Peru: 1964 stadium disaster

As the Hillsborough disaster is in the news again in the UK due to the ongoing inquest, the BBC has run a feature on Peru's 1964 stadium which, it is rightly pointed out, is little known globally. I had actually never heard of it. This is a very interesting, though sad, article:

Lima 1964: The world's worst stadium disaster (BBC)

See also this piece from the Guardian archives:
From the archive, 26 May 1964: Hundreds dead in stampede at football match

Chile: Pinochet officials made secret visits to UK

Declassified documents in Britain have revealed how high-ranking dictatorship officials from Chile came to the UK in the 1980s.

General Fernando Matthei, commander of the Chilean Air Force, for example, visited London in 1982, ostensibly to "visit friends" and "buy a few books from Foyles" (the famous bookshop). However, he also met representatives of the defence ministry. A confidential memo from the Foreign Office noted that Matthei was a "controversial figure" and that his visit must be kept private so that meetings did not attract criticism from human rights groups.

Matthei's visit was apparently not the first of a Chilean official to Britain, the documents show; in fact some of these took place not just under Thatcher, but also under the Labour government of the late 1970s.


Papeles secretos Chile-Reino Unido: los generales fantasma de Pinochet en Londres (BBC Mundo)
Pinochet generals and ministers incognito and “non official” visits to UK (Mercopress; this is a translation of the BBC Mundo piece)

News round-up: While I was off holidaying

Argentina
Life sentence for Argentine civilian minister who worked with the military dictatorship (Mercopress)
Timerman meets with Jewish community to report on talks with Iran (Mercopress)
A Year of Progress in Argentina’s Human Rights Trials (IPS)
Surprise Visits to Prisons in Argentina to Prevent Torture (IPS)

Argentina/UK
"If I may be very frank and rather rude, you had to keep the ball in the air with the Argentines. That was the object. We did not have any cards in our hands."
Britain's approach on the Falklands: neglect and hope for the best (Guardian)
Falklands invasion 'surprised' Thatcher (BBC)


Chile
Indigenous Chileans Still Fighting Pinochet-Era Highway Project (IPS)
Chile journalist denounces military rule research theft (BBC)
Thieves steal laptop of Chilean journalist investigating secret services during Pinochet dictatorship (Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas)
More cases come to light of journalists intimidated for investigating the military dictatorship in Chile (Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas)

Peru
Peru Puts Shining Path Leader on Trial (The Pan-American Post)

Remembering the Falklands/Malvinas

On this day 30 years ago, Argentina invaded the Falklands Islands. The news is full of this so I want to concentrate on a few memory issues by showing the respective memorials and taking a brief look at media coverage.

The British official commemoration took place at the national memorial arboretum in Staffordshire. I've just seen it for the first time on the BBC news and to be honest I thought it looked a bit sterile, but it does receive 300,000 visitors a year apparently.

"I think it shows an ongoing need for remembrance," said the Royal British Legion spokesman Andrew Baud. "It used to be a place for veterans but now it is very much a place for families."

Falklands widows remember loved ones on war's 30th anniversary (Guardian)


In Argentina, president Cristina Fernandez is at the memorial in Ushuaia:


Cristina Fernandez leads main Malvinas war commemoration in Ushuaia (Mercopress)

As for the Argentine press, they fall into their accustomed roles. La Nacion goes for a very formal image and a nationalistic headlines about the "inflexible kelpers".









Meanwhile Pagina/12 focuses on the personal testimony of former soldiers - and they make tough reading. The desperate story of Silvio Katz, tortured by his anti-semitic superior officer, is just as horrifying as any other experience of the dirty war.








Meanwhile, Clarin squeezes the memory issue onto the bottom right of its cover.










Images: National memorial arboretum by NMAguide on Wikipedia, Malvinas memorial in Ushuaia by Miguel A. Monjas.

HRW Film Festival, London 23 March - 1 April

If you're in the London area around the end of March, you may be interested in the Human Rights Watch Film Festival. Latin American related films are:

Familia (2010, dir. Mikael Wiström and Alberto Herskovits, focusing on Peru/Spain)

Granito (2011, dir. Pamela Yates, focusing on Guatemala)

Impunity (2010, dir. Juan José Lozano and Hollman Morris, focusing on Colombia)

When the Mountains Tremble (1983, dir. Pamela Yates, focusing on Guatemala)

Argentina: Honour for Journalist Robert Cox

British journalist Robert Cox, who worked for the Buenos Aires Herald, has - somewhat belatedly - received honorary citizenship of the Argentine capital in recognition of his brave work during the dictatorship.

Under military rule, the Buenos Aires Herald was one of the very few examples of independent journalism which reported the truth about the abductions, disappearances and extrajudicial executions which became features of everyday life. Media boss Jorge Fontevecchia, for one, credits Cox's reporting with saving his life after he was abducted and taken to El Olimpo. The writers of the English-language daily faced threats and Cox, fearing for the safety of his children, was eventually driven into exile.

Modestly, he claims that he was "just doing his job", but publishing lists of the dead in the early months of the dictatorship really was a bit more than that and he deserves this public acknowledgement.

Heroic British journalist Robert Cox honoured in Argentina (Guardian)

(For more, see this book by Robert Cox's son David, and this one by fellow Buenos Aires Herald journalist, Andrew Graham-Yooll)

Lat Am Events in the UK

The Peru Support Group is holding its annual conference in Oxford next week. See flyer here (pdf).

The London Latin American Film Festival is also currently underway - apologies for late notice. There looks to be many excellent films being shown. Of interest to this blog would be the documentaries Victims of Democracy (dir. Stella Jacobs), The Loss/La Perdida (dir. Javier Angulo & Enrique Gabriel) and Our Disappeared (dir. Juan Mandelbaum).

Peru: Monterrico Metals in the High Court

It seems to be only the Guardian reporting on this so far, but their articles are good and include the video embedded above.*

As regular readers will recall, this is about the mine at Majaz from where photographic evidence of torture emerged last year.

Two protesters were shot in their legs, one man lost an eye to gunshot wounds and a farmer called Melanio Garcia, 41, suffered a fatal gunshot. Photographs allegedly taken by a Monterrico supervisor, which the protesters say support their allegations of abuse by the police, show Garcia lying on the ground, apparently alive but badly injured. Several other pictures taken 30 hours later, according to their time and date stamps, clearly show Garcia to be dead.

Now the mining company is being sued for damages in London.

Richard Meeran, of Leigh Day, the London law firm bringing the high court case, said the evidence of torture was incontrovertible and that it was inconceivable the company could have been unaware of what was happening on its site.

"The company must have been aware of the inhuman treatment of the victims during their three-day ordeal at the Rio Blanco mine," he said. "Yet there is no evidence of it taking any steps to prevent the harm. On the contrary, it would appear that the company was working in cahoots with the police. It is vital that multinationals are held legally accountable for human rights violations occurring at their overseas operations."

The mining firm is denying the allegations.

Abuse claims against Peru police guarding British firm Monterrico (Guardian)

British mining company faces damages after allegations of torture in Peru (Guardian)

I'll try to keep updating on this.

*Richard, was it you who uploaded the video on Youtube? Thanks!

Argentina/UK: Malvinas Memorial Service

For the past two Saturdays, the families of Argentine soldiers killed during the Falklands/Malvinas conflict have travelled to the Islands to witness the inauguration of a memorial there.

This weekend, the group brought with it a statue of the Virgin of Lujan, Argentina's patron saint, to form part of the memorial.

[The statue] completed the assembling of the cenotaph that stands as two stretched out arms made of blocks, embracing the 237 graves and crosses, and with engraved plaques with just the names (alphabetic order and no service or rank) of all 649 Argentines that went down during the South Atlantic conflict.

“Our Lady of Lujan, Mother of God will watch over the eternal repose of our brothers who fought the good fight for independence and national sovereignty” reads the inscription at the foot of the statue.

Memorial inauguration marks positive chapter in Falklands-Argentina relations (Mercopress)

Malvinas Families with statue of Virgin of Lujan leave for the Falklands (Mercopress)*

Malvinas victims' families hold ceremony in Darwin (Buenos Aires Herald)

* The image above is from this article and shows an exhibition of Malvinas crosses in the Plaza de Mayo, Buenos Aires.

Chile/UK: Pinochet's Lost Millions

A good, if not particularly surprising, article in the Independent today about the UK connection to Pinochet's finances.

Two-and-a-half years after the death of General Augusto Pinochet, a report by the Chilean police task force charged with investigating money-laundering has claimed that British authorities and the financial sector were complicit in hiding his massive ill-gotten fortune.
[...]
Professor David Sugarman, the director of the Centre for Law and Society at Lancaster University and author of a forthcoming book on Pinochet's arrest and imprisonment, said yesterday: "It looks like some of the banks holding Pinochet's funds did not comply with the letter and spirit of their duties of disclosure, due diligence and the legal requirement to report suspicious circumstances."
[...]
Simple ruses were used to hide the fact that the banks were dealing with the Pinochet family fortune. Accounts were opened which were designated by any combination of his Christian names or initials – Augusto Jose Ramon – and the surnames of his father, Pinochet, or his mother, Ugarte, and those of his wife, Lucia Hiriart Rodriguez. Some bankers preferred to call him Joe (from Jose), or APU (Augusto Pinochet Ugarte). The practice made the tracing of information about him as difficult as, say, looking for Griff Rhys Jones under "Jones" or Iain Duncan Smith under "Smith". Various accounts were labelled merely "L Hiriart and/or AP Ugarte".

Pinochet's lost millions: the UK connection (The Independent)

Peru/UK: Monterrico Metals Assets Frozen

Remember the torture that took place at Majaz in Peru? And the lamentable failure of the Peruvian justice system to bring those reponsible to book?

The story rumbles on.

On June 2nd, London law firm Leigh Day served an injunction against Monterrico Metals to freeze their assets pending a further hearing on 16 June (Tuesday). Here is the information provided by the lawyers:

1. Proceedings have been commenced in the English High Court by Leigh Day & Co on behalf of 13 Peruvians seeking compensation from British mining company Monterrico Metals PLC ("Monterrico") and its Peruvian subsidiary Rio Blanco Copper SA.

2. The claimants were tortured by the police following their protest at the Rio Blanco Mine in August 2005, situated in a remote area of Northern Peru, close to the border with Equador. All the claimants, including two women, were detained for three days, during which time they were handcuffed, blind-folded and beaten by the police. The detention and torture occurred at the Rio Blanco Mine site and also allegedly involved guards of the mine security company, Forza. As a result, the claimants suffered long term physical and psychological injuries and financial losses.

3. The Claimants allege that the Defendants must have known of the conditions in which they were being detained, but failed to take steps to prevent or end their ordeal. In March this year, Peruvian prosecutors accused the police of torture but cleared the mining company and Forza of wrongdoing. Peruvian human rights groups denounced the findings as incomplete.

4. Monterrico's principal asset is the Rio Blanco Mine and Monterrico had a close involvement in the operations at the Mine. In terms of ownership: Monterrico owns all the shares in Copper Corp Limited (Cayman Islands); Copper Corp Limited owns all the shares in Rio Blanco Copper Limited (Cayman Islands); Rio Blanco Copper Limited owns 99.98% shares in Rio Blanco Copper SA (Peru). Rio Blanco Copper SA owns the Mine.

5. On 3 June 2009, Monterrico de-listed from the AIM UK stock exchange. Because it had also relocated its corporate headquarters to Hong Kong, we were concerned that Monterrico might be planning to dispose of its assets and transfer them to Hong Kong. If that happened, then the claimants might find that their UK legal action was futile. (NB it is not alleged that the purpose of any such intention to dispose of assets was related to these claims).

6. On 2 June 2009, a freezing injunction was granted by Mr Justice Burton of the High Court. This prohibited Monterrico from disposing of assets to an extent that would leave Monterrico with less than �7.2 million.

7. The injunction application was made in the absence of Monterrico. However Monterrico and its directors have been served with the court order. A further hearing has been fixed on 16 June, when Monterrico will have an opportunity to contest the freezing injunction.

Contact: Richard Meeran, Partner, Leigh Day & Co, 020 7650 1365, 0750 7798 358

That decision was upheld during the second hearing, leaving open the possibility that the torture victims, and the family of the man who died, may be able to receive compensation through the British courts.

Juez britanico ordena congelamiento por $12 millones contra Monterrico Metals (CNDDHH)

British Mining Company Faces Injunction over Torture Allegations in Peru (Reuters AlertNet)

Cortes britanicos ordenan congelamiento de cuenta contra Monterrico Metals (La Republica)

British Court Orders Majaz Mining Company's Assets to Be Frozen for Tortures in Peru (Living in Peru)

Meeting on Peruvian Violence in London

From a Peru Support Group mail:

The All-Party Parliamentary Group for Peru, the Peru Support Group & CAFOD are jointly organising a public meeting on:

‘The Recent Violence in the Peruvian Amazon’

Venue: Committee Room 9, Palace of Westminster

Please allow about 20 minutes to pass through security checks. Members of the public enter via the Visitors’ Entrance, next to St Stephens Entrance, the Palace of Westminster.

Date: Monday 22nd June 2009

Time: 7.30pm

Please e-mail the Peru Support Group to confirm your attendance (info@perusupportgroup.org.uk).

Speakers will include the only international witnesses to the events, together with other participants who will provide a political and legal analysis of the situation.

At the beginning of June, Peru witnessed probably the worse loss of life since the end of the country’s internal armed conflict in 2000, following protests by indigenous groups against a series of legislative decrees, collectively known as the 'Law of the Jungle' (Ley de la Selva). It has been reported that some 50 people (and the estimates continue to rise), both indigenous protestors and members of security forces, have died.

Indigenous groups, principally in the Amazon region of the country, have been protesting since April 9^th against a legislative package which was approved last year by President Alan García to make Peruvian law conform to the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with the United States.

The current reaction of President Alan García’s government reflects its ongoing determination to regenerate the Peruvian economy by promoting private, particularly foreign investment, with an emphasis on extractives industries.

Colombia: Is the Net Closing on 'False Positive' Perpetrators?

In the Guardian this morning, a letter from 5 British MPs supporting the decision to withdraw military aid from Colombia, but concerned that the government

continues to supply secret and unconditional counter-narcotics assistance to unspecified units of the Colombian army.

Meawhile, the excellent Colombia Reports indicates that 67 members have been convicted of so-called 'false positive' killings - murdered civilians and dressing them up to look like guerrillas. The BBC has also picked up on the story, noting that there has been a number of arrests.

It's pleasing to see proceedings being brought against these criminals, although I fear that it's quite easy to start this many trials because there are simply so many perpetrators out there. One of them, for example, has apparently admitted to killing over 150 people. Never fear, though, Uribe wants to ensure that they all get a fair trial.

Colombia: Britain Cuts Military Aid

Last week, the British government announced sent a small memo to parliament saying that its military assistance programme to Colombia would end following repeated concerns about human rights abuses committed by the Colombian military (see this post and this article for a small selection of examples).

UK Ends Bilateral Military Aid to Colombia (Guardian)

Boz noted that

The projects included a landmine clearance programme that had been under way since 2000 and a human rights training project that began in 2006.

and commented

The UK is cutting assistance to programs that would save civilian lives and prevent future human rights abuses. The government says that none of this money was going to units accused in the scandals, but they're cutting it anyway.

If the UK wants to make a statement about human rights, they should target their cuts more carefully towards the training and equipping of the units actually involved in the scandals and continue the funding of military programs that actually help fulfill human rights objectives. Otherwise, this is just a budget cut wrapped up in some pretty language.

These seemed like legitimate concerns, so I tried to find out more. I turned to Justice for Colombia's report [pdf] on UK Military Aid to Colombia, written before the end of the aid, and note the following:

The UK plays a role in the conflict by providing assistance to the Colombian military. Very little detail about this assistance has been made public, though the UK is reportedly the second largest donor of military aid to Colombia after the US. (p.4)

- Why the secrecy when it's UK taxpayers' money being used?

Troublingly, there are no conditions of any sort attached to UK military assistance to Colombia.
This gives the regime no incentive to improve their behaviour as they know that irrespective of their performance, the UK aid will keep flowing. (p.6)

HMG [Her Majesty's Government] says that some of the assistance provided to the Colombian military is for human rights training. However, HMG has refused to reveal what proportion of UK assistance is for this type of training nor to which units/personnel of the Colombian Army it is provided.
This human rights training does not appear to be working as abuses perpetrated by soldiers, including cases of torture and extra-judicial executions of civilians not only continue, but are increasing.... Indeed, the only Colombian Army unit that HMG has confirmed receives UK assistance in this area has, in recent years, been implicated in grave violations... The fact that HMG refuses to disclose exactly who receives the human rights training also makes any independent monitoring of its impact or effectiveness impossible. (p.7)

So much for the human rights training. There appears to be no clear evidence on what it is, how much it is, or how successful it is, and financial aid does go to units implicated in atrocities.
And as for the de-mining,

HMG states that approximately 8% of their military assistance to Colombia is focussed on humanitarian de-mining work. There is concern that UK assistance in this area is not aimed at clearing mines from areas where civilians are at risk (humanitarian de-mining) but rather for offensive operations (i.e. rapid clearance of mines during pursuits).
Evidence for this is provided by the ‘Colombian Campaign Against Mines’ which lists several countries, but not the UK, as assisting with humanitarian de-mining; and the ‘International Campaign to Ban Landmines’ (ICBL) which lists countries such as Canada, the USA, Germany, Italy, Spain, Norway and Switzerland as assisting with humanitarian de-mining, but makes no mention of any UK assistance.(p.8)

So, if the £190,000 per annum sum is correct, the de-mining programme is the equivalent of a paltry £15,200 per year - and in any case, civilians may not benefit from it. I am unconvinced that the funding would save lives or prevent abuses - and very possibly, quite the opposite.

On balance then, I support the stance of the British government, since the money - while not a particularly large amount - would have been taken as tacit support for Uribe's policies. Besides that, there is a lack of transparency in revealing what the money was actually used for. Ideally, however, I back Boz's call for better targeted funding rather than none at all - but it seems to me that the existing funding programme was wholly inadequate and should be replaced rather than upheld.

My analysis here seeks to go somewhat beyond the Guardian article, but it still isn't ideal since I haven't found too much information outside Justice for Colombia. If readers have improved sources, they are very welcome to add links in the comments section or email me and, if appropriate, I'll update the post.

Peru: Majaz and Richard Ralph

For anyone following the Majaz torture story: see also this piece by blog ten percent on the involvement of British ambassador Richard Ralph.

So here’s the rub, a UK ambassador in Peru at a time when a UK mining company in conjunction with the police is behind the kidnap and torture of peaceful protesters with a legitimate grievances against an illegal mining project. Who then goes on to head this mining company. Is it reasonably possible he was ignorant of their crimes? Of the racist component? Of their laughable attempt to call protesters terrorists even as they tortured them? At the time he was an ambassador did he uphold any commitment to human rights and look to investigate this British company and Peruvian police abuses? Surely a UK ambassador to Peru who then goes on to become chair of a UK company abusing people in Peru should do due diligence to see what the company did in Peru? Are we to believe he knew nothing of what went on in Majaz? As his history shows his personal ethics are… a tad shaky shall we say, the question is- Were human right abuses swept under the rug on behalf of a UK mining company and the host government by an ambassador who then went on to chair that company?

I should have learnt better by now, but I keep falling into the trap of thinking that people representing countries abroad should be absolutely above board in all their dealings, so as not to reflect badly on their position and, by extension, their nation. If only, eh.