Global Geopolitics Net Sites / IPS
Tuesday, November 04, 2008
All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2008.
By Constanza Vieira
BOGOTA, Nov 3 (IPS) – The extrajudicial executions that are being committed by government forces in Colombia constitute crimes against humanity, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said at the end of her six-day fact-finding tour of this South American country.
“An offence becomes a crime against humanity if it is widespread and systematic against the civilian population. We are observing and keeping a record of the number of extrajudicial killings, and it does appear systematic and widespread in my view,” Pillay said in answer to a question from IPS in her only meeting with the press in Colombia, on Saturday Nov. 1.
According to the Observatory of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law of the Colombia-Europe-United States Coordination Group (CCEEU) — a coalition formed by some 200 humanitarian organisations — from January 2007 to June 2008 “one person died every day in extrajudicial executions” committed directly by government security forces.
The same source indicates that the number of summary executions has tripled since right-wing President Álvaro Uribe took office in August 2002. And the killings are occurring in every region of the country, as evidenced by statistics from the Colombian Commission of Jurists, a prominent human rights group that forms part of the CCEEU.
Pillay spoke of “continuing levels of extrajudicial executions,” which she described as “very alarming.”
But the implicated military officers may not have to appear before the International Criminal Court (ICC) — on which the South African-born U.N. official previously sat as a judge — given that the Colombian government has started to bring actions against the culprits, she noted.
“The goal is to have the national authorities investigate these crimes and prosecute the perpetrators,” Pillay explained. “It’s only when a country is unable and unwilling that the International Criminal Court, for instance, would have the power to intervene.”
Midway through Pillay’s visit to Colombia, on Oct. 29, the Uribe administration dismissed 20 officers, including three generals, and seven non-commissioned officers, for alleged involvement in forced disappearances and summary executions of civilians.
The bodies of the victims are later dressed up and presented to the media as leftist rebels or right-wing paramilitary fighters killed in combat, with the aim of showing results in the counterinsurgency war.
That same day, the CCEEU and other human rights groups presented a total of four reports on extrajudicial executions in this country that has been torn for more than four decades by a war between leftist guerrilla groups, government forces and far-right paramilitaries.
The military officers were fired for negligence or lack of command over their troops, and the Colombian press was quick to stress that they are innocent until proven guilty.
The U.N. high commissioner, however, said that in her meetings with Defence Ministry officials she “noted that in accordance with international standards, a superior may be criminally responsible for crimes committed by subordinates, under his or her effective authority and control, and as a result of his or her failure to exercise control properly over such subordinates.”
“So this is the basis on which this government has acted,” she continued, “and I am encouraging that the process of investigation be followed consistently through the ranks,” until those who are directly responsible are found.
Pillay urged “the Ministry of Defence to continue working to ensure that central orders are enforced at an operational level.”
She said she recognises “that this is an historic development that has not been attempted before, where the government takes accountability” seriously with respect to the responsibility of the armed forces.
The dismissals — which the government promises will not be the last — are “a hopeful indication that such atrocities will not be tolerated and that the army is moving away from ‘counting bodies’ as a criteria of success in their operations,” the high commissioner declared.
She added that she “supports the commitment expressed by the highest civilian and military authorities of the country that progress in security should be achieved with full adherence to legality and respect for human rights.”
The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) has a major country office in Colombia, which has been pressuring the government since 2004, demanding that it stop emphasising “body counts” as a measure of military success, as soldiers are tempted by a policy of rewards — prizes, leave incentive, promotions and bonuses — which leads them to execute civilians to inflate the number of casualties achieved in actual combat.
In the last interview he gave before stepping down in 2006, the former head of the OHCHR Colombia field office, Swedish U.N. official Michael Frühling, had warned about extrajudicial killings, saying that “the government is aware of many of these cases because we have talked about it.”
“The government has taken certain steps because it is apparently concerned, even though it has not declared it publicly,” Frühling said back then to Un Pasquín, an anti-Uribe newspaper published by Colombian caricaturist and journalist Vladdo.
The Final Report of the International Observation Mission on Extrajudicial Executions and Impunity in Colombia, made up of 13 independent experts from Britain, France, Germany, Spain and the United States, identifies certain patterns in these extrajudicial killings.
Presented at the same time as the CCEEU report, it warns that these killings “are not isolated crimes but rather a systematic practice that is premeditated.”
“There is a system of incentives for soldiers,” said German expert Stefan Ofteringer, one of the 13 members of the observation mission who personally reviewed 135 of the 955 extrajudicial execution cases documented by the CCEUU since 2002.
“There are economic rewards,” he added, “and prizes for positive results, which we have been able to verify in many cases we’ve studied.”
But there are also “intimidations and aggressions against the relatives of victims, whenever they attempted to access the case files, court proceedings or bodies,” and the human rights defenders that help these families in their inquiries have also been threatened, he said.
The mission sees the efforts made in 2007 by the OHCHR, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and Colombian human rights groups, as well as its own work, as instrumental in the Defence Ministry’s decision to refer the homicide investigations to civilian courts on Nov. 2 of last year.
But, at the same time, the cases brought before ordinary courts advance very slowly, there aren’t enough prosecutors assigned to them, and no efforts are being made to determine who is really behind the crimes, beyond the actual perpetrators.
“We asked that military aid be conditioned to (the elimination) of extrajudicial executions and, in general, to the human rights record of the security forces,” Ofteringer told IPS.
The expert said that the countries should assess whether Colombia is complying with the annual recommendations made by the high commissioner for human rights, in preparation for the Universal Periodic Review that Colombia will voluntarily submit to next Dec. 10 in Geneva. Ofteringer noted that because of the forthcoming review, “the outcome of our mission goes far beyond individual cases.”
POLITICS: Is Cold War Rhetoric Back at the U.N.?
Global Geopolitics – Global News Blog – Global Politics Online – IPS
Monday, September 08, 2008
All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2008.
Analysis by Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 8 (IPS) – When the United States and the former Soviet Union were on the verge of a military confrontation over Cuba during the height of the Cold War, the legendary U.S. Ambassador Adlai Stevenson went eyeball-to-eyeball with Soviet envoy Valerian Zorin in the Security Council chamber.
As old U.N. hands would recall, Stevenson aggressively sought a response from Zorin over allegations of Soviet nuclear missiles stationed in Cuba.
”Yes or no?” Stevenson demanded, and added the punch line: ”And don’t wait for the translation”, as he pressed for an immediate answer from the Russian-speaking envoy.
Zorin turned to Stevenson and said, through a translator: ”I am not in an American court of law, and I do not wish to answer the question put to me in the manner of a prosecuting counsel.”
Stevenson famously responded he will wait for an answer ”until hell freezes over”.
Judging by the recent deadlock in the Security Council — over Kosovo, Iran, Myanmar (Burma), Zimbabwe, Sudan and most recently Georgia — one wonders whether the days of the Cold War are back in vogue. Or perhaps its political rhetoric?
In January last year, a Western-backed and U.S.-led move to castigate the Burmese government for human rights violations suffered a rare double veto, both from China and Russia.
And last month, history repeated itself when these two big powers exercised their vetoes again — this time to stall a resolution aimed at imposing sanctions against Zimbabwe.
The U.S.-Russian political confrontation in the Security Council has been intensified in recent weeks with the Russian invasion of Georgia, and Moscow’s subsequent decision to recognise the breakaway Abkhazia and South Ossetia.
When U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad sought a response from Russian Ambassador Vitaly Churkin on whether or not the Russians were bent on violating the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Georgia, Churkin said he had already provided an answer to the question.
Maybe, he added rather sarcastically, the U.S. representative had not been listening when Churkin had given his response. ”Perhaps he had not had his earpiece on,” he added.
And when U.S. Ambassador Alejandro Wolff recently blasted Russia for its perceived violations of international law and the U.N. charter during the invasion of Georgia, Churkin hit back with another dose of sarcasm.
”Did you find any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq?…And are you still looking for them?” he asked.
Speeches laced with sarcasm and personal insults are rare in the Council chamber. But is the United Nations now back to the days of the Cold War?
”The United Nations is not headed for a new Cold War,” predicts Phyllis Bennis, director of the New Internationalist Project at the Washington-based Institute for Policy Studies, and author of several studies on the United Nations.
As U.S. economic, political and diplomatic power has diminished around the world, she argued, military power has become ever more dominant as a viable tool of hegemony.
”The threat of U.S. unilateral military power continues to rise not only in Iraq and Afghanistan, but also with increasing U.S. military bases across the globe, as well as possible new interventions in Iran, in Georgia, in Pakistan and perhaps elsewhere,” Bennis told IPS.
Partly as a result of that rising militarism, and partly out of longstanding habit, she pointed out, governments around the world continue to treat the United States as if it were still an unchallengeable dominion.
”And in the United Nations, that means allowing Washington to continue to call the shots,” added Bennis, author of the recently-released ‘Understanding the U.S.-Iran Crisis: A Primer.’
”A return to the Cold War era? Not sure whether we can characterise it as such?” says an Asian envoy, who keeps close track of the state-of-play in the Security Council.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, he said it is a fact that the Security Council has not been functioning effectively for some time now.
”In my view, the last time it operated effectively was probably during the first Gulf War when Iraq invaded Kuwait and the then Bush [Sr.] administration (1990-91) worked hard to put together an international coalition to take on Saddam Hussein,” he told IPS.
It was just after the Cold War and Washington was in less of an ”ideological mode”.
Maybe it was because they felt that they had won the Cold War and could now afford to be magnanimous without behaving in an overbearing and unilateral manner, he added. Or maybe they saw it as an opportunity to demonstrate true leadership and to work towards the preservation of a system where they remained at the top of the heap.
But, over time, especially in the last eight years, he argued, ”the Americans have become extremely ideological and unilateral in their approach — they are always right and you are either with them or you are seen to be against them. It’s all black and while with no grey issues.”
”This was evident during the run-up to the Second Gulf War — it blinded American planning and strategising, with them thinking that they would hailed as liberators in Baghdad,” he added.
Mouin Rabbani, contributing editor to the Washington-based Middle East Report, said that since 1990 the United Nations, and particularly the Security Council, has under U.S. domination (perhaps ”proprietorship” is a more accurate term) increasingly become an instrument for the marginalisation of international law.
The United States, he said, has also been undermining the consensus of the vast majority of its constituent states on a range of issues, as opposed to an institution that works to uphold international law and enforce the will of the international community.
”In this context, the prospect of a new Cold War at the global organisation is to be enthusiastically welcomed,” Rabbani told IPS.
”At the very least there will be some daylight between the U.N. Security Council (UNSC) and the U.S. National Security Council, and hopefully some dimunition of the role of the UNSC itself,” Rabbani said.
The Asian envoy said the ideological zeal of the United States and the West is also seen in the disturbing tendency by the ”West” to try to broaden the definition of what is a ”threat to international peace and security”.
While the U.N. Charter leaves some room for interpretation, he said, this definition of a ”threat” has generally been confined to wars and violence.
”Increasingly, what we are witnessing are attempts by the West to include all manner of transgressions as possible reasons that require Security Council action,” he said.
In the Zimbabwe case, he said, the argument was that democracy, elections, and human rights all fall under possible new definitions of ”threats”.
”This is the same sort of reasoning that we have seen the West try to apply to Myanmar over the political process and the humanitarian crisis,” he added.
While Russia and China are becoming more assertive, it is primarily on issues that bear directly on their own national interests, like preventing the UNSC from producing a lopsided resolution on Georgia.
The real issue remains unchanged — whether the United Nations is capable of reforming itself to become an effective international organisation.
”And here the joint interests of the U.S. and Russia are likely to converge to prevent this from happening, as in the past,” Rabbani added.
The Asian envoy said: ”I don’t see either side backing off for the time being. The West will continue to push the envelope and many amongst the Rest continuing to resist,” he added.