The Guardian Covers (Up) Colombia’s Reality

[Judi Lynn]

The Guardian Covers (Up) Colombia’s Reality
May 14th, 2008By Joe Emersberger

Colombia received more detailed attention than usual from the daily Guardian of the UK during the months of March and April of this year for many reasons:

1) On March 1 Colombia’s military violated Ecuadorian sovereignty to kill Raul Reyes, a leftist (FARC) guerrilla leader, and thereby provoked a regional crisis.
2) In mid March a minor scandal erupted due to UK Foreign Minister Kim Howells’ aggressive support for UK arms exports to Colombia
3) Rumors were reported in late March that a high profile hostage of the FARC rebels, Ingrid Betancourt, was gravely ill.
4) Mark Penn resigned on April 6 from Hillary Clinton’s campaign because of his lobbying work on behalf of Colombia in support of a trade agreement with the US.

During these two months the Guardian published 38 articles that discussed Colombia in significant detail. It is a very revealing exercise to scan these articles for information that is readily available on the website of Human Rights Watch (HRW).


HRW is a prominent organization with a track record of being disproportionately hard on US enemies (Hizbullah, Hamas, Venezuela) and soft on the US allies (Israel, Haiti under Gerard Latortue). <1> It is not a group likely to exaggerate the crimes of a US and UK ally.

One might expect that a supposedly left leaning newspaper like the Guardian would, at the very least, tell readers what HRW has been reporting.

In February of 2008, in an article for the Progressive magazine, two senior HRW officials wrote:

“For years, the Bush administration in the United States has stood by the government of President Álvaro Uribe in Colombia unconditionally, turning a blind eye to Colombia’s serious human rights problems. The Blair government in the UK, for the most part, quietly followed suit, providing substantial assistance to Colombia’s military with no strings attached. Colombia presents one of the worst human rights records in the world. At nearly three million, Colombia’s population of internally displaced persons is second only to that of Sudan.”<2>

In the 38 articles examined, not a single word (out of roughly 25,000) appeared about Colombia’s internally displaced people. No doubt, unconditional support for Colombia is easier to maintain when the magnitude of its human rights disaster is completely hidden by the Liberal media, but the Guardian did not just bury the scale of the crimes. It kept the leading perpetrators mostly out of sight.

More:
http://www.ukwatch.net/article/the_guardian_covers_up_colombia%E2%80%99s_reality