For Immediate Release
July 12, 2001
U.S. Military Aid Implicated in Human Rights Abuses
U.S. anti-drug money spent on Latin America has been funneled through corrupt military, paramilitary and intelligence organizations and ends up violating basic human rights, a new ICIJ investigation shows.
The investigation by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists found that in three of the Latin American countries examined, U.S. aid was implicated in civilian human rights abuses. Other findings:
The $1.3 billion Plan Colombia aid package represents the largest American commitment in a guerrilla war since Vietnam. With the drug war’s focus on leftist guerrillas, successive U.S. administrations have tolerated the Colombian military’s ties to right-wing forces, even though they, too, are steeped in drugs.
In Peru, the CIA paid at least $10 million to spymaster Vladimiro Montesinos, who also diverted U.S. high-tech surveillance equipment to spy on political opponents. Montesinos betrayed his American benefactors by arming Colombia’s FARC guerrillas.
The ICIJ investigation reveals human rights abuses by members of the elite Mexican special forces unit known as GAFE, many of whose troops are trained by the United States. As in South America, U.S. assistance to the Mexican military ends up as dual use - to counter drugs and to deal with internal security matters
U.S. officials are particularly concerned about regional stability in Latin America, which ships more oil to the United States than the Persian Gulf. Major U.S. corporations with Latin American interests spent more than $92 million lobbying the U.S. Congress in the latter half of the 1990s, in part to affect U.S. policy in the region. |
