By Mario A. Flores
Impunity Watch Reporter, South America

BOGOTA, Colombia — The President of Colombia’s Supreme Court, Augusto Ibañez, said that several justices of the Court received death threats late this week.

The presiding justice of the Criminal Division, Julio Enrique Socha Salamanca, reported that he received a letter containing intimidation and threats to his office. The letter also listed threats against an assistant judge.

Socha Salamanca immediately notified law enforcement and ordered tighter security for each of the judges and their staff.

The authorities disclosed that they had also discovered intimidation schemes against other judges of the Supreme Court, a former peace commissioner and two political leaders.

The Director of the National Police, Oscar Naranjo, confirmed that a number of Supreme Court judges and politicians have been threatened. Naranjo said the police are taking the necessary steps to safeguard the security of those in danger.

The plot involves threats to the lives of chief judge Ibañez, judge Jaime Arrubla Paucar, former peace commissioner Victor G. Ricardo, presidential candidate German Vargas Lleras and one of his staunchest supporters, Senator Rodrigo Lara Restrepo.

The Police are dealing with the threats “with utmost prudence and greatest responsibility, without underestimating them, but without causing panic, verifying all information provided,” Naranjo added. It is not known who sent the threat messages or who is behind intimidation attempts.

Judge Socha said that he planned to meet next week with President Alvaro Uribe to discuss the threats.

Supreme Court justice, Jaime Arrubla, said in an interview that several of his colleagues believed they were being followed.

“We don’t exactly know where they [the threats] come from, we only know that they exist, unfortunately they are intensifying,” Arrubla said. “It appears they want to besiege us.”

For more information, please see:

Colombia Reports – Police confirms threats against Supreme Court judges and politicians – 21 August 2009

The Latin American Herald Tribune – Colombian Police Probe Threats Against Judges, Politicos – 21 April 2009

Colombia Reports –  Supreme Court judges receive death threats – 20 August 2009

By Mario A. Flores
Impunity Watch Reporter, South America

BOGOTA, Colombia — The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said that over 100 indigenous families have fled their jungle reserves in Colombia’s southeastern province so far this year, in fear that armed groups will snatch their children for use as soldiers.

The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) is on an aggressive recruitment campaign to replenish their dwindling ranks. The FARC have been weakened by a series of defeats at the hands of government forces in the past two years, prompting record numbers of guerrilla fighters to desert.

The terrorist group, financed largely by drug-trafficking proceeds, has waged a four-decade war against the Colombian army in a bid to take power. Recently, the threat of rebels forcibly taking away children to join their ranks has caused increasing numbers of people to flee their homes.

Local non-governmental organizations believe there are more than 6,000 child soldiers, with an average age of 12, in the FARC’s ranks. The rebels commonly use children as messengers and cooks and to plant landmines.

“There’s a very clear relationship between forced displacement and recruitment of children by illegal armed groups,” said Marie-Hélène Verney, the UNHCR spokeswoman in Colombia.

“We’re particularly concerned about the increase in forced recruitment of minors during the summer holidays when teachers are not in schools and when kids are pretty much left to their own devices,” said Verney.

Last year, more than 400 families fled their homes in the province of Vaupes, a large Amazon outpost which is home to 27 different indigenous groups, because of threats and the fear of having their children recruited by illegal armies, UNHCR said. Human rights organizations worry that the new violence is pushing even deeper into the Indians’ ancient lands.

The apparent stability in some largely pacified cities like the capital, Bogotá, belies the conflict in remote areas, where Indians find themselves at the mercy of armed groups.

Indigenous children, often living in isolated and far-flung jungle regions where rebels tend to have more power because the military’s presence is weak and sporadic, are particularly at risk of being forcibly recruited.

“Our rulers in Bogotá prefer to ignore that an entire section of the country is surviving, just barely, as if we are in the 16th century, when plunder and killing were the norm,” said Víctor Copete, who runs Chocó Pacífico, a foundation addressing the violence in Chocó, one of the nation’s poorest provinces.

Rebels in some guerrilla-controlled areas have been known to knock from door to door demanding that families hand over a son or daughter to fight.

Rebel groups even hold propaganda meetings in schools, public squares and host parties in areas they control, luring children with false promises of adventure, food, and money.

“Some children join illegal armed groups because they’ve been talked into it. For others it’s about getting new shoes — some don’t know what they’re getting themselves into,” Verney said.

A school teacher in one of the indigenous communities told UNHCR, “These children have no real hope and it makes them terribly vulnerable to other options some unscrupulous people may offer them.”

According to the United Nations, Colombia has about four million internal refugees, second in number only to Sudan, with Indians bearing a disproportionate share of the suffering. The Colombian government puts the figure at around 2.7 million displaced people.

Displaced women from the Embera indigenous ethnic group.
Photo by Moises Saman for The New York Times

For more information, please see:

Reuters – Colombian Indians flee threat of forcible recruitment in rebel ranks – UNHCR – 19 August 2009

IPS – COLOMBIA: Killings of Indians Continued During UN Rapporteur’s Visit – 29 July 2009

The New York Times – Wider Drug War Threatens Colombian Indians – 21 April 2009

The Los Angeles Times – Colombia is asked to probe slayings of Indians in Narino state – 11 February 2009

By Mario A. Flores
Impunity Watch Reporter, South America

SÃO PAULO, Brazil — The National Security Archive in Washington, D.C. published declassified White House secret memos showing that Brazil and the United States discussed plans to overthrow or destabilize Chilean President Salvador Allende in a 1971 meeting.

According to the formerly secret documents that reveal a deeper collaboration than previously known between the United States and Brazil, President Nixon discussed with Brazilian military regime-era President Médici a cooperative effort to overthrow the democratically elected Chilean administration.

Nixon, at a meeting in the Oval Office on Dec. 9, 1971, said he was willing to offer Brazil the assistance, monetary or otherwise, it might need to rid South America of leftist governments, the White House memorandum of the meeting shows.

The United States and Brazil, Nixon told Médici, “must try and prevent new Allendes and Castros and try where possible to reverse these trends.”

The records released also reveal that Brazil was involved in the Uruguayan election fraud of 1971 with consent from the United States.

Nixon saw Brazil’s military government as a critical partner in the region. “There were many things that Brazil as a South American country could do that the U.S. could not,” Nixon told his Brazilian counterpart, according to the memos.

Peter Kornbluh, a senior analyst at the National Security Archives, noted that “a hidden chapter of collaborative intervention to overthrow the government of Chile” was now emerging from the declassified documentation. “Brazil’s archives are the missing link,” he said, calling on President Ignacio Lula da Silva to open Brazil’s military archives on the past. “The full history of intervention in South America in the 1970s cannot be told without access to Brazilian documents.”

Eventually, a CIA-supported coup, led by Gen. Augusto Pinochet, toppled the Allende government in Chile in 1973.

The daughter of Salvador Allende requested that Brazil open any secret archives that could shed light on any role it played in the 1973 overthrow of her father’s administration.

“It seems to me Brazil owes an explanation, if not an apology, to Chile in the form of a full historical reckoning of its role in the overthrow of Allende and the advent of Pinochet,” Kornbluh said.

For more information, please see:

The Washington Post – Allende seeks Brazil documents on ’73 Chile coup – 18 August 2009

The New York Times – Chile: Allende’s Daughter Seeks Secret Records About Coup – 18 August 2009

The New York Times – Memos Show Nixon’s Bid to Enlist Brazil in a Coup – 16 August 2009

National Security Archive at George Washington University – Brazil Conspired with U.S. to Overthrow Allende – 16 August 2009

By Mario A. Flores
Impunity Watch Reporter, South America

BOGOTÁ, Colombia — The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) of the Organization of American States (OAS) said this week that it was the target of Colombian intelligence operations.

The IACHR said that it had received documents proving that at least one of its members had been spied on by Colombia’s intelligence agency, the Administrative Security Department (DAS), which answers to the president’s office.

According to the human rights commission, Susana Villarán, a former Peruvian minister who visited Colombia in 2005 as IACHR Commissioner and Rapporteur for Colombia was declared a “target” of intelligence operations by the DAS Special Strategic Intelligence Group known as G3.

In February of this year, the local magazine Semana revealed that the DAS had for years carried out illegal wiretap activities against opposition politicians, human rights defenders, journalists and even Supreme Court judges.

The IACHR expressed “concern” over these intelligence activities and requested information from Colombia on the espionage against people the Commission itself had ordered be protected, while calling for an investigation and punishment of those responsible.

The Commission later expanded its request for information to include all intelligence operations carried out with respect to the IACHR, the destination and use of the reports, and the investigations of the matter carried out by the Office of the General Prosecutor and the Office of the Attorney General.

The IACHR says the DAS files it received show that the G3 “was created to monitor activities tied to the litigation of cases at the international level” – cases of serious human rights violations involving the Colombian state that were being considered by the Inter-American human rights system.

The file shows that objective of the operation against the Commissioner and Rapporteur was “to identify the cases being studied by the Rapporteur and the testimony presented by nongovernmental organizations, as well as the lobbying these organizations are doing to pressure for a condemnation of the State.”

The IACHR says these intelligence activities violate Colombia’s commitment to respect the privileges and immunities of representatives of the OAS and to comply in good faith with the aim and purpose of the American Convention on Human Rights and other treaties of the inter-American system.

Following the IACHR revelations, the Colombian government issued a press release denying involvement in the alleged spying of the human rights commission.

Colombian authorities condemned the illegal activities of the intelligence organization and stressed its commitment to turn it into a “reliable and transparent” entity.

The Attorney General’s office is pressing charges against several G3 members in connection with the illegal spying scandal. It says that the G3 operated from DAS headquarters although it never appeared on the intelligence service’s organizational chart. Officials claim that the G3 has been dissolved.

For more information, please see:

IPS – COLOMBIA: Spying on Human Rights Defenders – 15 August 2009

Colombia Reports – Government denies involvement in wiretapping IACHR – 14 August 2009

Colombia Reports – IACHR says it was spied on by Colombian intelligence agency – 13 August 2009

Read the Press Release by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) – 13 August 2009

CARACAS, Venezuela – Scuffles broke outside the Venezuelan parliament building as lawmakers debated a bill that would broaden government control over schools.  Venezuelan police fired tear gas to disperse the protesters.
Thousands of teachers, union leaders, community activists, and militants of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela gathered near the National Assembly building in support of the law.  In a smaller march led by high profile politicians, opponents of the law demanded that discussions of the law be further postponed.

University and private school authorities fear that the law will allow an increase in government influence on campuses by involving grass-roots community groups, often loyal to President Chavez, in school operations.

One of the contentious parts of the law is that it strengthens the role of the state in education. Article 4 states that is the responsibility of the “Estado Docente” or the Educator State  is to guarantee “education as a universal human right and fundamental, inalienable, non-renounceable social duty, and a public service… governed by the principles of integrality, cooperation, solidarity, attentiveness, and co-responsibility.”

President Hugo Chavez claims that the bill is based on the ideals espoused by 19th century Venezuelan independence hero Simon Bolivar. Opponents say the changes would amount to indoctrination.

“This law is very dangerous,” said legislator Pastora Medina of the Humanist Front, a former government supporter and a member of the education commission. “It turns schools into centers for community activists and ignores the pedagogical aspect.”

Supporters of the law generally discount the claims that it’s aimed at indoctrinating children and downplay concerns, saying the legislation reflects the government’s efforts to ensure equal opportunities and teach social responsibility. The law, they claim, requires that education be “open to all forms of thinking.”

For more information, please see:

Reuters – Venezuela passes education, land laws after clashes – 14 August 2009

BBC News- Venezuelan clash over education – 14 August 2009

Venezuela Analysis – Venezuelan National Assembly Passes New Education Law – 14 August 2009

El Universal – Oposición se declara en rebeldía y anuncia acciones contra Ley de Educación – 14 August 2009