U.S. being a dick, won't let Colombian human rights activist in U.S. to receive award

[Peace Patriot]

Here's the item from BovRev.net...

"Some poor kid risked his life exposing abuses of Colombian prisoners, and now the U.S. is going to be a dick and not let him pick up his human rights award in New York".

it's rich: http://www.borev.net/2009/10/titulares_asininity_67.html#comments

the original story: http://www.laht.com/article.asp?ArticleId=345456&CategoryId=12393

more info.: http://www.humanrightsfirst.org/defenders/hrd_colombia/hrd_colombia_page.aspx?item=61&c=c1

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From the Latin American Herald Tribune (10/12/09)

NGO Accuses U.S. of Holding Up Visa for Colombian Activist

NEW YORK – The non-governmental organization Human Rights First has accused the U.S. government of delays in issuing a visa to Colombian activist Gabriel Gonzalez, winner of that group’s rights prize for 2009.

The New York- and Washington-based organization said in a press release Thursday that those delays could prevent the activist from being present to receive the award at a gala ceremony in New York on Oct. 22.

HRF said that because of the delays “Gonzalez may be thousands of miles away” from the ceremony, adding that “his visa is being held up by the U.S. government, apparently because of false charges lodged against him by the Colombian authorities – despite U.S. agreement that those charges amount to nothing.”

“Rather than welcoming Gonzalez, the U.S. government is letting him languish in a bureaucratic black hole,” said the CEO and executive director of that rights organization, Elisa Massimino, who added that the “the State Department has long supported Gonzalez’ work as well as his effort to fight the very trumped-up criminal charges that may now prevent him from entering the United States.”

Massimino was quoted as saying in the press release that the Colombian activist first applied for his visa four months ago, but “his application is stalled in a seemingly endless bureaucratic back and forth between the State Department, the Department of Homeland Security and other government agencies.”

“This sends the wrong message to the Colombian authorities and undercuts U.S. policy to support Colombian human rights defenders who are under attack,” Massimino said.

Gonzalez is a student activist and regional coordinator of the Political Prisoners Solidarity Committee in Colombia, where he has worked to promote access to justice for prisoners and victims of Colombia’s decades-old armed conflict, whose main combatants are leftist rebels, rightist paramilitaries and government forces.

“Ironically, Gonzalez’s advocacy led to his own arrest,” HRF said. “He was detained for more than a year on the false charge of being a guerilla leader.”

According to the NGO, the Colombian activist now faces seven more years in prison if his appeal to Colombia’s Supreme Court is not successful.

Human Rights First also said the State Department and several U.N. bodies “have expressed concern that his prosecution is baseless and intended to discredit him and undermine his work.”

Among the U.N. bodies mentioned are the Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Defenders, the U.N. Working Group on Arbitrary Detention and the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in Colombia.

The NGO also said that at the beginning of 2009 “Gonzalez received support from the State Department to appeal the criminal investigation to Colombia’s Supreme Court.”

It noted that the State Department in 2007 included Gonzalez in its human rights country report “citing his baseless prosecution as being emblematic of ‘the government’s attempts to harass human rights defenders.’”

“Gonzalez’s case is just one example of a systematic problem in Colombia. Colombian activists from all walks of life are routinely subjected to trumped-up charges intended to stigmatize and silence them,” Massimino was quoted as saying.

Domestic and international human rights groups have drawn the ire of Colombian President Alvaro Uribe for accusing his hard-line government of being ]overly lenient with right-wing militias and failing to ensure that those responsible for killing union leaders – and others suspected of links to left-wing guerrillas – are brought to justice.

Gonzalez was chosen by Human Rights First to receive its 2009 Human Rights Award “in recognition of his courageous defense of human rights in Colombia.”

He is to be honored on Oct. 22 at an event hosted by U.S. newsman Tom Brokaw at Chelsea Piers in New York City. EFE

http://www.laht.com/article.asp?ArticleId=345456&CategoryId=12393

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I smell a Bush mole at 'Fatherland Security' or State. Phew! Stinks up the place!

I also want to note that the latest anti-Chavez gang in the Latin American Forum says that Colombians just LOVE Alvaro Uribe--an 80% approval rating! They especially LOVE this narco-thug when he jails student human rights workers for a year, calls them "terrorists" (like that Mitcheletti guy in Honduras), and is less than vigorous in prosecuting the murders of people who don't vote him. Well, that's democracy, I guess.

[Judi Lynn]

1. He's the only country's President of whom I've everh heard who is publicly

pointed out BY the death squads as someone they helped get votes during his elections, AND whose party was learned to have BRIBED senators to vote to push through the bill to allow him to stand for re-election, rather than allowing this duty, responsibility, right to go to the people for the final vote.

He CONTROLLED the vote, clearly, on getting back into office, and maintains ties to mass murdering, chain-saw torturing monsters who publicly have admitted ties to him reaching back a LONG time, and who admit murdering lefists in Colombia who are outspoken against his regime.

He's a real prince.

http://www.huerquenche.com.ar.nyud.net:8090/cheblog/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/uribe_asesino1.jpg http://www.aporrea.org.nyud.net:8090/imagenes/gente/uribeparaco.jpg http://4.bp.blogspot.com.nyud.net:8090/_eTL43edy_Nw/R5xKRi_vQCI/AAAAAAAAC2g/VsSohj3or-Y/s320/biografia%2Balvaro%2Buribe.jpg http://1.bp.blogspot.com.nyud.net:8090/_oPbb-jBKoXk/SRc83xbIAgI/AAAAAAAAG7M/Ot_YiMZ-eaQ/s400/renucie-uribe.jpg http://2.bp.blogspot.com.nyud.net:8090/_f_EHFh5U-4A/SNnGTdVB7BI/AAAAAAAAEUQ/UyF87Wlqx6o/s1600/Uribe.%2BCartel%2BMaldito%2BUrube%2Basesino..jpg http://images-srv.leonardo.it.nyud.net:8090/progettiweb/internazionalismo/blog/uribe_asesino_344.jpg http://www.kaosenlared.net.nyud.net:8090/img2/83/83439_uribe.muerte.jpg

[Judi Lynn]

2. Such fine BoRev. Thanks for the link! n/t

[ChangoLoa]

3. Caricature

"I also want to note that the latest anti-Chavez gang in the Latin American Forum says that Colombians just LOVE Alvaro Uribe--an 80% approval rating!"

I was talking about the validity of polls (published by EFerrari) that say 80% of approval for Uribe and the absurdity of your simplistic affirmation that when a leader is popular, his government is good. Do you know how massive was the approval for Mussolini and Hitler in their countries during the 30s?

That means you should recognize that your previous point was not right. That's it. It won't kill you and it won't kill your general arguments about Chavez. I even agree with some of them because I don't consider the full truth to be in one side or the other. Apparently you do.

I don't think there's an anti-Chavez gang and a pro-Chavez gringo gang. It's maybe a very infantile thing to say.

[Peace Patriot]

4. Mussolini and Hitler, huh? So now Venezuela's voters are nazis?

It's not just that Chavez has high approval ratings. Venezuela ALSO has transparent elections--transparent on their face, on the facts, as well as certified by all international election monitoring groups--and it also does NOT have rightwing death squads assassinating leftists, thousands of murdered union organizers, and hundreds of other people--human rights workers, community organizers, peasant farmers--DEAD; intimidation and threats against leftist rallies, leftist campaign activists and leftist candidates, whom Uribe has called "terrorists," and who live in fear for their lives, before, during and after elections, and a hundred other ways to rig public oplnion and rig the vote, that occur in Colombia. Venezuela is a free and open society, with a government that respects human and civil rights, and promotes human and civil rights. It is also a country with a pre-dominantly rightwing corporate news media, forever criticizing the Chavez government. There is no comparison to Hitler's Germany or Mussolini's Italy. That is absurd. There is also no comparison to Colombia, where you take your life in your hands if you advocate a leftist cause.

I think the poor majority in Colombia lives in fear, and are not free to express their true opinions. That means that polls and votes are screwed up. And that is not the case in Venezuela. I do not base my view of the Chavez government on opinion polls alone. I base it on ALL indicators. His government has a positive and beneficial program AND the people of Venezuela overwhelmingly approve of it, in every kind of opinion poll, AND they vote for it, in large numbers, with high participation rates, in transparent elections, AND there no repression. People are free to meet, organize, speak out, protest, petition their government, run for election and freely support candidates. These things are not true in Colombia, and were not true in Hitler's Germany or Mussolini's Italy. There is no indication whatsoever that Chavez is any kind of tyrant or that the people of Venezuela would approve of tyranny--or that the other leaders of the continent, who like and approve of Chavez, would like and approve of a tyrant!

I didn't say there is a pro-Chavez gang. I think there is an anti-Chavez gang, and others, who are very well-informed about Latin American history and current events, and who approve of Chavez, Correa, Morales, Lulu, Batchelet, Lugo, Vasquez and other leaders of the leftist movement in Latin America, and approve of the movement itself, which they (and I) see as the most positive and progressive development in Latin America's history. We see the matter in CONTEXT. We are not "pro-Chavez" or "pro-Lulu" so much as we are "pro-MOVEMENT"--pro-grass roots, pro-people. The anti-Chavez gang, on the other hand, is obsessed with Chavez, just as our corpo/fascist media is. That's all they see. Chavez, Chavez, Chavez! Chavez is a dictator. Chavez is a stupid clown. Chavez is this, Chavez is that. They can't and won't see that Chavez, a) works with other leaders, and b) is the product, not the creator, of the leftist democracy movement in Venezuela, which has inspired the region.

[Judi Lynn]

5. You may remember hearing accounts of paras intimidating people into voting for Uribe.

Widespread, from what I've heard.

Here's ONE article, from many available on this subject:

COLOMBIA: "Mark Him on the Ballot - The One Wearing Glasses"
By Constanza Vieira

BOGOTA, May 8 (IPS) - "With Uribe, we thought: this is the guy who is going to change the country," the 41-year-old fisherwoman told IPS.

That is why her fishing and farming village of 800 people in the central Colombian region of Magdalena Medio decided overwhelmingly to vote for current President Álvaro Uribe in the 2002 presidential elections, when he first ran.

The woman agreed to talk to IPS on the condition that she be asked neither her name (we will call her "L.") nor the name of her village.

The main city in the fertile region of Magdalena Medio is Barrancabermeja, an oil port on the Magdalena River, which runs across Colombia from south to north before emptying into the Caribbean Sea.

What convinced the villagers to vote for Uribe? "Because the region where we live is poor, very poor, it’s so difficult to find work, and when I heard him say ‘I am going to work for the poor, I am going to help them,’ I thought ‘this is a good president’."

When the rightwing president’s first four-year term came to an end in 2006, most of the villagers decided again to vote for him, reasoning that he just needed more time to reduce poverty.

The odd thing was that in both the 2002 and 2006 elections, despite the fact that the villagers had already decided to vote for Uribe, the far-right paramilitaries, who had committed a number of murders since 1998, when they appeared in the region that was previously dominated by the leftwing guerrillas, pressured the local residents to vote for Uribe anyway.

The paramilitaries did not kill people to pressure the rest to vote for Uribe, as they did in other communities, but merely used "threats," said L.

"If you don't vote for Uribe, you know what the consequences will be," the villagers were told ominously.

And on election day, they breathed down voters’ necks: "This is the candidate you’re going to vote for. You’re going to put your mark by this one. The one wearing glasses," they would say, pointing to Uribe’s photo on the ballot, L. recalled.

"One (of the paramilitaries) was on the precinct board, another one was standing next to the table, and another was a little way off, all of them watching to see if you voted for Uribe," she added, referring to the less than subtle way that the death squads commanded by drug traffickers and allies of the army ensured that L.’s village voted en masse for the current president in both elections.

"We form part of a municipality where there is corruption, from the mayor to town councillors, the police, the army and the justice officials - in a word, everyone. They are just one single corrupt mass. So what are you supposed to do?" said L., who added that the paramilitaries "control everything."

More:
http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=42290

[ChangoLoa]

6. Do you understand abstraction?

The idea was not about Chavez or about Mussolini and Hitler. It was rejecting your assumption "the proof that this leader is god for his people is that a majority of them voted and re voted for him". You can still talk about how good our democracy works, it will still have no rational connection with the assumption.

I do think you are pro-chavez, because the strongest critical statement you have ever made about him was that he was a strong leader with a strong hand, which is a half compliment almost. I have said some good things about him and some (many more) bad. I have posted stuff , chavista or non chavista, that didn't represent my point of view because I like to comment things I don't agree with too. I don't think Chavez is a tyrant, I think he has done his time. I notice that he is not doing a good government anymore because of many reasons that I have mentioned. When you talk about the leftist movement that produced him, you must understand that a part of it doesn't support Chavez anymore. That doesn't mean they have become right wing or ultras. So stop talking to me like if I was a fascist-oligarch ghost because it's low and wrong.

[Peace Patriot]

7. YOU brought up Hitler and Mussolini, not me.

"The idea was not about Chavez or about Mussolini and Hitler."--ChangoLoa

And there you go, putting them together again.

Where did I say that "this leader is god for his people"?

Please don't invent things and attribute them to me.

I haven't seen any change in Chavez's approval ratings, so apparently it doesn't matter that "a part of" the leftist movement that produced Chavez "doesn't support him anymore." He may have lost you and those who think like you, but he and his government have gained others.

You know, rather than arguing with me, perhaps your time would be better spent creating your own program of social justice and good government for Venezuela and convincing Venezuelans of its efficacy. I'd like to hear what your alternative to the Chavez government is, but better yet, talk to Venezuelan voters, who have the power to implement it, if it's beneficial.

[Judi Lynn]

8. Democracy Now video clip: US Government Stalls on Visa for Colombian Activist, Gabriel Gonzalez

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8opi-_nVDgY

US Government Stalls on Visa for Colombian Activist, Gabriel Gonzalez
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s344GNDfs4Y&NR=1

Thanks again, Peace Patriot, for the story. Hope to hear much more about this down the road.