Reports of extrajudicial killings and domestic wiretapping in Colombia are troubling, but Bogota has made enough progress on human rights to receive the remainder of its US military aid, the US State Department said on Friday.
Colombia, the world’s top cocaine exporter, has received more than US$6 billion in mostly military and anti-narcotics aid from Washington since 2000 to help it battle drug traffickers and Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) guerrillas waging Latin America’s oldest insurgency.
Under US law a portion of the aid is withheld each year until the State Department certifies to Congress that Colombia is meeting requirements regarding human rights and paramilitary groups.
US lawmakers placed the condition on the aid because of concerns about the increase in right-wing paramilitary activity and extrajudicial killings amid Colombian President Alvaro Uribe’s drive to end the country’s 45-year leftist insurgency.
“There is no question that improvement must be made in certain areas,” State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said.
“However, the Colombian government has made significant efforts to increase the security of its people and to promote respect for human rights by its armed forces and has thereby met the certification criteria,” he said.
Kelly voiced concern about extrajudicial killings of men and boys from the poor Bogota suburb of Soacha. Nineteen young men from the suburb were slain by troops who tried to pass the bodies off as dead rebels in the guerrilla war.
An investigation found the soldiers were trying to inflate the body count in order to win promotions and bonuses promised by officers trying to crush the insurgency.
Kelly said the armed forces and prosecutor general in Colombia were swift to take action, dismissing 45 service members and investigating 75 soldiers.
He also expressed US concern about allegations of domestic wiretapping and surveillance by the Department of Administrative Security, calling them “troubling and unacceptable.”
Meanwhile, police said two bombs carried by donkeys exploded in northeastern Colombia, killing two coca-eradication workers and wounding six soldiers.
Police General Orlando Pineda said the workers were heading for a field to destroy coca plants when the explosives went off.
Officials attributed the attack to FARC.
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