2011

This is horrible and shameful news, so we’ll get straight to the point.

Over the last 5 years, migrants have suffered more than 30,000 incidents of abuse and mistreatment while in Border Patrol custody, according to a shocking new report by humanitarian organization No More Deaths. Many of the abuses plainly meet the definition of torture under international law.

Click here to sign the petition calling for an immediate end to the abuse, clear and enforceable standards for Border Patrol short-term custody, and independent community oversight of Border Patrol.

The U.S.-Colombia trade agreement was held up for an unprecedented five years over human rights and labor rights concerns.  It was passed today, October 12th, but over strong and passionate opposition from many members of Congress, and from a broad range of civil society organizations in the United States and Colombia, including labor unions, human rights groups, faith-based organizations, environmental groups, and Afro-Colombian, indigenous and small-scale farmer associations. 

"Why do we care so much about this?" said Lisa Haugaard, Executive Director of the Latin America Working Group (LAWG).  "Because we believe that passage of this agreement will make it harder to encourage the Colombian government to protect its trade unionists, who are still murdered with impunity today—23 so far this year.  Because we believe the flood of agricultural imports from the United States will undermine Colombia’s small-scale farmers, including Afro-Colombians and indigenous people, who have suffered so much in Colombia’s civil war. And because it will boost the kinds of large-scale investment, such as mining and biofuel, that has helped to fuel the violence in a conflict that still grinds brutally on."

The State Department on September 15, 2011, certified that Colombia had met the human rights conditions attached to U.S. assistance. No surprise there—the State Department always certifies Colombia meets the conditions, no matter what is happening on the ground.  To be fair, this time, with the year-old Santos Administration, there’s somewhat more reason to certify than during countless rounds of certification during the Uribe Administration.   The certification document cites the Santos Administration's successful passage of a victims' reparations and land restitution bill; a “disarming of words” initiative in which it abandoned the inflammatory anti-NGO language used by Uribe and his top officials, which had endangered human rights defenders and journalists; progress on some historic human rights cases; and a variety of directives and policy initiatives, at least on paper, to support human rights and labor rights.
 
But the 118- page document contains a wealth of information that shows why we should still be deeply concerned.