Despite a new pro-intervention offensive, Latin American & Caribbean Conference Unites for Solidarity with the Struggle in Colombia
IAC Demands that Human Rights Watch End Its Pro-intervention Policies
Public Forum to be held August 14th on El Salvador conference Against Plan ColombiaAugust 8, 2001
Over 400 people from across Latin America, Europe and the U.S. joined for the First International Conference for Solidarity and Peace for Colombia and Latin America, including a delegation from the International Action Center. The conference marked an important step in the growing world movement against Plan Colombia and U.S. intervention in Latin America.
Most importantly, the conference took a strong stand for solidarity with all those Colombians who are struggling for a new country of peace and social justice against the U.S.-backed death squad government in Bogotá. IAC delegates will be holding meetings around the country to explain this important development.
The conference took place amid a new propaganda offensive against Colombia s main insurgency, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia-Peoples’ Army (FARC-EP). This latest offensive was spearheaded by Human Rights Watch, a supposedly nonpartisan group that claims to speak in the name of human rights.
HRW: STANDING WITH THE WARMAKERS
Human Rights Watch recently issued two publicity campaigns directed against the FARC-EP: a July 9 letter addressed to FARC-EP Commander-in-Chief Manuel Marulanda and a follow-up press release on July 23. Both of these publicity events were carefully timed for days prior to votes for military aid to Colombia’s government in the U.S. Congress.
The House Appropriation Committee voted on July 10 to increase its funding for the war in Colombia by $632 million next year along: bringing total U.S. aid for the death squad government to $2 billion since last year. The full House voted to approve the package on July 25.
“Human Rights Watch claims to be non-partisan,” charged the IAC’s Committee to Stop the U.S. War in Colombia chair Teresa Gutierrez. “But the July publicity campaign was an overt attempt to insure continued U.S. support for the war against the Colombian people.”
“None of the allegations against the FARC-EP cited by Human Rights Watch are new, and many are based on biased sources within the corrupt Colombian government, like the Colombian Fiscalia [Attorney General’s office],” Gutierrez noted. “The fact that they were re-aired under the glare of the big-business media days before U.S. Congressional appropriations hearings cannot be a coincidence. This report is just more ammunition coming from the Pentagon and others to justify intervention in that Colombia. HRW and others want to drive a wedge between anti-war activists and the movement in Colombia.”
“And it is no surprise that the murderous Colombian military, notorious for its human rights abuses, gave the HRW letter a big thumbs up.”
Over 40,000 people have been killed in the last 12 years alone in the Colombian government’s dirty war. Human rights groups: including Human Rights Watch itself: have consistently reported that the vast majority of killings of civilians are at the hands of the government or the government-linked death squads.
A RECORD OF DISGRACE
Human Rights Watch postures as a friend of human rights. Many progressive activists rely on their reports as one of the few sources for documenting human rights violations. But behind the façade of impartiality, Human Rights Watch has a clear political agenda and a long record of actions in support of the U.S. State Department.
Human Rights Watch is closely tied to billionaire financier George Soros, who sits on the board of both the group’s Americas and Europe committees. Soros’s “Open Society Institute” has a long record of using “human rights” as a bludgeon to “open” countries: especially in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union: to penetration by the IMF and Western corporations. It’s stated goals include “assisting small-business entrepreneurs” and “strengthening the institutions of representative democracy.”
On the board of Human Rights Watch Europe are such notables as Morton Abramowitz, who worked in the Reagan and Bush State Department; Paul Goble, a former commentator on Radio Free Europe, the CIA’s propaganda arm in Eastern Europe; and Warren Zimmerman, U.S. ambassador to Yugoslavia during the U.S.-led destabilization effort in that country.
NEW SOLIDARITY MOVEMENT
On June 28, the FARC-EP unilaterally turned over some 300 captured government soldiers and police as a sign of good will in the context of peace talks with the Colombian government.
“The July 20-22 conference in El Salvador, attended by both the FARC-EP and the National Liberation Army, is a further sign of growing solidarity with the Colombian people in the fight for peace and social justice,” Gutierrez continued. “No amount of war propaganda: whether by the U.S. State Department or by Human Rights Watch: can stop that.”
“Extreme militarist elements within the Colombian press and the Pentagon openly clamored for some way to diminish any hopes for good will that the prisoner exchange and the conference would generate,” said IAC co-coordinator Sara Flounders. “Human Rights Watch answered the call of these enemies of peace.”
The IAC will be holding a special report-back meeting in New York City about the El Salvador solidarity conference on Tuesday, Aug. 14 at 6: 30 p.m. at 39 West 14th St. #206 in Manhattan.
High on the list of upcoming actions will be insuring that on September 29, as thousands gather to surround the White House in the first actions of the week of demonstrations against the IMF and World Bank, that George Bush hears a loud and clear signal: No to U.S. intervention in Colombia and Latin America!
CALL TO ACTION: HOLD HRW ACCOUNTABLE FOR PRO-WAR PROPAGANDA
The IAC’s Committee to Stop U.S. Intervention in Colombia is calling on all progressive and anti-war activists to write, call and email Human Rights Watch and demand:
- A public apology for its political intervention in favor of funding the war in Colombia;
- Public acknowledgement that the vast majority of human rights abuse, by any measure, is committed by the U.S.-backed Colombian government and government-backed death squads;
- Public recognition that the talks between the FARC-EP and the Colombian government provide the best hope in the current climate to reduce violations of human rights, not irresponsible and politically-charged press releases.
The address for Human Rights Watch is: 1630 Connecticut Ave. NW, #500, Washington DC 20009 USA, Tel: 1 (202) 612-4321, Fax: 1 (202) 612-4333, Email: hrwdc@hrw.org .
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