More on human rights in Colombia

a commenter responded to yesterday's posts (here and here) on the wapo op-ed defending colombia's president, álvaro uribe, and my follow-up post attempting to provide some context via amnesty usa...

You didn't answer the questions of whether or not Uribe has any ties to the paramilitary groups. This is the argument that WaPo is making, and if you don't dispel this argument you haven't convinced me. Please help me out here.
Anonymous | 05.07.07 - 9:39 am | #

i responded...

i'm not trying to convince you of anything and it's certainly not in my power to determine whether or not uribe has ties to paramilitary groups... one, i'm pointing out that the wapo has, purposely or not, left out a major chunk of context in their op-ed... two, ties to paramilitary groups notwithstanding, it is reasonably clear that uribe's government campaign to take back control of the country has done so at great cost to human rights, as bad or worse than the abuses caused by the paramilitary forces...
profmarcus | Homepage | 05.07.07 - 11:10 am | #

as i was looking for something that might provide some additional perspective, i ran across this from ips, a news outlet i consider to be pretty reliable...

When a murder occurs in a Colombian community, the locals know who committed it: far-right paramilitaries, leftwing guerrillas, or the security forces. They also know if fighting really took place, or if the "enemy" bodies displayed on television as "trophies" by army officers were in fact dead civilians.

A large proportion of the casualties in Colombia's decades-long armed conflict are civilians. The violence between leftist rebel groups on one hand and rightwing paramilitary militias and government forces on the other is further fuelled by drug trafficking, corruption and impunity. Amid the chaos and pressure from all sides, local people are in the best position to know precisely what happened.

i think this sums up what i believe is a fair picture... there are three groups, all of whom are killing people, and that is further aggravated by this...

Javier Giraldo, founder of the Inter-Church Justice and Peace Commission ... spends his time with communities in the most violent regions of the country, provides them with legal advice and gives voice to their accusations [and] runs the Human Rights and Political Violence Databank of the Centre for Popular Research and Education (CINEP), which has been keeping a tally of the killings for 19 years.

[...]

[Giraldo says], "The problem in Colombia is that there is no right to information. The right to information means that people can have access to the truth, and that most people, or at least organised sectors of society, can communicate what is happening and their own reading of it to the general public. That is not possible in Colombia."

it's a rather complicated situation to say the least, but certainly nothing like the flag-waving, democrat-excoriating, uribe-as-america's-best-friend, context-free wapo op-ed would have you believe...

Submit To Propeller
Tweet