Colombia's Human Rights Failure

Happy 2010 everyone! We plan to bring some exciting changes to GP so stay tuned. It has just been announced that a Colombian court has decided to throw out the case surrounding one of the worst civilian massacres in the Colombian conflict so far.

Starting in 2002, the Colombian military kidnapped, killed, and dressed civilians as FARC rebels. Potentially up to 1000 people have been victims of the military's brutality.

Yet the case trying some of the perpetrators of the massacres has been thrown out thanks to precedural roadblocks thrown out by the defence team, preventing the prosecution from being able to bring the case to court. The case was a high profile one, and provided a crucial test as to how well the Colombian justice system would be able to account for these kinds of human rights violations.

Instead, victims' families received a proverbial slap in the face, and many international groups and local NGOs are quite angry as the perpetrators walk free.

This decision also invariably embarasses the U.S. government, which had recently and controvertially declared that Colombia's human rights record had 'improved'.

Posted on January 9, 2010

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Felipe Schrieberg is the director of Global Politics. He has graduated with an M.A in International Relations and Film Studies at the University of St. Andrews.

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