RSS - PostsJanuary 3, 2022
Argentina
- Ailin Bullentini, “Sergio Triaca, el Hijo de un Juez Militar Que Vio de Chico a las Victimas de los Vuelos de la Muerte y Hoy Es Testigo en la Causa” (Pagina12 (Argentina), January 3, 2022).
Mr. Triaca was 14 when his parents took him to work in Buenos Aires’s Campo de Mayo base, which the military dictatorship at the time used as a detention center. There, he’s certain that he heard discussion of people being sentenced to death, thrown from planes.
Colombia
- Camilo Pardo Quintero, “Ni Con Proteccion de la Jep Cesan Amenazas a Responsable de “Falsos Positivos”” (El Espectador (Colombia), January 3, 2022).
A soldier giving evidence about military “false positive” killings received serious threats during three months that he lacked a security detail.
- “Crisis Humanitaria en Arauca por Enfrentamientos Entre el Eln y Disidencias” (El Espectador (Colombia), January 3, 2022).
Initial reports point to a high death toll and thousands displaced by fighting between ex-FARC dissidents and the ELN in Arauca. The ELN is dominant in this zone, having fended off the FARC in a bloody conflict in the 2000s. There had been an uneasy peace with growing dissident groups. That appears to be over.
Mexico
- Leonardo Lugo, “En Mexico, 25 Activistas Pro Derechos Humanos y Ecologistas Fueron Asesinados en 2021” (Milenio (Mexico), January 3, 2022).
Mexico saw 25 human rights and environmental defenders killed last year. Far less than Colombia but still extremely serious and among the worst numbers in the world.
- “Madre Pide a Caro Quintero y a los Salazar Que la Dejen Buscar a Sus Hijos” (EFE, SinEmbargo (Mexico), January 3, 2022).
A tragic phenomenon in Mexico are groups of parents of disappeared people who band together to go on searches for their loved ones, encountering numerous mass grave sites and getting almost no support from the government. A mother in Sonora is appealing publicly to local organized-crime leaders to let them search. She says they just want closure about their loved ones, they’re not trying to name the victimizers. That victims should even have to make a statement like that shows the depth of Mexico’s security and rule-of-law deterioration.