Colombian Government’s Role in Human Rights Abuses

Here is the latest article from our friends at Colombia Journal:

Colombian Government’s Role in Human Rights Abuses

by Garry Leech

It seems that new revelations about the Colombian government’s links to human rights abuses are appearing almost weekly. In recent weeks there have been allegations that Colombian political and military officials conspired with right-wing paramilitaries to burn the bodies of massacre victims in an effort to conceal the number of people killed by the militias; the country’s largest paramilitary organization funded President Alvaro Uribe’s 2002 election campaign; and the military’s counterinsurgency strategy has contributed to a worsening humanitarian crisis. These revelations come on the heels of evidence that the military has increasingly used extra-judicial executions as a counter-insurgency strategy in recent years and the para-politics scandal linking elected officials to the paramilitaries.

In response to the Colombian military’s increasing involvement in human rights violations, the British government recently announced that it was ending military aid to Colombia. In contrast, both the U.S. and Canadian governments continue to disregard the human rights crisis in their push to implement bilateral free trade agreements with Colombia.

Read the full article at: http://www.colombiajournal.org/colombia308.htm