more information contact us now whatspp Number +918929490461
    Contact Us At : abdullahibrahimlender@gmail.com
    Mr Abdullah Ibrahim

    ReplyDelete