UK ends bilateral military aid to Colombia

UK ends bilateral military aid to Colombia


Sibylla Brodzinsky in Bogotá
www.guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 29 April 2009


Britain has quietly ended nearly a decade of military aid to Colombia's armed forces after accusations of gross violations of human rights, including the murder of civilians who were shot and reported as guerrillas killed in combat.

The Colombian government was "extremely surprised" by the decision to cut off the bilateral cooperation programmes, the deputy defence minister, Sergio Jaramillo, told the Guardian.

The British foreign secretary, David Miliband, announced the move in a written statement to the House of Commons last month, stating that the government "shares the concern … that there are officers and soldiers of the Colombian armed forces who have been involved in, or allowed, abuses".

"Our bilateral human rights projects with the Colombian ministry of defence will cease," the statement said.

The projects included a landmine clearance programme that had been under way since 2000 and a human rights training project that began in 2006. Together, funding for the programmes totalled £190,000 a year.

While the financial value is relatively small, the termination of British military aid has symbolic significance for Colombia. Jaramillo called the decision a "severe blow" to the armed forces from a "great ally".

"No other European country has worked as closely with the army as the United Kingdom," he said.

Colombia's military had long been accused of colluding with illegal rightwing paramilitary groups. Investigators are looking into 1,296 cases since 2002 of reported executions of civilians by army soldiers who dressed the victims in rebel uniforms and planted weapons on them to present them as legitimate guerrilla casualties.

The UN high commissioner for human rights described the practice as "widespread and systematic". Many of the cases came to light after a public outcry over the fate of 11 men missing from a poor suburb of Bogotá who were then reported as combat deaths thousands of miles away, days after their disappearance. Twenty-seven officers, including three generals were discharged over those killings.