One of the statues at Monserratt, Bogotá. Melissa Engle/MCC
A recent report by International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) and the Coordinación Colombia Europa Estados Unidos (CCEEU), titled “Colombia: The war measured in litres of blood – ‘False-positives’, crimes against humanity: the impunity of the most responsible“, details the “false positives” phenomenon in Colombia. That is, the extra-judicial killing of more than 3,000 civilians by the official Colombian military,which then falsely reported these victims as guerrillas killed in combat.
What should perhaps be most disconcerting, however, is that the high body count has been encouraged in order to justify continued military aid from the United States, which has provided the Colombia military with nearly $6 billion since 2000 to wage its war on drug trafficking. Moreover, classified documents show that the U.S. has been aware of such “false positives” phenomenon since well before 2000. Despite this knowledge, U.S. has increased military aid under Plan Colombia.
Huffington Post writer Dan Kovalik observes,
While the U.S. justifies its crimes in Colombia on its alleged desire to eradicate drugs, there are two irrefutable truths about this: (1) since the U.S. began its “war on drugs” in Colombia, there has been no decrease in cocaine exported from that country to the U.S.; and (2) the entire Western financial system has itself become addicted to the drug trade, is being propped up by it with billions of dollars of capital and Western governments are doing nothing to police this. Therefore, while innocents die in countries like Colombia, Mexico and Honduras by the thousands in our so-called “war on drugs,” the Western banks are allowed to profit from drugs.
I can think of no greater injustice.
Read the Huffington Post article here.
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Posted by Jesse Epp-Fransen 
