Colombia war data 'unbelievable'

[Judi Lynn]

Page last updated at 20:26 GMT, Saturday, 13 December 2008
Colombia war data 'unbelievable'
By Jeremy McDermott
BBC News, Colombia

Colombian government figures on the number of guerrillas killed, captured or surrendered are vastly exaggerated, a human rights group says.

Codhes, a respected Colombian NGO, analysed the statistics of recent successes claimed by the armed forces in the 44-year civil conflict.

About 114,000 members of the warring factions were said to have been dealt with by the army in the last six years. However, other estimates say there are only 30,000 in the warring factions.

Even allowing for recruiting to replenish depleted ranks, the government figures suggest that eight members of the warring factions are killed every single day in Colombia, something not substantiated by any other sources.

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Also there is mounting evidence that members of the security forces have killed hundreds of unarmed civilians and presented them as members of the illegal armies shot in combat.

More:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7781991.stm

[Judi Lynn]

1. Dirty money:"shameful that the EU is so willing to overlook Colombia's deteriorating human rights"

Dirty money
It is shameful that the EU is so willing to overlook Colombia's deteriorating human rights situation in order to strike trade agreements

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Alvaro Uribe, the country's president, tried to use Betancourt's bloodless rescue to cultivate an image of cuddliness for himself. But his continued – and unfounded – assertions that trade unionists are engaged in terrorism has given right-wing paramilitaries a licence to kill and intimidate.

Uribe stated that a senior figure in Human Rights Watch was an accomplice of the Farc after HRW published a report in October suggesting that his government was sabotaging investigations into the influence wielded by paramilitaries over policy-makers. Accusing critics of Farc sympathies is a convenient way of distracting attention from Uribe's own record. Mark Thomas's new book Belching Out the Devil says that in 2002 the state was responsible for 17% of human rights violations in Colombia. By the end of Uribe's first term as president four years later, that proportion had risen to 56%.

Despite all this evidence, the European commission has still not opened a formal investigation into whether Colombia is complying with the terms on which its trade preferences were granted.

Even worse, the commission has confirmed recently that it wishes to negotiate a full free trade agreement with Colombia and Peru. This represents a climbdown from a decision taken in 2006 to pursue an accord with the entire Andean community. Because the leftwing governments of Ecuador and Bolivia are reluctant to completely hand over their countries to unscrupulous western firms, the EU side has decided to ditch them and negotiate with Bogota and Lima only. An official commitment made by Brussels officials last year to use trade as a means of bolstering regional integration in Latin America has now been overlooked.

The EU's policy for all free trade accords stipulates that they should contain a clause on human rights. In the case of Colombia that sounds like a joke, until you remember that it will be written with the blood of trade unionists.

More:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/dec/14/colombia-human-rights-trade