Source:
The ProgressiveColombia Spies on Fellowship of Reconciliation and Other Human Rights Groups
By Matthew Rothschild, December 24, 2008
The government of Colombia has been busy spying on human rights groups.
Colombian government agencies have intercepted more than 150 e-mail accounts of nonviolent groups like the Fellowship of Reconciliation and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, as well as Colombian NGOs, according to the Fellowship of Reconciliation. Colombia was intercepting e-mails from members of the Fellowship of Reconciliation who were even in the United States, the group says.
Colombia’s police intelligence agency began the intercepts in December 2006 and continued to get them as recently as November 2008. The Colombian NGOs that were monitored were: The Movement for Victims of States Crimes, the Colombian Network for Action on Free Trade, the Alvear Restrepo Lawyers Collective, and the Yira Castro human rights organization.
This surveillance spells danger for members of these groups, since Colombian paramilitary squads, often working hand in glove with the military, have savagely persecuted human rights workers and labor organizers over the last several decades.
~snip~
“As a result,” says the letter, “U.S. taxpayers were apparently paying for Colombian agencies to spy on legitimate U.S. and Colombian humanitarian organizations.”
Read more:
http://www.progressive.org/By%20Matthew%20Rothschild%2C%20December%2025%2C%202008
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