There exists a very close correlation that holds over a long period of time between human rights violations and US military aid and training. It's not that the US likes to
torture people; it's that it basically doesn't care. FOR THE US GOVERNMENT, HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATION ARE A SECONDARY CONSEQUENCE .
( THIS TIES IN VERY NEATLY WITH BESIGYE"S ARTICLE WHICH I JUST POSTED Matek)
In Colombia, as elsewhere, human rights violations tend to increase as the state tries to violently repress opposition to inequality, oppression, corruption, and other state crimes for which there is no political outlet. The state turns to terror – that's what's been happening in Colombia for a long time, since before there was a Colombian drug trade.
Counterinsurgency has been going on there for 40
years; President Kennedy sent a special forces mission to Colombia in the early
1960s. Their proposal to the Colombian government was recently declassified,
and it called for "paramilitary terror" – those are their words –
against what it called known communist proponents.
In Colombia, that meant labor leaders, priests, human rights activists, and so on. Colombian military manuals in the 1960s began to reflect this advice. In the last 15 years, as the US has become more deeply involved, human rights violations are up
considerably.
