Reply #279: "FAIR finds editors downplaying Colombia’s abuses, amplifying Venezuela’s" [View All]

[Judi Lynn]

Extra! February 2009

FAIR Study: Human Rights Coverage Serving Washington’s Needs
FAIR finds editors downplaying Colombia’s abuses, amplifying Venezuela’s

By Steve Rendall and Daniel Ward and Tess Hall

Any evenhanded comparison of the Colombian and Venezuelan governments’ human rights records would have to note that, though Venezuela’s record is far from perfect, that country is by every measure a safer place than Colombia to live, vote, organize unions and political groups, speak out against the government or practice journalism.

But a new survey by FAIR shows that, over the past 10 years, editors at four leading U.S. newspapers have focused more on purported human rights abuses in Venezuela than in Colombia, and their commentary would suggest that Venezuela’s government has a worse human rights record than Colombia’s. These papers, FAIR found, seem more interested in reinforcing official U.S. policy toward the region than in genuinely supporting the rights of Colombians and Venezuelans.

Colombia’s ‘appalling’ record . . .

Over the past 40 years, Colombia has been known for its rampant human rights violations, untouchable drug cartels, government-linked death squads and violent guerrilla groups. The principal specialist on Colombia for the nonprofit group Human Rights Watch (HRW), Maria McFarland Sanchez-Moreno, told Congress (4/23/07), “Colombia presents the worst human rights and humanitarian crisis in the Western Hemisphere.” She also noted that government-linked paramilitary groups are largely responsible for Colombia’s grim status.

Though Colombia is not the chaotic state it was in the late 1980s and early ‘90s, and violence and repression have not been uniform, HRW’s Americas director José Miguel Vivanco has called Colombia’s current human rights situation “appalling” (Human Rights Watch, 1/22/08).

Killings of civilians by uniformed Colombian military and police totaled 329 in 2007 (Los Angeles Times, 8/21/08), and the country’s unfolding “para-political” scandals have revealed “links between rightist death squads and dozens of officials loyal to President Álvaro Uribe” (Boston Globe, 12/14/06). Everyone from senators to cabinet members to judges have been implicated—even Colombia’s top general, Mario Montoya, whom the Washington Post (9/17/08) described as “a trusted caretaker of the sizable aid package Washington provides Colombia’s army.”

A 2005 report by the Colombian Commission of Jurists (6/21/05) estimated paramilitaries have killed at least 13,000 people since 1996 alone.

The country is, in Sánchez-Moreno’s words (4/23/07), “the murder capital of the world for trade unionists”; estimates of the number of unionists killed in the last two decades range from 2,700 (Human Rights Watch, 11/20/08) to 4,000 (AFL-CIO Solidarity Center, 6/06; U.S. State Department, cited in Miami Herald, 4/16/07).

Journalists have not fared much better. In 2001, the Committee to Protect Journalists described Colombia as “by far the most dangerous country in Latin America for journalists” (New York Times, 7/12/01). According to recent statistics by the organization (12/31/08), there were 40 journalists killed in Colombia from January 1992 until January 2009, making it the fourth-deadliest country during that period, following Iraq (137), Algeria (60) and Russia (49).

. . . vs. ‘relatively open’ Venezuela

~snip~
When all is said and done, though, Vivanco described Venezuela as a “relatively open society” (New York Times, 9/19/08), and HRW’s report pointed out that, excluding the court-packing charge, “the most dramatic setback” to Venezuelan democracy was the 2002 coup that temporarily removed Chávez from office—an action cheered by both the White House and many U.S. newspaper editors (L.A. Times, 4/17/02; New York Times, 4/13/02; Chicago Tribune, 4/14/02).

More:
http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=3699