Ljs: The LSE is wrong to give Uribe a platform

Friday, May 20, 2011

The LSE is wrong to give Uribe a platform

The LSE and London Business School risk legitimising state terror by inviting Colombia's former president to visit

One might have thought that the London School of Economics at least would have learned the wisdom of caution after getting its fingers burnt for other dubious guests. And yet the LSE and the London Business School are both hosting the visit of Colombia's notorious rightwing former president �lvaro Uribe V�lez on Monday.

Uribe was George Bush's favourite Latin American leader, seen as the model of a "war on terror" style stabilisation in the region, and he arrives in London days after the debate in Colombia's Congress over a proposed victim's law. Uribe's former defence minister Juan Manuel Santos is now president and he promised reparations for all victims of political violence, significantly including victims of state forces, as well as leftwing guerrillas and the rightwing paramilitary groups generally seen as state proxies. In his heated interventions, Uribe has objected to defining the confrontations as an "internal armed conflict", insisting on his preferred Bush-era formulation of a "war on terror". Uribe refuses to identify the guerrilla movements as anything other than "terrorists". Santos has been at pains to find common ground with his former boss ? neither would grant "belligerent status" to the guerrillas ? but the spat highlights how the government is trying to move on from Uribe's own unrepentantly belligerent presence.

With the smugness of a petty tyrant, Uribe claims that the successes of his eight years in government were based on the three pillars of security, social cohesion and investor trust. Is it the case? Let us examine Uribe's record by his own criteria.

Starting with security, the obvious question is "for whom"? Not for the 565 trade unionists, nor the much less reported 1,400 indigenous people assassinated during the Uribe years. While the guerrillas are not free from culpability, social organisations consider that state forces and their associated paramilitary groups are mainly responsible for this slaughter. Uribe supposedly demobilised the paramilitaries, yet all the evidence is that these groups have recreated themselves as a new generation of "Black Eagles" and "Rastrojos" drug traffickers. Three thousand paramilitary grave sites have been identified, as well as specific locations where they used ovens to cremate their victims' remains.

The mass grave at La Macarena containing 2,000 bodies was discovered accidentally after schoolchildren detected a sour taste in water from the local stream. The burial ground is within sight of an army camp with US advisers. The army initially said that the bodies were of guerrillas killed in combat, their normal cover story known as "false positives" where they dress the cadavers of civilians in combat fatigues. There were over 3,000 such extra-judicial killings by the official state "security forces" known of under Uribe.

Heads of the DAS secret police reporting to Uribe were caught mounting extensive phone tapping of journalists, politicians and high court judges, and supplying lists of trade unionists to be assassinated. Then there was "para-politica", one third of all Congress seats occupied by paramilitary front men. Uribe's family and close associates have been involved in a series of scandals, which in a functioning democracy would have obliged his resignation.

"Social cohesion"? Uribe's regime polarised the gap between what was long ago termed official Colombia and real Colombia. The forced displacement from rural areas of campesino farmers, indigenous and African-Colombians totalled 2.65 million people under Uribe. Almost all of them are still completely destitute as official agencies only recognise a third of these people. The desplazados have been left utterly abandoned by the state, except when the riot police descend at night to evict them again, from their cardboard shacks on the fringes of the cities.

"Investor trust"? Well one has to concede that Uribe's right on that one. Multinationals have made huge profits, especially in the extractive industries. In 2008 alone coal corporations made $1.7bn, and oil and gas corporations made $6.1bn profits. Under Uribe there was a more than nine-fold increase in profits flowing out of the country (it's not always clear where to, as investment flows are increasingly registered through the Cayman Islands and other offshore havens). Uribe's strategy was to encourage a huge land grab, mineral claims rocketed from 1.13m to 8.53m hectares. Mining on this scale will devastate the environment, especially because of water contamination in high mountain areas. Uribe leaves a sour taste indeed.

With its eyes on stalks at another El Dorado, big business may toast Uribe, but no amount of public relations gloss can cover up his strategy of state terror and misery for the majority of Colombians, as Amnesty International's latest annual report confirms. The ex-president craves international status to protect him from the inevitable, growing and justified demands for his trial. By offering Uribe their prestigious platform, the London Business School and LSE are legitimising state terror and giving impunity to a criminal. Shame on them.

Andy Higginbottom

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