Final day and we are due to start with a meeting after breakfast with President Uribe. At short notice President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela flies in for a meeting with President Uribe to discuss amongst other things whether he can assist in the humanitarian exchange proposal that we had discussed with family victims the night before. Our proposed meeting with President Uribe does not therefore go ahead. We’re not too disappointed at this as we didn’t expect to hear anything different from what his Vice President had said the other night. Incidentally, we hear that the Vice President has gone on television to say that he had had a meeting with a British delegation and that he was fed up of foreigners coming to his country and criticising the way the country was governed.
We go to the Defence Ministry were we have a meeting with the Minister Juan Manuel Santos, a cousin of the Vice President and whose father was the editor of the powerful “El Tiempo” newspaper for over fifty years. Also in attendance are national Police Commander General Oscar Naranjo and the Commander of the Armed Forces, General Freddy Padilla de Leon. Wouldn’t fancy meeting him in a dark alley late at night!
Mr. Santos, who speaks excellent English, tells us that he lived in London for ten years, is a graduate of the LSE and has many British friends including Tony Blair and John Major. We asked for his assessment of the UK military aid that Colombia receives and are told that they receive little but valuable help from the British government, mainly in respect of the war on drugs which, he says, the UK has accepted co-responsibility for. We ask about the well-documented links between the military and the para-militaries and receive no denial of those links but that there has never been a policy of the armed forces working with the para-militaries. When any officer is discovered to have broken the law in this respect he is subjected to civil not military justice. We raise the issue of the three young farmers captured, kidnapped and killed by the High Mountain Brigade in Sumapaz and the mother killed in Agua Blanca by the police. His response is that there are “rotten apples” in the police forces as there are everywhere but he promises to look specifically into those two cases and to respond via JFC.
With regard to the humanitarian exchange proposal he is less convinced that it will take place, taking the view that the FARC do not want such an agreement. Another consummate politician, very slick at deflecting questions but, one detects, another member of the ruling classes with little incentive to effect real change.
In the afternoon we meet with the British Ambassador, Haydon Warren-Gash at his office. We ask specifically why the Ambassador is silent in condemnation of the atrocities being committed in the country. He says that there are too many atrocities to condemn every one but that the Embassy prefers to concentrate its main efforts for change at national level. On the whole, he says, that he does not put out bilateral condemnation of individual atrocities but that he prefers to workers behind the scenes with others because he finds that more effective.
A fairly heated discussion ensues and my overall impression was that Britain would continue with its policy of being much less critical of what’s going on in the country than others but he did assure us that he would continue to push the issue of human rights in Colombia.
In the evening we had dinner and salsa dancing with a number of people with whom we have met during the week and say our goodbyes. We are due to leave the hotel the following morning for a long journey home via Caracas and Madrid.
Footnote:
Arrive at Heathrow after journey of some twenty odd hours only to discover that my suitcase is left behind in Caracas. Great that’s all I need!
This is the end of this blog, but I shall take a couple of weeks to consider what I have seen and heard and post a follow-up on my thoughts.
