By R. Renee Yaworsky
Impunity Watch Reporter, South America

POTOSI, Bolivia — In a public meeting, members of five indigenous communities in northern Potosi, Bolivia, admitted to lynching four police officers on Sunday.  Responding to accounts that the officers were tortured and killed, indigenous leaders described them as “thieves disguised as police.”  The leaders said they would not hand over the bodies until the police conduct an investigation into the alleged “murder” by police of several area residents that took place months ago.  They also accuse the police of stealing seven cars from their community and voted to retain the bodies until those cars are returned.

The BBC reported that Potosi Police Chief Orlando Avila said his officers could not enter the area because “there were sharp shooters stationed all along the highway” threatening to kill anyone trying to retrieve the bodies.  Avila estimated that about 10,000 people were mobilized to prevent authorities from entering.

Members of the indigenous clans accused the four hanged officers of charging between $200 and $1,000 to ignore the smuggling of cars from neighboring Chile.  At a local meeting on Wednesday, one indigenous leader announced, “Brothers, we did not kill police officers, we killed thieves disguised as police officers.”

The slain officers belonged to a unit responsible for tackling car theft in neighboring Oruro province.  They may have been in Potosi on a search to recover stolen vehicles.  Many indigenous residents believe the officers were in Potosi to extort car smugglers.  It is also possible that the indigenous members who killed them mistook them for criminals in a route commonly used by smugglers.

Avila said he wants to arrange a meeting with indigenous leaders to begin an investigation of the lynching.  Bolivia’s deputy minister for public safety, Gen. Miguel Vazquez, said that the government’s current priority is “to calm” the population in Uncia.

The indigenous communities of Aymara and Quechua Indians are called the Ayllus Guerreros, or Warrior Clans, because of a 200-year history of  bloody conflicts over land.  Each of the five clans has about 8,000 to 10,000 residents in the area where the officers were lynched.  Clashes among these groups have been blamed for about 10,000 deaths since 1830.  The most recent violence occurred nine years ago, resulting in 57 deaths.

For more information, please see:

Latin American Herald Tribune–Bolivian Indians: Lynched Men Were Thieves, Not Police–28 May 2010

BBC–Indigenous Group Lynches Four Policemen in Bolivia–27 May 2010

UPI–4 Police Officers Lynched in Bolivia–27 May 2010

By Patrick Vanderpool
Impunity Watch Reporter, South America

 

BOGOTA, Colombia – According to a retired Colombian police major, President Alvaro Uribe’s younger brother, Santiago Uribe, commanded a death squad in the early 1990s that killed nearly fifty people, including petty thieves, suspected guerillas, and their sympathizers. Santiago Uribe allegedly led the right-wing group from the Uribe family’s cattle ranch in the Antioquia state municipality.

Although there is little evidence to support the allegations, the ex-officer, Major Juan Carlos Meneses, stated that Santiago Uribe claimed that Alvaro Uribe, a senator at the time, was aware of the illegal militia.  When recently asked about his knowledge of the death squad after the report was first published in the Washington Post, Alvaro Uribe’s stated “I don’t read international newspapers.”

These accusations are coming shortly before the highly contested May 30 presidential election involving Alvaro Uribe’s former defense minister, Juan Carlos Santos.  Alvaro Uribe’s interior minister, Fabio Valencia, has suggested that Meneses’ comments are politically motivated to discredit Santos’ candidacy; a claim which Meneses denies.

Meneses claims that he attended meetings with Santiago Uribe where the group would decide who would be killed.  Additionally, Meneses claimed that Santiago Uribe paid him approximately $700 monthly for a four month period so that Meneses would allow the death squad to operate in the area where Meneses was the top law enforcement officer.  Meneses claims to have personally witnessed at least fifteen men armed with semi-automatic firearms participating in obstacle course training on the Uribe family ranch.

Alvaro Uribe was elected Colombia’s President in 2002 and has since been given significant financial assistance from the U.S. to defeat leftist rebels in the country.  While president, Alvaro Uribe has been criticized by international humanitarian groups for suspected human rights violations.  These violations include Colombian soldiers allegedly murdering more than 1,000 citizens under the guise that they were rebels.

Colombian law enforcement officials have investigated the death squad claims on at least two occasions and have not discovered enough evidence to prosecute Alvaro Uribe; however, Meneses’ claims may be enough to reopen the case.  Meneses claims that he and his family have been forced to leave Colombia and seek asylum in Venezuela after receiving written and telephoned death threats because of the accusations against Santiago and Alvaro Uribe.

Santiago Uribe has been unavailable for comment; however, he denied the allegations in a previous interview with the Washington Post.

For more information, please see:

CBS News – Ex-cop Claims Uribe’s Brother Led Death Squad –  24 May 2010

Time –Ex-cop: Alvaro Uribe’s Brother Led Death Squad–24 May 2010

Colombia Reports – Uribe’s brother led paramilitary death squad – 23 May 2010

By Sovereign Hager
Impunity Watch Reporter, South America

QUITO,Ecuador–A controversial water bill has led to unrest as indigenous communities in Ecuador protest what they view as an unconstitutional intrusions into their rights to water. Protests began several weeks ago when the Ecuadorian government released a new bill on water regulation. The initiative includes provisions of water for industries such as mining and agribusiness. Indigenous communities argue that this “privatization” will damage their small farms.

The bill has been postponed for several months and the head of Parliament, Fernando Cordero has proposed a “non-binding pre-legislative consultation” with Ecuador’s indigenous peoples. Indigenous communities make up forty percent on the population. This proposal led to temporary suspension of demonstrations and roadblocks that have been ongoing for the last two weeks in seven provinces.

Consultations with indigenous communities on the impact of industrial projects are required by the Ecuadorian constitution, which has been in effect since 2008. This was meant to align with the International Labor Organization’s Convention Concerning Indigenous and Tribal Peoples, which requires prior, free and informed consent, and participation by indigenous peoples in the benefits generated by such projects.

Ecuador’s Constitutional Court confirmed that the consultation was mandatory under the constitution, however the incorporation of the results is not required. There are three indigenous associations opposed to the bill: the Ecuadorian Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities, the National  Federation of PEasant, Indigenous and black Organizations, and the Federation of Evangelical Indigenous Peoples and Organizations of Ecuador. Native leaders demand that the results of the participation be binding.

Modifications proposed by indigenous groups include a  mandated respect for the order of priorities for water use established by the new constitution. This provision establishes that water resources must go first to human consumption, then to irrigation for domestic food production, next to maintaining adequate levels of water in the ecosystems, and finally to non-food productive activities. The interpretation that water use in export-oriented industry is not contemplated in constitution is opposed by the Congress.

Indigenous communities accuse the government of trying to privatize water resources, which the constitution establishes are a national good for public use. Private companies are only allowed to administer supplies of water through government concessions. However, indigenous associations insist that the concession system should be replaced by a permit system which would be subject to discretionary renewal.

For more information, please see:

Al Jazeera-Ecuador Water Law Sparks Protest-20 May 2010

Alternet-Water Conflict Mounts in Ecuador-20 May 2010

IPS-Native Standoff Over Water Bill On Hold-19 May 2010

By Sovereign Hager
Impunity Watch Reporter, South America

BRASILIA,Brazil-International human rights groups are vehemently opposing the Brazilian Supreme Court’s decision not to reinterpret a 1979 law giving amnesty to members of the former military government responsible for extrajudicial killings, torture, and rape. Instead, the Court held that such acts were political acts and therefore deserved amnesty.

While Argentine, Bolivia, Chile, Peru, and Uruguay have prosecuted individuals accused of human rights violations during military dictatorships, Brazil has not. Rights groups argue that the amnesty law puts Brazil in breach of conventional and customary international law that does not allow amnesty for crimes of torture and extrajudicial executions.

Tim Cahill of Amnesty International commented that “in a country that sees thousands of extra-judicial killings every year at the hands of security officials and where many more are tortured in police stations and prisons, this ruling clearly signals that in Brazil nobody is held responsible when the state kills and tortures its own citizens.”

Amnesty International also called on Brazil to come into conformity with the rulings of the Inter American Court of Human Rights, which has stressed that ” all amnesty provisions  . . . designed to eliminate responsibility are inadmissible, because they are intended to prevent the investigation and punishment of those responsible for serious human rights violations such as torture, extrajudicial, summary, or arbitrary executions, and forced disappearance, all prohibited because they violate rights recognized by international human rights law.”

The Court voted in a 7-2 majority that the law should remain intact because it had been approved by society as a whole, including the bar association, armed forced, and political exiles. Thousands of people were imprisoned, tortured, or disappeared in Brazil under military rule form 1964-1985.

For more information, please see:

Amnesty International-Brazil Court Upholds Law that Protects Torturers-30 April 2010

AP-Brazil’s Top Court-Amnesty Law Will Not Change-30 April 2010

NY TIMES-Brazil: No Change to Amnesty Law-30 April 2010

By Sovereign Hager
Impunity Watch Reporter, South America

PARA, Brazil-A court convicted two ranchers for ordering the murder of a U.S. nun and environmental activist, Dorothy Stang in 2005. Prosecutors argued that the two men hired gunmen to kill the seventy-three year old nun because she blocked them from seizing land that the government had given to Amazonian farmers. Both men were sentenced to thirty years in prison.

Dorothy Stang had been working in the Amazon for thirty years to preserve the rainforest and protect the rights of rural workers against large-scale farmers. She was shot and left to die on the side of a muddy rainforest road where loggers and ranchers have deforested large sections of the rainforest.

Human rights groups protested a delay in the prosecution, which was widely viewed as a test of Brazil’s ability to combat impunity in the Amazon region. A court acquitted Vitalmiro Moura in 2008, an event President Lula de Silva called a “stain” on Brazil’s international image. The recent conviction is the result of a retrail. Judge Raimundo Moises Alvez Flexa told the AP that the conviction “sent a clear message that the law will be applied to everyone regardless of socioeconomic status.”

However, both the judge and Greenpeace have stated that more convictions for these types of crimes are necessary in order for activists to truly be protected.  The Pastoral Land Commission estimates that in the past ten years up to 2008, three hundred and sixty-five people were killed  over similar land disputes. Only around eighty gunmen have actually gone to jail for these murders.

Rebeca Spires, a nun who knew Dorothy Stang called the convictions a milestone victory given the “endless supply” of gunmen. Spires told the AP that “the verdict sends a strong message to other masterminds that the impunity is ending.”

For More information, please see:

AP-Brazil: Last Rancher on Trial for U.S. Nun’s Murder-1 May 2010

BBC-Second Brazil Rancher Jailed Over U.S. Nun’s Murder-1 May 2010

Washington Post-Second Brazil Rancher Sentenced in U.S. Nun Murder-1 May 2010