While
Colombia is known for one of the worst human rights records in the
world, it remains a top recipient of US military aid and enjoys
uncritical press coverage in Western media--all while Trump threatens
military intervention against Venezuela over unsubstantiated
allegations.
Abby Martin
spoke to human rights attorney Dan Kovalik, who has recently returned
from both countries. In a part of the interview, Kovalik spoke about
the "false positive" scandal and the atrocities by the
Colombian military against civilians:
The
Colombian military which has been trained by the United States, was
responsible for the "false positive" scandal which people
may remember. It's fairly recent. The high-water markers between 2002
and 2009, where they killed between about 4,000 and 6,000 civilians,
that they knew were civilians, but they dressed them up as
guerrillas, would kill them and put uniforms on them, guns on them,
in order to push-up the numbers to justify more US military aid.
As pointed
out in the summary of a 2015 report
by Human Rights Watch:
Between
2002 and 2008, army brigades across Colombia routinely executed
civilians. Under pressure from superiors to show “positive”
results and boost body counts in their war against guerrillas,
soldiers and officers abducted victims or lured them to remote
locations under false pretenses—such as with promises of
work—killed them, placed weapons on their lifeless bodies, and then
reported them as enemy combatants killed in action. Committed on a
large scale for more than half a decade, these “false positive”
killings constitute one of the worst episodes of mass atrocity in the
Western Hemisphere in recent decades.
In
September 2008, a media scandal over army troops’ killings of young
men and teenage boys from the Bogotá suburb of Soacha helped force
the government to take serious measures to stop the crimes, including
by dismissing three army generals. Prosecutors are now investigating
more than 3,000 alleged false positives by military personnel.
Upwards of 800 army members have been convicted for extrajudicial
killings committed between 2002 and 2008, most of them low-ranking
soldiers. The convictions have covered a handful of former battalion
and other tactical unit commanders, but not a single officer who was
commanding a brigade or holding a position higher up the chain of
command at the time of the crimes. Of the 16 active and retired army
generals under investigation, none have been charged.
Today,
especially after FARC disarmament, things seem to getting worse in
Colombia. As mentioned,
it seems that the void left by FARC has been occupied by new
paramilitaries on behalf of big corporations. Atrocities,
assassinations and human rights violations continue against anyone
who dares to question the corporate authority.
The usual
suspect behind the mess is well known and always the same: US
imperialism.
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