Colombia Spies on Fellowship of Reconciliation and Other Human Rights Groups

[Judi Lynn]

Colombia 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.”

http://www.progressive.org/By%20Matthew%20Rothschild%2C%20December%2025%2C%202008

[amyrose2712]

1. Always a kick!

[Judi Lynn]

2. Caught! Condi's State Dept. Found Spying on Peace Fellowship

December 17, 2008 at 21:34:28
Caught! Condi's State Dept. Found Spying on Peace Fellowship

by Gustav Wynn

In a stunning waste of your tax dollars, the State Dept. has been found to have spied on emails between an American human rights advocacy group and their Bogotá, Columbia partners after they compiled documentation of state sponsored brutality and disappearances. But it gets worse - email intercepts may have led to the break-in and seizure of computers in which this evidence was stolen, suggesting the U.S. government could have played a role in tipping off Columbian government thugs that the humanitarian agency had evidence on them.

A plea went out today from the Executive Director of Fellowship of Reconciliation, an international peace advocacy organization with a 94 year history and branches in 40 countries. In part:

In 2005, we informed FOR supporters that more than 10,000 pages of FBI files had been released to us, documenting decades of surveillance of the organization. Now, we have just learned that for two full years - since December 2006 - our Latin America program has been targeted and monitored by state agents. Specifically, the e-mail messages intercepted include FOR communication in the US and with Colombia.

This covert action is a direct violation of our right to privacy as a humanitarian activist organization.

We've also learned that the Colombian military paid for computer hard drives "of interest to intelligence" agencies. The June 2007 break-in and stealing of FOR's Bogotá office computers containing sensitive files on our work with members of Colombian peace communities may have been a direct result of this state-sanctioned surveillance.

~snip~
Also of deep concern is the possibility that this State Dept. email surveillance program inappropriately uses government resources to spy on political critics. Going beyond Nixonian paranoia, the timing and the advanced knowledge of the location and sensitivity of the data on the computers stolen from the ransacked Bogotá office suggests the thieves may have been told exactly what was there: names of perpetrators of violent attacks highlighting collusion between Colombian military, high-level civilian officials and paramilitary factions.


FOR has stood against US aid to the corrupted Columbian government, compiling records while offering protection to threatened nationals.

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Caught-Rice-s-State-Dept-by-Gustav-Wynn-081217-784.html