Colombia Commits "Crimes Against Humanity" As Free Trade Pacts Are Debated

[Judi Lynn]

Colombia Commits "Crimes Against Humanity" As Free Trade Pacts Are Debated
Tuesday May 19, 2009 20:54 by Dan Kovalik - Huffington Post

Despite the claims of the Colombian government and those in the U.S., Canada and the EU eager to consummate "free trade" pacts with that regime, the human rights situation in that country is deteriorating fast. Indeed, by key measures — the killing of unionists, extra-judicial killings by the military, and the forced displacement of civilians — Colombia’s human rights situation is amongst the worst in the world and getting worse. In the case of union killings, it remains the very worst.

Union Killings and The Hand of the State

So far this year, 17 unionists have been killed in Colombia — allowing Colombia to maintain its long-running title as "most dangerous country in the world for trade unionists," and putting Colombia on a pace to exceed the figure of union leaders killed last year (49) and the year before (39) - figures which motivated Barack Obama to oppose the Colombia FTA in the first place.

Francisco Javier Ricaurte Gomez, the President of the Labor Section of the Colombian Supreme Court, recently mentioned to me in a meeting we recently held in Pittsburgh, that he sees in these killings "the dark hand of the state." And indeed, the U.S. State Department continues to detail the strong connections between the Colombian state and military and the outlawed paramilitary groups which are largely responsible for these killings, making one wonder if those in charge of negotiating these trade pacts are actually reading their own governments’ human rights reports.

According to the most recent 2009 State Department Country Report on Colombia, sectors of Colombia’s official armed forces "collaborated with or tolerated the activities of new illegal groups or paramilitary members who refused to demobilize. Such collaboration often facilitated unlawful killings and may have involved direct participation in paramilitary atrocities."

Colombia’s Crimes Against Humanity — Extra-Judicial Killings

The State Department also reported (in its typical understated fashion for countries the U.S. is aligned with) that "political and unlawful killings remained an extremely serious problem, and there were periodic reports that members of the security forces committed extrajudicial killings during the internal armed conflict." In fact, according to the AP, around 1,600 civilians have been the victim of extra-judicial killings by the Colombian military itself since President Uribe took over as President in 2002 - a massive increase from Uribe’s predecessor. Indeed, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights recently declared that these extra-judicial killings by the military are on such a scale that they amount to a "crime against humanity."

And, as the State Department explained, many of these killings involved the phenomenon of "false positives" - that is, of "military officials paying illegal groups to forcibly recruit young men, transport them to another town, and turn them over to local brigades who then killed them and presented them as guerillas killed in combat."

More:
http://www.anarkismo.net/article/13158