Smoke and Mirrors - British Military Aid to Colombia

4.06.08

By Joanne Crouch
IPO – International Peace Observatory

As a British citizen living in Bogotá being exposed to the harsh realities of the human rights crisis here in Colombia, I’ve been keen to determine what my government and my taxes are doing on behalf of this country. I would love to say that in spending time reading on this issue I have uncovered some truths. However the real truth is that all information is classified which leaves British citizens to question if the British government is financing human rights abuses in Colombia.

I am far from the first person to seek clarification regarding Britain’s involvement in the ongoing civil conflict taking place here in Colombia. People, politicians and organizations with far greater political weight than me have attempted to secure the truth and the realities of British financing. They have all come up against brick walls. As recently as July 2007, Foreign Office minister Kim Howells refused to disclose financial details of this assistance and critically, who ultimately receives it, on the grounds that it could damage international relations. (Guardian August 29 2007 http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2007/aug/29/foreignpolicy.uk)

Information has been classified on the basis that it may harm international relations with Colombia which in turn would be contrary to British interests. As a citizen of the United Kingdom, holding a British passport, paying British taxes and living for the most part in Britain, I find this disconcerting.

Colombia has a very disturbing human rights track record, and although part of this history of violence can be attributed to insurgent forces, it is the government forces and the paramilitaries which have committed the vast majority of human rights violations. According to War on Want, a British human rights organization, the Colombian military have one of the worst human rights records in the Western Hemisphere and well-documented links to paramilitary death squads that are responsible for 80% of human rights abuses perpetrated in Colombia each year. (http://www.waronwant.org/Colombia20background+4606.twl)

If British military aid is being sent to the Colombian government with the specified use of financing, supporting or improving military operations, and we know that the military commits significant numbers of atrocious human rights violations, we have to question whether Britain is implicated in supporting and enabling these human rights violations to take place. The British government is not willing to disclose the truth, but when stories emerge of 14 British trained Colombian Soldiers participating in a massacre of 10 Colombian Anti-narcotics police in 2006 it puts a huge dent in the British Governments theory that military aid given is to suppress cocaine trafficking and improve the human rights situation there. (http://www.justiceforcolombia.org/?link=newsPage&story=267)

In this particular case, Colonel Bayron Carvajal and 14 other soldiers have been convicted, and are currently awaiting sentence, for killing 10 anti-narcotics police in 2006 in Jamundí. They have been directly linked to paramilitary groups and are known to have undertaken the act in the interests of drugs barons. This particular Battalion has been receiving British military aid since its foundation in 2003. Kim Howells, the British Foreign Office minister, has claimed that they only receive human rights training. Nonetheless, it appears this training is ineffective at best.

As these types of contradictions emerge, Britain has an obligation to re-think it’s financing to the region and investigate where it goes. We know of this particular massacre in Jamundi in 2006 because it was Colombian police who were affected. But how many other violations have taken place that we don’t know about? The government refuses to disclose the amount of money, how it is spent and where. But more concerning is that the British government refuses to say what human rights monitoring mechanisms are in place to prevent human rights abuses taking place. As a minimum it has an obligation to ensure that British aid is not financing human rights abuses.

With impunity rife in Colombia and no apparent methodology to prevent the use of military aid for human rights abuses, this essentially means military aid is given on a no strings attached basis and contradicts the Government’s own position as having identified Colombia as a “country of concern”.

Britain’s reluctance to take a stance stronger than paying lip service to the human rights scandal here only serves to preserve the impunity that exists within Colombia. What it also serves to do is to lend impunity to itself. If we are not told the truth and not given facts, then how can we make real charges against the British government of committing or supporting human rights abuses. There is no transparency and consequently no accountability for violations of human rights.

Britain has numerous economic interests here in Colombia most significantly in the form of coal, petroleum and gold mining companies such as Anglo Gold Ahsanti, BP and BHP Bilton. These companies have been linked time and again to human rights violations that take place in the regions within which they work. A prime example of this being the El Cerrajon coal mine in the Guajira where in 2001 following the takeover by three British Companies, BHP Bilton, AngloAmerican and Xstrata a local town of El Tabaco was destroyed to make way for expansion. With the British government acting on behalf of its economic interests, it forces us to question if the British government is prioritizing money over the lives of the local inhabitants and over the international human rights obligations it holds.

According to War on Want’s report, Fanning the Flames, November 2007:
“the British Government has been a strong supporter of the Colombian regime, and provides military and intelligence aid to security forces responsible not only for human rights abuses but also for creating conditions for favorable investment by British Companies which have invested over $16 Billion in Colombia, according to foreign office figures, with mining and oil both key sectors.”

Is it any real wonder that the facts about military aid to Colombia are classified when the British interests here, namely economic ones, such as the petroleum and gold industry, are so closely linked to human rights abuses and the facilitation and even encouragement of them?

If the British government was upholding its obligations to international humanitarian law and is taking preventative action to avoid the funding of human rights abuses in Colombia, one would think Britain would come clean and give us the details. The fact that all is hidden in the shadows only increases speculation over what the real interests the government is supporting and the human cost of Britain’s pursuit of them.

As Britain becomes increasingly linked to human rights abuses and further evidence pertains to direct funding of it, Britain must make a decision. Either it must come clean on what it really is doing and where the money is going, or it must stop sending the money across. The secrecy pertaining to its financing of Colombia´s military is not a position that the British government can legitimately defend when it is human lives that is at stake.

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