Dan Kovalik THE HUFFINGTON POST
Human and Labor Rights Lawyer
Posted: April 1, 2010 09:22 AM
U.S. and Colombia Cover Up Atrocities Through Mass Graves
The
biggest human rights scandal in years is developing in Colombia, though
you wouldn't notice it from the total lack of media coverage here. The
largest mass grave unearthed in Colombia was discovered by accident
last year just outside a Colombian Army base in La Macarena, a rural
municipality located in the Department of Meta just south of Bogota.
The grave was discovered when children drank from a nearby stream and
started to become seriously ill. These illnesses were traced to runoff
from what was discovered to be a mass grave -- a grave marked only with
small flags showing the dates (between 2002 and 2009) on which the
bodies were buried.
According to a February 10, 2010 letter issued by Alexandra Valencia
Molina, Director of the regional office of Colombia's own Procuraduria
General de la Nacion -- a government agency tasked to investigate
government corruption -- approximately 2,000 bodies are buried in this
grave. The Colombian Army has admitted responsibility for the grave,
claiming to have killed and buried alleged guerillas there. However,
the bodies in the grave have yet to be identified. Instead, against all
protocol for handling the remains of anyone killed by the military,
especially those of guerillas, the bodies contained in the mass grave
were buried there secretly without the requisite process of having the
Colombian government certify that the deceased were indeed the armed
combatants the Army claims.
And, given the current "false positive" scandal which has enveloped
the government of President Alvaro Uribe and his Defense Minister, Juan
Manuel Santos, who is now running to succeed Uribe as President, the
Colombian Army's claim about the mass grave is especially suspect. This
scandal revolves around the Colombian military, most recently under the
direction of Juan Manuel Santos, knowingly murdering civilians in cold
blood and then dressing them up to look like armed guerillas in order
to justify more aid from the United States. According to the UN High
Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pilay, this practice has been so
"systematic and widespread" as to amount to a "crime against humanity."
And sadly, when Ms. Pilay made this statement, she literally did not
know the half of it.
To date, not factoring in the mass grave, it has been confirmed by
Colombian government sources that 2,000 civilians have fallen victim to
the "false positive" scheme since President Uribe took office in 2002.
If, as suspected by Colombian human rights groups, such as the
"Comision de Derechos Humanos del Bajo Ariari" and the "Colectivo
Orlando Fals Borda," the mass grave in La Macarena contains 2,000 more
civilian victims of this scheme, then this would bring the total of
those victimized by the "false positive" scandal to at least 4,000
--much worse than originally believed.
That this grave was discovered just outside a Colombian military
base overseen by U.S. military advisers -- the U.S. having around 600
military advisers in that country -- is especially troubling, and
raises serious questions about the U.S.'s own conduct in that country.
In addition, this calls into even greater question the propriety of
President Obama's agreement with President Alvaro Uribe last summer to
grant the U.S. access to 7 military bases in that country.
The Colombian government and military are scrambling to contain this
most recent scandal, and possibly through violence. Thus, on March 15,
2010, Jhonny Hurtado, a former union leader and President of the Human
Rights Committee of La Cantina, and an individual who was key in
revealing the truth about this mass grave, was assassinated as soldiers
from Colombia's 7th Mobile Brigade patrolled the area. Just prior to
his murder, Jhonny Hurtado told a delegation of British MPs visiting
Colombia that he believed the mass grave at La Macarena contained the
bodies of innocent people who had been "disappeared."
The discovery of this mass grave by sheer accident raises the
prospect that there are more yet to be found. Certainly, it is the
consensus of human rights groups in Colombia that this is only be the
tip of the iceberg. In any case, the discovery of this grave, on top of
the large magnitude of the "false positive" scandal already known,
justifies a serious rethinking of U.S. policy toward Colombia -- a
policy pursuant to which the U.S. has sent over $7 billion of military
aid to Colombia since 2000 and still counting. This policy, which
President Obama is only deepening, has continued the U.S.'s
long-standing practice of giving the most military aid to the worst
human rights abusers. The time is way overdue for this practice to end.
Daniel Kovalik is a human and labor rights
lawyer living in Pittsburgh. The information in this article about the
mass grave at La Maracena was based on research provided by Justice for Colombia in London and by two brave Colombian human rights leaders, Edinson Cuellar and Carolina Hoyas, who are working tirelessly to spread the truth about this mass grave.
