'Uribe has made it worse'

2003-09-09 08:23

Bogota - A report presented on Monday by an umbrella group of 80 NGOs accused President Alvaro Uribe of taking an "authoritarian" stand in his first year in office that has only aggravated Colombia's bloody conflict.

The 172-page, 17 chapter report states that since Uribe took power in August 2002, human rights violations have risen amid a worsening of Colombia's social situation. It also harshly criticised the president's economic policies.

A summary of the report by the Colombian Platform for Human Rights, Democracy and Development states that the government's social policy "aims for social control and to implant terror in the population."

It claims that Colombia's current security policy is characterised by "indiscriminate military operations" along with deployment of a broad base of forces, major raids that mainly target the civilian population, and impunity.

The conflict has grown due to the government's move to militarise daily life, to close space to Colombia's political and social opposition, and to negotiate a peace deal with extreme right paramilitaries, the document adds.

Uribe refuted the claims on Monday, accusing some of Colombia's human rights groups of serving terrorism.

At a military ceremony, Uribe said there existed a group of non-government organizations (NGOs) that he defined as "politicking at the service of terrorism."

And he said the NGOs he was pointing to "cowardly shield themselves behind the human rights banner to try to give back to terrorism the space that public forces and citizens have wrested from them."

- AFP