The US State Department says Colombia is making significant progress in improving its human rights record, opening the door for more than $30 million in US military to the country for the fiscal year 2011. The evaluation came as part of DOS’s annual certification report required under Plan Colombia and turned into the US Congress last week. According to AFP, the report maintains that “Though there continues to be a need for improvement, the Colombian government has taken positive steps to improve respect for human rights in the country.” Of newly elected president Juan Manuel Santos, DOS contends the former defense minister “has taken significant steps to demonstrate that it takes human rights seriously” and praises Santos’s early push land reform – what it calls “monumental legislation” to return millions acres of stolen land to displaced persons.
However, there remain serious reservations. “Impunity remains a concern... (and) threats by criminal groups against human rights defenders and civil society in Colombia are also deeply troubling,” DOS notes. The AP writes that to date, “191 members of Colombian security forces have been convicted of extra-judicial killings and nearly 300 are on trial. In addition, “prosecutors on Wednesday charged 29 soldiers with murder in the 2005 case of two men slain and presented to authorities as leftist rebels killed in combat” – one of many “false positives” cases still under investigation..
The US Congress must now vote on authorizing the $30 million plus – monies which US officials say will support Colombian military aviation, ground and maritime programs as well as training for peacekeepers and equipment.
In other Colombia-related news:
· From the UK’s Telegraph (via Latin America News Dispatch), a report that two Colombian hitmen, suspected of working as “debt collectors” for Colombian drug cartels, were arrested in Spain’s Valencia region this week. The two men are suspected of killing as many as 200 individuals, working on behalf of Colombia’s Norte del Valle drug cartel, (aka La Negra) and traffickers connected to the old Self Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC). The Interior Ministry in Spain commented on the arrests, calling the two men “the most dangerous Colombian citizens to have been detained in Spain up until now.” Both men face extradition back to Colombia. From the Economist, a look at the recent uptick in FARC activity in Colombia – actions which led to President Juan Manuel Santos’s recent call for intensified military operations against the group. The Economist:
“Recently…the FARC has delivered brutal reminders that they have not been vanquished yet. On September 1st, a police convoy in the province of Caquetá was destroyed by a mine laid by the guerrillas, who later burned the bodies of the 14 victims. Nine days later, the group fired homemade mortars made from cooking-gas cylinders on a police station in the town of San Miguel, on the Ecuadorean border, claiming eight lives. All told, the FARC has killed 40 police and soldiers over the last month.”
And in what looks like a repeat of the Hollman Morris case, award-winning Colombian journalist Claudia Duque has been refused a visa to enter a major Western country. This time it’s the UK who has turned the journalist away (although it’s still unclear why her visa application was rejected). According to the Guardian, Duque’s work has revealed “the infiltration of extreme right-wing paramilitary groups into government institutions.” The journalist had hoped to visit London as part of a European tour in which she collected a press freedom award in Stockholm from the Swedish branch of Reporters Without Borders.
· Three recent pieces updating the situation in Haiti. The LA Times looks at the ongoing challenges of resettling the country’s millions of homeless, as well as questions about who owns what land. The LAT: “The government and foreign aid groups want to move many back to their old neighborhoods or open spaces nearby and build single-family shelters for them. But to avoid roiling an already volatile situation, they must know who owns the land they're building on.” More on the matter from Mother Jones magazine, looking at the entrance of “disaster capitalists” and the mass land expulsions of already displaced Haitians which have followed. The magazine says the issue has flown under the radar screen of most NGOs in the country, putting displaced persons “at the mercy of landowners anxious to reclaim their property.” Finally, the Miami Herald on the progress report given by Haitian PM Jean-Max Bellerive at the Americas Conference in Florida this week. His tone: a more positive one. Bellerive: “Like the famous iceberg, much of what we've accomplished is hidden from open view. We have not had a thousand days. We've only had 240 days. And what we have accomplished in those brief 240 days is, under the circumstances, remarkable when weighed against the challenges.”
· BBC Mundo has more on Alvaro Colom’s push for an anti-gang law in Guatemala, following the legislation recently approved in El Salvador. Colom’s notion suggests the desire on the part of some Central American governments for a more coordinated “regional strategy” against organized crime. For its part, the UNPD seems to support the idea with its coordinator for governability quoted in the piece saying that the sub-region needs “articulated measures” that “allow it to confront the problem in a regional manner.” More on the issues of crime and democracy in Central America at AQ today.
· New Datanálisis pre-election numbers for Venezuela were discussed at the Americas Conference yesterday. The Miami Herald has the report on the latest survey data which shows 27 percent of the total electorate planning to vote for Chávez allies in upcoming legislative elections. Twenty-four percent will vote for opposition candidates and 30 percent undecided. The data for the poll was collected in the month of August.
· While I haven’t had a chance to listen, the Inter-American Dialogue has the audio of Ollanta Humala’s talk yesterday in Washington DC up at its site.
· Andres Oppenheimer comments on the World Bank’s new regional assessment of the place of primary commodities in Latin America’s recent economic success, as I discussed here recently. His view is less optimistic than the Bank’s: “Even if the World Bank study is calling on commodity exporting countries to save for a rainy day and to add value to their raw materials, I'm afraid that it will send the wrong message to countries that rely on commodity export.”
· And finally the AP and Time with reports on bicentennial festivities in Mexico. Here’s Time with a its attempt at analytical reflection, often lost among daily drug war body counts:
“Mexico actually has a lot to celebrate this week. Its fledgling, decade-old democracy is taking deeper root, and its economy is far more modern and productive than it was before Mexico inked NAFTA 16 years ago. But the flaw holding Mexico back — the reason its landscape is still loaded with gluttonous monopolies, dismal schools and bloodthirsty narco-gangs — is its lack of, if not disdain for, functioning institutions. More specifically, rule of law.”
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