I guess it’s okay if conservatives do it.
In a news conference Wednesday morning, human rights and labour groups released an open letter to Harper asking him to raise a number of humanitarian issues when he meets with Colombian President Alvaro Uribe and Haitian President Rene Preval.
That would be this Albaro Uribe.
In his five years as president, Alvaro Uribe has repeatedly denied accusations that he’s been cozy with Colombia’s murderous right-wing militias, whose thousands of victims include suspected rebel sympathizers and union activists.
Yet newly uncovered video of his 2001 campaign shows him shaking hands with a militia leader who was arrested only weeks later on suspicion of involvement in multiple murders, and is now a fugitive with a price on his head. It’s the latest headache for the law-and-order president, who has seen one ally after another jailed for allegedly colluding with the outlawed militias…
Cue the outrage from the Blogging Whories on July twelfth, two thousand and never.
Update: By the way, Colombia has the worst human rights record in the western hemisphere.
Today, Colombia presents the worst human rights and humanitarian crisis in the Western Hemisphere. For four decades, ordinary Colombians have borne the brunt of a brutal conflict involving leftwing guerrillas, rightwing paramilitary groups, and the Colombian military. Trade unionists, human rights defenders, journalists, and other vulnerable groups continue to be targeted by armed groups for their legitimate work. Thousands of child combatants fight in the ranks of guerrillas and paramilitary groups. At over 2 million, Colombia’s population of internally displaced persons is larger than Iraq’s. Extrajudicial executions of civilians by the Colombian military are on the rise.
Colombia is currently the murder capital of the world for trade unionists. Those who are not killed are often threatened, attacked or kidnapped. The government says 58 unionists were murdered in Colombia in 2006, up from 40 the year before. Labor rights groups report even higher totals: 72 killed in 2006 up from 70 the year before. These killings are not random casualties of Colombia’s conflict, as the Colombian government claims. Trade unionists are especially targeted when exercising their rights to organize and bargain collectively. Often, their killers have been paramilitaries.
The overwhelming majority of human rights abuses in Colombia are never fully investigated, prosecuted or punished.
But hey, Chavez…blah, blah, blah.
“It’s an exploratory trip to what might be called “Mister Harper’s new neighbourhood.”
“We’re doing it because we believe it’s our neighbourhood,” a senior Canadian official said yesterday, echoing Mr. Harper’s statement last month at the Group of Eight meeting in Germany.
That neighbourhood is increasingly dominated politically by left-leaning governments that are less than enamoured with traditional U.S. economic dominance of the region. That creates an opening for Canada to play a more important role, said Michael Shifter, policy vice-president at the Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington-based think tank, who recently visited Ottawa.
“What Canada can offer is that it’s close to the United States but is not the United States,” he said. “The United States has so much baggage in Latin America, but Canada escapes that. This is a hemisphere where there is a lot of mistrust and a lot of disarray, and the U.S. is very handicapped to do anything about it.”
~Globe and Mail
In other words, Canada will carry the can for the US, in the vain hope that anyone will be fooled into thinking we have an foreign policy that is independent from the US and so can be trusted.
This is what he meant when refused (more) aid to Darfur. That he was keeping to things nearer to his own neighbourhood…a terrible misquote I know, but something similar right after the G8.
So “Mr, Harper’s New Neighbourhood” is Columbia and other Latin American countries and his position is America’s whore while he’s there.
Oh god, what is this going to cost us? Canada will not hold her head up high for a long long time.