European NGOs ask EU to condemn Colombian disappearances

[Judi Lynn]

European NGOs ask EU to condemn Colombian disappearances
Thursday, 16 February 2012 11:06
Miriam Wells

An organization representing more than 30 European NGOs has asked the European Union to call for a "frontal assault" on Colombian forced disappearances, reported newspaper La Vanguardia Thursday.

The International Office for Human Rights-Action on Colombia (OIDHACO) says the EU must demand the Colombian government do something about this abuse, highlighting that in May 2011 the total number of missing people reached 57,200, according to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. This represents a 40% increase in forced disappearances from 2009.

It has the second-highest incidence of forced disappearance after Argentina and the situation continues to worsen, according to a report released last year by Washington-based NGO Council of Hemispheric Affairs.

OIDHACO spokesman Vincent Vallies said he was deeply worried by "the silence of the EU before this drama which affects thousands of people." The EU must take a public stand and demand that forced disappearances stop, he said.

More:
http://colombiareports.com/colombia-news/news/22243-ngos-ask-europe-to-condemn-colombian-disappearances.html

[Judi Lynn]

1. The U.S. War for Drugs and of Terror in Colombia

The U.S. War for Drugs and of Terror in Colombia
Posted: 02/16/2012 7:05 pm

just had the pleasure of reading an important new book entitled, Cocaine, Death Squads and the War on Terror (U.S. Imperialism and Class Struggle in Colombia). This book, which was ten years in the making, is written by Oliver Villar & Drew Cottle and published by Monthly Review. The premise of the book is that, despite the U.S. claims that it is engaged in a war against drugs in Colombia, it is in fact engaged in an anti-insurgency war against the left-wing FARC guerillas - a war which does not seek to eradicate coca growing and cocaine production in Colombia at all.

Rather, the U.S. war effort (which has cost U.S. taxpayers over $7 billion since 2000) is designed to ensure that the allies of the U.S. in Colombia -- that is, the Colombian state, paramilitaries and wealthy elite who are favorable to U.S. business interests and to the U.S.'s desire for exploitation of Colombia's vast resources -- are themselves able to monopolize the drug trade so critical to their survival.

This thesis is well-expressed in the Forward by Peter Dale Scott:

The CIA can (and does) point to its role in the arrest or elimination of a number of major Colombian traffickers. These arrests have not diminished the actual flow of cocaine into the United States, which on the contrary reached a new high in 2000. But they have institutionalized the relationship of law enforcement to rival cartels and visibly contributed to the increase of urban cartel violence. The true purpose of most of these campaigns, like the current Plan Colombia, has not been the hopeless ideal of eradication. It has been to alter market share: to target specific enemies and thus ensure that the drug traffic remains under the control of those traffickers who are allies of the Colombian state security apparatus and/or the CIA. This confirms the judgment of Senate investigator Jack Blum a decade ago, that America, instead of battling a narcotics conspiracy, has in a subtle way . . . become part of the conspiracy.

More:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dan-kovalik/us-war-colombia-drugs_b_1279321.html