Rights groups demand US hold Colombia accountable

Defending human rights in Colombia–never an especially safe endeavor–has become even more dangerous lately, several NGO leaders and Colombian human rights defenders testified on Capitol Hill Tuesday. Human rights defenders in the country "have noticed a surge in threats against defenders and their family members, as well as a number of physical attacks and assassinations, and unexplained break-ins of defenders' offices", said Kelly Nichols, executive director of the U.S. Office on Colombia, an NGO that has helped organize a campaign to promote recommendations for how to protect Colombian human rights defenders. "Colombian activists are subject to the full gamut of human rights violations," said Andrew Hudson of Human Rights First, "including torture, threats, misuse of state intelligence, systematic stigmatization, unfounded criminal proceedings and impunity for violations of defenders." The testimony came before the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission and follows on the heels of a scandal that has unfolded over the past year in Colombia in which recordings of the wire-tapped conversations of people supposed to be critics of President Álvaro Uribe–including human rights defenders, politicians, journalists and even Supreme Court justices–have become public. The majority of blame for the eavesdropping activities, illegal under Colombian law, has been directed at the Department of Administrative Services, or DAS, an intelligence agency under the president's authority.