U.S. Fueling Human Rights Abuses in Colombia in Violation of Its Own Laws

[Judi Lynn]

U.S. Fueling Human Rights Abuses in Colombia in Violation of Its Own Laws
Posted: 01/25/2012 12:56 pm

As Noam Chomsky has often cautioned, when considering foreign relations, and especially military intervention, states should always heed the primary Hippocratic oath -- "First, do no harm." The U.S. has certainly disregarded this admonition with reckless abandon in Latin America, and Colombia is the foremost example of this, at least at the present time. Human Rights Watch appears to concur with this judgment.

Thus, Human Rights Watch (HRW) just released its annual human rights report on Colombia, and it is not pretty. The punch line of the report is most damning of the United States and its role in that country's abysmal practices -- undoubtedly, the very worst of this hemisphere.

~snip~
HRW explains in detail that the human rights violations the U.S. is aiding and abetting in Colombia are indeed the worst imaginable. As HRW explains, in Colombia

paramilitary successor groups continue to grow, maintain extensive ties with public security force members and local officials, and commit widespread atrocities. There has also been ongoing violence against rights defenders, community leaders, and trade unionists.

More:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dan-kovalik/colombia-human-rights_b_1228349.html

[Zorro]

1. If it's Sunday

it must be another US-Colombia relationship-bashing article.

[Peace Patriot]

2. Oh, those poor babies--the architects of Colombia's human rights atrocities!

How dare anybody "bash" them for their crimes--for the (at least) $7 BILLION in U.S. taxpayer dollars to the Colombian military with its close ties to rightwing paramilitary death squads, for the vast corruption and bloody horror of Colombia's political system, for the rise to the presidency of mafia don and Bush Jr pal, Alvaro Uribe, seventy of whose closest political cronies are under investigation or already in jail for ties to the death squads, drug trafficking, election fraud, illegal domestic spying, ponzie schemes and other crimes?! How dare anybody "bash" the architects of the brutal displacement of FIVE MILLION peasant famers?! How dare anybody "bash" those dear souls of Colombia/U.S. "free trade" for allowing Chiquita and Drummond Coal to hire death squads to murder labor leaders?

I mean, really, how mean can you get?!

Poor dears! They must weep at all these "terrible things" that people are saying about them! They must wring their hands and suffer palpitations of anxiety that their most heartfelt sincerity in spreading "freedom and democracy" is being questioned!

Critics should back off and let them do what they will to prep Colombia for U.S. "free trade for the rich"--trade unfettered by trade unions, trade free of human and civil rights for the poor, trade based on the lowest of possible wages, no benefits, a servile workforce and maximum profit for the rich! Trade based on rampant drug lords elevated to positions of authority, vast corruption and "dog eat dog" rules! Trade based on vast land theft, bloody repression, murder and mayhem! How could anybody object to this IDEAL form of U.S. "free trade"? Don't they know how good it will be for transglobal corporations, the favored drug lords and the super-rich?

The few voices left in (s)elected public office in the U.S., who oppose this worst of all U.S. "trade" deals, should shut the fuck up and bow before the sacred shrine of "free trade" along with other commie pinkos like Human Rights Watch! Everybody knows that these "hardline" human rightsters hate "free enterprise" and constantly carp on the murder of labor leaders and other advocates of the poor, as if that were a "snag" in the rich doing business!

How anti-free enterprise can you get! They want workers to LIVE and to NOT be terrorized! They want peasants to have their little organic food plots instead of being a addicted to Burger King and MacDonald's! They want honest elections, not crime networks running the political system! And they never stop "bashing" those who see the benefits of terrified workers, addicted to corporate food and imported goods, who don't dare to vote the wrong way because they might get a bullet in head!

Stop all this "bashing"! Let it slip into the corporate river of forgetfulness! Forget, forget, forget what is being done for the profit of the rich and powerful. Nothing to see here, move along.

Be stupid! Give in! And, hey, get ready for "trickle down," cuz all those profits built on the mountain of dead bodies in Colombia are coming here soon, to fund our schools and create jobs!

Is it necessary to say ?

[naaman fletcher]

3. So, human rights watch is good again? nt