By Patrick Vanderpool
Impunity Watch Reporter, South America

 BOGOTA, Colombia – Colombian officials have arrested an army officer suspected of 11 extrajudicial killings of civilians. Major Orlando Arturo Cespedes Escalona was arrested Thursday in the northwestern city of Medellin.  The 11 deceased individuals were presented as leftist guerillas killed during combat.

Those allegedly killed by Escalona include 11 adolescents and young men, ages 16-28, from Toluviejo, a town in the northern province of Sucre.  Recruiters lured these young men to areas through promises of agricultural work and money, but they were then executed.  While remains from 10 bodies have been found and returned to family members, one 16-year-old is still missing.

Colombia’s Attorney General has stated that Escalona will face aggravated kidnapping, criminal conspiracy, and homicide charges.  The case is being handled by a special human rights and international law prosecutor who also ordered the arrest of retired Col. Luis Fernando Borja.

In what has become known as the “False Positives” scandal, the Colombian army has been accused of killing civilians and presenting them as guerrillas killed in combat to pump body counts.  The soldiers who claimed credit for the “kills” received weekend passes and other benefits.  Civilian accomplices lured the victims away from their homes and in what is described as a common practice, army recruiters would bury the men in common graves to give the impression that they were insurgents killed in combat. 

There are many other instances of extrajudicial killings aside from those that Escalona is accused of.  The number of documented victims has already topped 2,000.  However, some suspect that the number could be closer to 3,000 victims.  Other recruiters have been already been convicted and sentenced to no less than 25 years in prison. 

Victims’ families and human rights activists suspect that a directive issued in 2005 by then-Defense Minister Camilo Ospina offering incentives to soldiers for insurgent deaths may have spurred many of these killings.

For more information, please see:

Latin American Herald Tribune – Colombian Army Officer Arrested for Unlawful Killings – 8 October 2010

Colombia Passport – Military Arrested for Murder of a Protected Person – 7 October 2010

Colombia Reports – Army Major Arrested for 11 “False Positive” Murders – 7 October 2010

By R. Renee Yaworsky
Impunity Watch Reporter, South America

 RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil–Disturbing images of dead bodies on Brazil’s streets have been found on the Google service Street View.  The grisly images have sparked concerns about the country’s pervasive homicide problem.

Google’s Street View is now available all over the world, including Antarctica.  While the service has previously captured people in the UK vomiting, and people asleep on Australian sidewalks, Brazil’s lifeless bodies were a first.  The service had only been in Brazil for less than a week before unsettling images of dead bodies were spotted by Street View users who reported them and complained.  Google announced Tuesday that those images have been removed.

Street View is a service that shows random scenes from public streets all over the world.  The fact that so many pictures from Brazil have captured images of dead bodies has created alarm about the surrounding culture.  Many of the photographed bodies were seemingly ignored by passers-by.  Many of the bodies were bloodied or covered in black plastic.

In one snapshot, a man casually uses a public telephone next to a body.  In a photograph of a busy street in Rio de Janeiro, police officers are seen holding back a staring crowd of onlookers. Military vehicles and yellow police tape surround the body.  Another photograph shows a body lying on a street, apparently the victim of a traffic accident or hit and run.

Apart from images of bodies, Street View users have seen other troubling scenes in Brazil.  In one photograph from Sao Paulo, two men roughly grab a third man in an apparent altercation while a passerby glances their way.

A spokesperson from Google has stated that Street View images are “no different to what anyone might expect to see for themselves around the country.  Sometimes that means our cars inadvertently capture odd or inappropriate moments as they drive past.”

The spokesperson stressed that Google is not responsible for depicting the world as it appears, saying, “This is why we have put in place tools so that if people see what they believe to be inappropriate, they can report them to us using the simple reporting tool and the images will be quickly removed or further blurring applied.”

According to information released by the United Nations, over 48,000 homicides occurred in Brazil in 2007.

For more information, please see:

Newser-Google Street View Comes to Brazil, Finds Bodies-7 October 2010

Telegraph-Google forced to remove ‘dead body’ images from Brazil Street View service-6 October 2010

CNET-More bodies (and other strange sights) on Brazil’s Street View-5 October 2010

By Patrick Vanderpool
Impunity Watch Reporter, South America 

Ricardo Ezzati, the archbishop in charge of mediating the situation, claims that the Mapuche peoples and the Chilean government have reached an agreement after representatives for the two sides met on two separate occasions. 

The government has proactively sought to reform the archaic anti-terror law and, in addition to the legal reform, has decided to withdraw the charges against the Mapuche under the anti-terror law. 

The news was met with great joy by family members of the imprisoned Indians.  However, the Mapuche hunger-strikers will not be completelyacquitted as they will still be charged with crimes under the common criminal code, albeit lesser ones.  

An attempt to negotiate an end to the hunger strike had failed recently when the Indians were unable to secure assurances that the anti-terror law would not be applied in their cases.  However, a meeting Thursday between several relatives of the jailed Mapuches and Chilean Interior Minister Rodrigo Hinzpeter at La Moneda presidential palace facilitated the resumption of the talks.

In addition to demanding the end of the anti-terror law, the hunger strikers are calling for the demilitarization of the poor southern region of Araucania, which is home 650,000 Mapuche people.

There are ten Mapuche prisoners who have refused to end their hunger strike.  Undersecretary of the Presidency Claudio Alvarado, who represented the government in talks with the prisoners’ family, said he hopes that the rest of the prisoners will follow suit and end their strikes soon.

The Mapuche hunger strike is the latest scuffle between the indigenous peoples and the Chilean government in a long and sometimes violent campaign by members of the Mapuche for the return of their lands to alleviate their poverty.

The Mapuche Indians are one of Chile’s original peoples, but were pushed into the country’s south only to lose those lands later to timber companies and other wealthy landowners.

For more information, please see:

Inside Costa Rica – Chile: End of Mapuche Hunger Strike – 3 October 2010

Associated Press – Chilean Archbishop: Most Mapuche prisoners end hunger strike after lengthy negotiations – 2 October 2010

Latin American Herald Tribune – Mapuches End Hunger Strike after Agreement with Chile Government – 2 October 2010

By R. Renee Yaworsky
Impunity Watch Reporter, South America

QUITO, Ecuador—Ecuador’s President Rafael Correa maintains that he was physically abused and detained against his will during an attempted coup Thursday.  The attack was waged by police officers protesting a new law that they believe would deprive them of bonuses and minimize compensation. Correa argues that the officers had not even read the law and misunderstood it.

The officers became violent after Correa had stood in the window of a barracks and challenged, “If you want to kill the president, here he is! Kill him, if you want to! Kill him if you are brave enough!”

According to Interior Minister Gustavo Jalkh, the officers’ reaction proves they intended to overthrow the government.  “The president was talking with some police who wanted to talk with us. We were talking. Why else would they throw bombs at a politician?” he said.

President Correa was battered by members of the angry group and surrounded by tear gas.  He claims he was not allowed to leave the hospital where he was taken for treatment afterward.  As his military rescued him that night, his SUV was struck by bullets.

At least four people were killed in the violence and over 200 were injured in related bloodshed throughout Ecuador.  Three days of national mourning began on Friday out of respect for the victims.

The government responded quickly to the unrest, declaring a week-long state of emergency and placing armed forces in charge of security.

Correa believes that the police officers who sparked the violence wanted to kill him; yet he says he recognizes the efforts of many others who remained loyal, including the officers who rescued him at the hospital.  The national police force is comprised of 42,000 members.  Their chief resigned on Friday.

No group or individual has admitted any involvement in the alleged coup attempt, but three colonels are being investigated.

Some have questioned Correa’s account of the attack, and others see the president’s confrontation in the barracks as a provocation.  Analyst Roberto Izurieta told CNN, “The elements for a coup do not exist. There was no political movement or a call for the president to leave office. What occurred was an uprising from part of the police.”

On Friday, the government said the law the police officers had been protesting would be revisited.

Correa received support from the international community, including Venezuela’s President Chavez and U.S. Secretary of State Clinton.

Ecuador is no stranger to unrest; three of the last eight presidents lost power after protests.

For more information, please see:

LA Times-Ecuador ‘coup attempt’ draws attention to Rafael Correa’s presidency-4 October 2010

NPR-Foreign Policy: The Power Of Ecuador’s Democracy-4 October 2010

CNN-Ecuador’s government maintains unrest was coup attempt-4 October 2010

Latin American Herald Tribune-Judge Releases 3 Colonels Arrested in Ecuador Policy Mutiny-3 October 2010

By Patrick Vanderpool
Impunity Watch Reporter, South America

WASHINGTON, DC – President Obama apologized this week for what many consider the most infamous example of unethical medical research in history.  From 1946-1948, American public health doctors deliberately infected hundreds of Guatemalans with venereal diseases so that the doctors could test the effectiveness of penicillin.

The experiment exposed as many as 700 Guatemalan prisoners, mental health patients and soldiers to these diseases.  Records indicate that the United States actually paid for infected prostitutes to sleep with Guatemalan prisoners in an effort to spread the diseases.  If that did not work, some prisoners had the bacteria introduced to open wounds on their bodies.

It has taken the United States more than 60 years to apologize for the horrific treatment of these Guatemalans.  Although many feel that it is likely more form than function, the U.S. State Department has assured that an investigation will be conducted on the matter.

Guatemalan President Álvaro Colom, who just recently learned of the experiments via a telephone call from Secretary of State Clinton, called them “hair-raising” and “crimes against humanity.” His government said it would cooperate with the American investigation and would also perform an independent investigation of their own.

Professor Reverby, a Wellesley College Professor who is credited with bringing these experiments to public attention with a recent paper, said that the United States Public Health Service “was deeply interested in whether penicillin could be used to prevent, not just cure, early syphilis infection, whether better blood tests for the disease could be established, what dosages of penicillin actually cured infection, and to understand the process of re-infection after cures.”

While many would like to believe that the U.S. discontinued the experiment after only two years because of the ethical and humanitarian considerations, the evidence simply does not support such a finding.  More likely, the project was halted after “medical gossip” began to accumulate and because penicillin, which was quite costly, was being used at an exorbitant rate.

Dr. Mark Siegler, director of the Maclean Center for Clinical Medical Ethics at the University of Chicago’s Medical School, said that “[the project is] appalling — that, at the same time as the United States was prosecuting Nazi doctors for crimes against humanity, the U.S. government was supporting research that placed human subjects at enormous risk.”

Dr. Siegler also stated that the Guatemala experiment was worse than the famous Tuskegee trials that infected African-Americans living in Alabama with syphilis because many of those subjects were infected by natural means, while many of the Guatemalan subjects were infected by inhumane and almost tortuous means.

Perhaps the most disconcerting aspect is that U.S. Public Health Service was entirely aware of the ethical violations at play here, and consciously disregarded them.

For more information, please see:

USA News Week – U.S. Expresses Regret Over Infecting Guatemalans for STD Tests – 2 October 2010

CNN – Studies Show “Dark Chapter” of Medical Research – 1 October 2010

Latin American Herald Tribune – U.S. Apologizes to Guatemala for Syphilis Experiments – 1 October 2010

The New York Times – U.S. Apologizes for Syphilis Tests in Guatemala – 1 October 2010