Re.: Colombia & human rights

[Chris Brady <chris_brady@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Jay wrote (in part) about ?a very liberal line which criticized both the

Colombia government/right-wing paramilitaries (80%) and the
Guerillas (20%) for "human rights violations".
No mention needless to say about the class-content of violence.?
??Some of these human rights organizations I know are
funded by very mainstream, to say the least, sources.

Jay, here are some of my thoughts:

The United States Government continues use human rights accusations
against its foes, but consistently shies away from comparative human
rights records on a national scale?particularly as they might shed light
on the human rights abuses in the United States!  To see what I mean,
please take any year?s edition of the Report on the Americas for the
past couple of decades and compare and contrast all countries in the
Carribbean region, in fact all of Latin America, to Cuba.  There are
questions of degree which will emerge that never come up in public
discussion in the USA.  (If you want to laugh/cry, the CIA World
Factbook can be used in a similar fashion, in other words: they know the
majority of Cubans live better than the general populations of nearly
all surrounding countries, and all of those of like or larger size.)

Human rights is a historical weapon in global realpolitik.  Look at how
the Declaration of Human Rights was hammered out in the first place.
The West wanted no economic rights included.  The Administrations of
Carter and Reagan both raised the banner of human rights to attack the
USSR and Cuba.  Subsequent to the Fall of the Wall, it has become
apparent that while there were abuses in, for example, the Baltic
states, those abuses by the 1970s and 1980s were often magnified for
propaganda purposes and in some cases manufactured out of thin air.
(See my introduction to Valdas Anelauskas The Choice is Hope
http://www.efn.org/~valdas/author.html)

Re.: official Human Rights travesties in the area of propaganda over
people, the most outrageous case to my mind was the Reagan Regime?s use
of Armando Valladares, a Cuban gusano, who was portrayed as a poor poet
and elevated to the post of a United States Human Rights
representative.  Of course the initial attempts by the US Govt to cover
up the rape-assassinations of young US woman social workers in Central
America is what one might call, in an understatement, a failure in the
area of championing human rights? that is besides the cover-up of the
same acts perpetrated by the same quarters on millions of people in
Central America?(also, the on-going discussion about prostitution fits
very well in the category of human rights abuse, exploitation, etc.)

As far as Colombia is concerned, I remain flabbergasted that Western
human rights organizations persist in the ?even-handed? approach.
Right-wing death squad agents have slain most if not all human rights
workers and union activists killed in Colombia, at least those we can
find out about.  Keep in mind that union organization is a human right
?it?s even on the formal list at the United Nations.  Scores of other
such workers have been threatened, terrorized and forced to flee the
country, again --please take note-- by the forces of capital.  Of
course, respectable authorities renounce such tools/weapons of capital,
but we must classify them as per their real activities, not someone
else?s intentions.  All this said, perhaps I should not be so
flabbergasted at human rights organizations? ?even-handedness? so as to
actually appreciate the victory of the foes of real human rights.  The
right has forced the public discussion in the direction they demand.
Those HR organizations are made up of workers who are on the scene, who
have to work out some form of a modus vivendi, a balancing act that
straddles the fence of politics, while in that process obscuring the
facts associated with quantification and qualification.

A friend in Canada recently sent me a report about Colombia from the
Ottawa Citizen:
How 'victory' in the Drug War has left Colombia in ruins
http://www.ottawacitizen.com/national/drugs/000906/4095653.html

After my reading, I mused:

Dan Gardner?s series on Colombian coke was thought-provoking.  But he
directs solutions toward a libertarian (even-more-free market)
capitalism and away from speculation about an entirely alternative
economic model, specifically of the socialistic variety.  He compounds
this tendency by conflating right and left culpabilities in the
Colombian bloodbath.  Gardner reproduces human rights reports that ?both
sides? i.e., the paramilitaries and the leftist guerrillas, are evenly
responsible for atrocities perpetrated against innocent civilians:
?Human-rights workers worry that the drive will intensify murder and
terror directed at civilian farmers, a standard tactic used by all
sides.?

First of all this slants a general impression toward the false dichotomy
of ?paramilitaries vs. leftist guerrillas.?  As Gardner elsewhere notes,
the paramilitaries are connected to the armed forces of the state of
Colombia.  He notes also that they are to the largest degree financed by
drug money, but also by large landowners bent on clearing the
countryside of ?surplus? people.  The paramilitaries are basically Death
Squads (familiar to historians of 20th century Central America), a more
extreme weapon used by the forces of capital against militant peasants
and workers.

Secondly, let?s table the idea that ?both sides? have hurt innocent
people.  They have.  But then let?s examine to what degree.  In my
research of the past five years I see that the right has systematically
waged war on the working classes of Colombia to terrify them out of
supporting the guerrillas.  This is a familiar counter-insurgency tactic
going back to the French imperialist wars in Algeria.  The United States
used similar schemes in Vietnam.  The FARC and the ELN do not; they
cannot?they get their recruits from among those humble folk.  Plain and
simple.  And that?s why the paramilitaries punish those folk..  The FARC
and ELN attack police stations and army outposts, the military on
maneuvers, pipelines, electric grids, etc.  They have in the process
encountered collateral damage to civilians, but it is regretted and not
intentional as in the case of the AUC (umbrella of much of the
right-wing irregulars).  The paramilitaries persistently perpetrate
massacres on the poorest people.

The leftists kidnap people, yes, but who?  The poor?  No, that would be
stupid.  They target the wealthy, the ones who have money, the few who
selfishly benefit from the distress of the many.  All in all, the rough
ratio of right vs. left attacks on civilians is 5:1.  That?s the
quantity.  A qualitative analysis reveals the fact that what we have in
Colombia is class war.  There should be no surprises about where the USA
would line up there.

When we join Colombia solidarity organizations, I think we better ask
?with whom will we show our solidarity??

YFTR,
Chris Brady