Report Suggests 'Correlation' between U.S. Aid and Army Killings

[mudplanet]

This report is six months old but remains pertinent and it's findings remain accurate.

The US is funding torture and extra-judicial killing wholesale in it's favorite Latin American puppet state, and has been doing so for over a decade. Yet the majority of news the US public receives is about kidnappings carried out by FARC, not about the 50,000 innocent people kidnapped and executed without trial by the government. If one looks in the mainstream media, one finds occasionalbv small mention to "false positives" and "unfortunate collateral casualties." If a Colombian is rich, it's "kidnapping and assassination" but if a Colombian is poor it's "it didn't happen" or "prove it" or "shit happens." One hundred rich privileged Colombians kidnapped and ransomed alive is much more important than 50,000 poor Colombian's "disappeared."

Is it any wonder that many people much prefer a socialist government that champions the poor such as Venezuela's to a corrupt and brutal kleptocracy such as Colombia's?

There are alarming links between increased reports of extrajudicial executions of civilians by the Colombian army and units that receive U.S. military financing," John Lindsay-Poland, lead author of a two-year study on the question, told IPS.

Lindsay-Poland is Research and Advocacy Director for the U.S.-based Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR), which presented a new report, "Military Assistance and Human Rights: Colombia, U.S. Accountability, and Global Implications", in Bogotá Thursday.

The report, produced in conjunction with the U.S. Office on Colombia (USOC), studies the application in Colombia of the so-called Leahy Law, passed in 1996, which bans military assistance to a foreign security force unit if the U.S. State Department has credible evidence that the unit has committed gross human rights violations.

The Leahy Law is one of the main U.S. laws designed to protect against the use of U.S. foreign aid to commit human rights abuses.

"If the Leahy Law was fully implemented, assistance would have to be suspended to nearly all fixed army brigades and many mobile brigades in Colombia," Lindsay-Poland said.

The report points out that most military training in Colombia is funded by the U.S. Defence Department.

Read the rest at: http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=52333

[EFerrari]

1. I remember this. But, do you have the link handy? n/t

[mudplanet]

2. Thanks for the heads up