Am I my brother’s keeper?
In Colombia, soldiers kill the innocent to up the body count
Lat-Am Watch for the Buenos Aires Herald
The success of Alvaro Uribe’s government at fighting left-wing insurgency groups in Colombia has boosted the president’s popularity to dizzying heights, at home and abroad. Where so many had failed in the past, Uribe’s policy of ‘Democratic Security’ brought blow after blow to the rebel groups, culminating in the spectacular rescue of the politician Ingrid Betancourt in July of this year.
Colombian president Álvaro Uribe. Photo Antoine Gyori / AGP-Corbis
No wonder then that many of his compatriots hope that Uribe will stay on for a record third term, even if it does require a constitutional rewrite.
But a spree of extrajudicial killings by the army, fueled by a warped incentives scheme to boost body counts, threatens to tarnish president Uribe’s reputation with the blood of innoncent victims.
For among all the reports of military success against the guerrillas, there lies buried one statistic that just doesn’t add up. According the government figures, the FARC has 15,000 men and women under arms.
Yet by those same figures, in the past six years no less than 55,000 rebel soldiers either surrendered or were captured or killed by government forces.
How to explain that huge discrepancy? One of the possible answers lies in the frightening story of Miller Andrés Blandón.
Miller, a former drug addict and street artist made his living as a human statue in the town of Neiva. On July 17, while lunching at a homeless shelter, two men approached him and asked him if he wanted to earn some money picking coffee. He and two others agreed and were whisked off.
The next day news outlets reported the deaths of three guerrilleros near the jungle town of San José de Isnos. By nightfall, a local prosecutor found a wallet on one of the bodies, containing a phone number and an ID card. The card belonged to Miller Blandón. The phone number was that of Miller’s grandfather’s wife. She vehemently denied he had anything to do with any guerrilla group.
The story, reported yesterday by Spain’s El País newspaper, is one of hundreds, perhaps thousands of cases in which innocent by-standers were murdered by security forces and passed off as slain ‘insurgents’ in a cynical attempt to boost army statistics. Colombia’s national prosecutor’s office is currently investigating the deaths 1,155 alleged victims of these extrajudicial killings.
The list includes homeless people, street children and drug addicts as well as indigenous and peasant community leaders. The victims were often executed after being singled out by paid informants. The evidence and the scene of the crime were then manipulated to make it appear as if the victims were guerrilla members killed in combat.
By inflating the tally of slain ‘enemies’, soldiers and officers received promotions and medals. They may also have shared in the financial rewards paid to informants, according to columnist Alvaro Camacho Guizado of El Espectador newspaper.
The scandal became headline news after 11 boys from the shantytown of Soacha near Bogotá turned up dead half way across the country in September. Their mothers travelled 14 hours to identify their sons, supposedly guerrilla fighters killed in combat.
An investigation ensued as soon as it became clear that the boys were executed, not defeated. The government fired 40 members of the security forces and army chief general Mario Montoya – the architect of Betancourts’ rescue – was made to resign. Prosecutors have tied at least 3000 armed forces personnel to extrajudicial killings.
The Uribe government has tried to present these rogue executions as a new phenomenon, but in fact reports of such killings have been frequent ever since 2002, when Uribe first introduced his policy of ‘Democratic Security.’ The US backed military surge against the rebel groups has been held responsible for a staggering number of over one thousand innocent deaths passed off as combat casualties. What’s even more worrying is that that number is on the rise.
According to the Colombia-Europe-United States Coordination Group (CCEEU), an umbrella that links some 200 human rights organizations, in the past five years, an increase of 67.71% has been registered in extrajudicial executions directly attributed to state security forces. One person a day was killed in these executions between January 2007 and June 2008, compared to only seven in 2002, the year in which Uribe first announced his scheme of rewards for informants.
The killing of innocent Colombians by the very men and women entrusted to protect their lives is horrendous enough. The fact that hundreds of society’s most vulnerable members were killed by soldiers eager to don more stripes is a nightmare scenario that demands a full-scale purge.
Replacing General Montoya was an important first step. His subordinates depict the soldier behind Operation Jaque as a trigger-happy and ruthless man-of-action. The US State Department had been calling for his resignation long before this latest scandal.
But just blaming the soldiers is not enough. Defence minister Juan Manuel Santos should step down as well, accepting responsibility for a policy that was flawed from the outset and that lacked even the semblance of checks and balances.
As for Alvaro Uribe, these killings embarrass him more even than his alleged ties to paramilitaries and to the slain drug lord Pablo Escobar. It’s time he accepted that his role in Colombia’s future is coming to an end despite his soaring approval ratings. Acknowledging his mistakes and announcing his intention to retire in 2010 when his term ends is the decent way to honour the innocent victims of his undeniably successful war on the guerrilla groups.
Lat-Am Watch for the Buenos Aires Herald
The success of Alvaro Uribe’s government at fighting left-wing insurgency groups in Colombia has boosted the president’s popularity to dizzying heights, at home and abroad. Where so many had failed in the past, Uribe’s policy of ‘Democratic Security’ brought blow after blow to the rebel groups, culminating in the spectacular rescue of the politician Ingrid Betancourt in July of this year.
Colombian president Álvaro Uribe. Photo Antoine Gyori / AGP-Corbis No wonder then that many of his compatriots hope that Uribe will stay on for a record third term, even if it does require a constitutional rewrite.
But a spree of extrajudicial killings by the army, fueled by a warped incentives scheme to boost body counts, threatens to tarnish president Uribe’s reputation with the blood of innoncent victims.
For among all the reports of military success against the guerrillas, there lies buried one statistic that just doesn’t add up. According the government figures, the FARC has 15,000 men and women under arms.
Yet by those same figures, in the past six years no less than 55,000 rebel soldiers either surrendered or were captured or killed by government forces.
How to explain that huge discrepancy? One of the possible answers lies in the frightening story of Miller Andrés Blandón.
Miller, a former drug addict and street artist made his living as a human statue in the town of Neiva. On July 17, while lunching at a homeless shelter, two men approached him and asked him if he wanted to earn some money picking coffee. He and two others agreed and were whisked off.
The next day news outlets reported the deaths of three guerrilleros near the jungle town of San José de Isnos. By nightfall, a local prosecutor found a wallet on one of the bodies, containing a phone number and an ID card. The card belonged to Miller Blandón. The phone number was that of Miller’s grandfather’s wife. She vehemently denied he had anything to do with any guerrilla group.
The story, reported yesterday by Spain’s El País newspaper, is one of hundreds, perhaps thousands of cases in which innocent by-standers were murdered by security forces and passed off as slain ‘insurgents’ in a cynical attempt to boost army statistics. Colombia’s national prosecutor’s office is currently investigating the deaths 1,155 alleged victims of these extrajudicial killings.
The list includes homeless people, street children and drug addicts as well as indigenous and peasant community leaders. The victims were often executed after being singled out by paid informants. The evidence and the scene of the crime were then manipulated to make it appear as if the victims were guerrilla members killed in combat.
By inflating the tally of slain ‘enemies’, soldiers and officers received promotions and medals. They may also have shared in the financial rewards paid to informants, according to columnist Alvaro Camacho Guizado of El Espectador newspaper.
The scandal became headline news after 11 boys from the shantytown of Soacha near Bogotá turned up dead half way across the country in September. Their mothers travelled 14 hours to identify their sons, supposedly guerrilla fighters killed in combat.
An investigation ensued as soon as it became clear that the boys were executed, not defeated. The government fired 40 members of the security forces and army chief general Mario Montoya – the architect of Betancourts’ rescue – was made to resign. Prosecutors have tied at least 3000 armed forces personnel to extrajudicial killings.
The Uribe government has tried to present these rogue executions as a new phenomenon, but in fact reports of such killings have been frequent ever since 2002, when Uribe first introduced his policy of ‘Democratic Security.’ The US backed military surge against the rebel groups has been held responsible for a staggering number of over one thousand innocent deaths passed off as combat casualties. What’s even more worrying is that that number is on the rise.
According to the Colombia-Europe-United States Coordination Group (CCEEU), an umbrella that links some 200 human rights organizations, in the past five years, an increase of 67.71% has been registered in extrajudicial executions directly attributed to state security forces. One person a day was killed in these executions between January 2007 and June 2008, compared to only seven in 2002, the year in which Uribe first announced his scheme of rewards for informants.
The killing of innocent Colombians by the very men and women entrusted to protect their lives is horrendous enough. The fact that hundreds of society’s most vulnerable members were killed by soldiers eager to don more stripes is a nightmare scenario that demands a full-scale purge.
Replacing General Montoya was an important first step. His subordinates depict the soldier behind Operation Jaque as a trigger-happy and ruthless man-of-action. The US State Department had been calling for his resignation long before this latest scandal.
But just blaming the soldiers is not enough. Defence minister Juan Manuel Santos should step down as well, accepting responsibility for a policy that was flawed from the outset and that lacked even the semblance of checks and balances.
As for Alvaro Uribe, these killings embarrass him more even than his alleged ties to paramilitaries and to the slain drug lord Pablo Escobar. It’s time he accepted that his role in Colombia’s future is coming to an end despite his soaring approval ratings. Acknowledging his mistakes and announcing his intention to retire in 2010 when his term ends is the decent way to honour the innocent victims of his undeniably successful war on the guerrilla groups.
posted by PIT @ 10:10 PM
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