VivirLatino

The United States isn’t about to tell people exactly how it’s spending Plan Colombia money, money that is said to fight against drug traffickers and terrorists in Alvaro Uribe’s country. There is some concern that brand spanking new military units are targeting civilian areas and violating human rights.

The Colombian Army’s brand-new 23rd Mobile Brigade, pursuing National Liberation Army (ELN) rebels, pounded a school and nearby home on Monday, February 2 with bombs, rockets and machine-gun fire in the hamlet of La Esperanza, in San Calixto municipality, Norte de Santander department.

The Nueva Esperanza school was hit dozens of times, with many bullets falling inside classrooms that, thankfully, were empty of students, owing to a lack of teachers. One young civilian resident was hurt, and bullets also fell on a house nearby, a mortar striking within thirty feet. The soldiers then camped in the homes and on the land of La Esperanza residents – a violation of International Humanitarian Law and Protocol II of the Geneva Conventions, as is the targeting and destruction of a civilian institution. (Article 48 of Geneva Conventions Protocol I requires the armed forces to only carry out operations against military targets, not civilian establishments.) They also stole personal property of local leaders, copies of parents’ identity documents and over $1,000 US in school and community property.

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