Via Video Vox is a speech by Jack Layton at a demonstration for the victims of paramilitarism and state violence in Colombia. He begins speaking in French but switches to English at the 2min 40sec mark.

A new report on Colombia’s human rights reports that in many areas their record is either not improving or getting worse.

Colombia’s major human rights groups documented 955 extrajudicial killings allegedly committed by the Colombian armed forces between July 2002 and June 2007, compared with 577 over the previous five-year period, a 65 percent increase. The Colombian Commission of Jurists documents 13 cases in the first month of 2008. These cases, which are deliberate rather than cases of civilians caught in the crossfire, typically involve groups of soldiers detaining a civilian, who is seen by witnesses, and who later turns up dead, dressed in guerrilla clothing and claimed by the army as killed in combat.

Yet despite Colombia’s worsening human rights record Stephen Harper insists that it would be ridiculous not to sign a free trade agreement with them. Jack Layton is right. This trade deal needs to be discussed in Parliament by the representatives of the people.