Article by Luis Carapinha, member of the International Department

Literally perverse, is how the Colombian record on the human rights issue, can be qualified. That is, due to its extensive, systematic and ignominious violation. A list of atrocities, which did not remain a deed of the past, at the hands of successive right-wing governments, of oligarchy substance and servants of the North-American imperialism, but carried on, in the same direction, with Uribe’s present, outstandingly proto-fascist government. Of more recent times, its sufficient to recall the dark history on civil executions – the majority being young needy kidnapped Colombians, assassinated and buried in common ditches – committed by militaries under the false allegation of " guerrillas killed in combat". But the "scandal "which led to the resignation of the Army commander-in-chief and obliged the Government to destitute more than 30 army officers, since October, constitutes but a drop in the ocean. The accusations on extra-judicial executions to not stop growing. Since president Uribe’s first investiture, in 2002, hundreds of Colombian trade-unionists were assassinated. In the 21st century, communists, left-wing political leaders and social Colombian activists continue to be systematically murdered by one of the most sanguinary State terrorism regimes, engendered by capitalism and the imperialist domination.

Therefore,it does not consider odd, the almost permanent news blockade and boycott by the dominant media round the tragedy in Colombia and the roots of the complex "armed social conflict", in that South-American country. Within the shade of the news focus, the massacre of the Patriotic Union remains, perpetuated about two decades ago. Tortuous criteria (of class) contribute meet towards to look down upon or the distorting of the reality of the innumerous torture cases within the Colombian prisons or the existence of hundreds or, even, thousands of political prisoners. The fact that more than forty members of parliament and Uribe’s political allies are judicially involved through liaisons/ commitments with paramilitarism, probably is not published on the front pages of the reference newspapers. Nor even one has seen that the institutional attempts of bleaching the paramilitary crimes, the land theft and the forced expulsion of millions Colombian peasants – the government itself, recognizes the existence within the country, of more than 2,5 million refugees -, in benefit of the large land estates and the transnational monopolies, namely in the agro-fuels, might have been a sufficient motive to agitate one of those so selective and non-innocently fashionable international " civic- humanitarian" campaigns. Of course, it was not expected – even being highly undesirable – that Bush or Solana could begin demanding Uribe’s destitution… If the multiple expressions of the repressive and terrorist Colombian regime are dominantly accounted for in the boarders of silence and omission, the contrary occurs on what concerns the criminalization of the multiple forms of resistance and all the actions in order to legitimate a barren-land policy undertaken by Bogota – and harmonized along with the USA’s imperative need to mitigate the emancipating dynamic within Latin American.

Nevertheless, the truth will someday come to reason, for there is no struggle that does bring in with effects. Within the core of the complex and acute Colombian class struggle, the trade-union movement and the large social sectors, grows round the demand of deep democratic and progressist changes.

As affirmed in the 20th Congress of the PCP statement, which took place last month, the "need of a humanitarian exchange of experiences and of a negotiated political solution on the social and armed conflict, represent a historical urgency and a task that cannot be adjourned ".