From SOA Wacth [2], Sept. 2:
Keep Colombian Ex-President Alvaro Uribe out of Georgetown and send him packing to La Picota prison in Colombia!
Georgetown University has recently announced that former Colombian president Álvaro Uribe will be named a "distinguished scholar in the practice of global leadership," and will soon begin giving seminars at the university's Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service (SFS). Uribe has said it is a "great honor" for him, and that his "greatest wish and happiness is to contribute in the continuous emergence of future leaders."
Uribe's 8-year tenure in Colombia was rife with corruption, human rights violations and widespread impunity. In a letter in June to the White House, Human Rights Watch expressed "serious concerns" about the Uribe administration's record on and commitment to human rights, democracy, and the rule of law.
More than 3 million Colombians (out of a population of about 40 million) have been forced to flee their homes, giving Colombia the second-largest population of internally displaced persons in the world after Sudan.
More than 70 members of the Colombian Congress are under criminal investigation or have been convicted for allegedly collaborating with the paramilitaries. Nearly all these congresspersons are members of President Uribe's coalition in Congress, and the Uribe administration repeatedly undermined the investigations and discredited the Supreme Court justices who started them.
Colombia has the highest rate of killings of trade unionists in the world.
A clandestine gravesite of 2,000 non-identified bodies was recently discovered directly beside a military base in La Macarena, in central Colombia. When the news became public, Uribe flew to the Macarena and said publicly that accusing the armed forces of human rights abuses was a tactic used by the guerrilla. These comments put the lives of those victims who spoke at the event in grave danger.
Starting in 2008, reports came out that the Colombian military was luring poor young men from their homes with promises of employment, then killing them and presenting them as combat casualties. The practice not only served to stack battle statistics, but also financially benefited the soldiers involved, as Uribe's government had, since 2005, awarded monetary and vacation bonuses for each insurgent killed. Human rights groups cite 3,000 or more "false positives".
For more information on Uribe and human rights violations, click:
http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2009/06/26/colombia-obama-should-press-uribe-rights [3]
Students, community activists and religious leaders have already spoken out against
the university's decision, and will be planning actions of protest for this fall.
Take action NOW, by signing this letter to Georgetown University President, Mr. John
J. DeGioia:
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/727/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=4711 [4]
See our last posts on Colombia [5], the paramilitary terror [6] and the legacy of Álvaro Uribe [7].
