Human Rights Watch director Jose Miguel Vivanco rejected Colombian
President Álvaro Uribe’s criticism on him, saying Colombia annually has more
human rights violations than happened during 16 years of
general Pinochet’s dictatorship in Chile.
Uribe had accused Vivanco of being a “defender” and “accomplice”of the FARC and denounced how “these international organizations generally tend to blame every human
rights violation on the public forces, but no one has lifted even a
finger defending the rights of soldiers and policemen like this
government has done.”
In an interview with Chile’s Radio Cooperativa, the HRW boss acknowleged the “massive” human rights violations committed by the FARC, “but there is a phenomenon of state officials, that now in Colombia more violations of human rights are committed every year as were occurred during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet in Chile.”
Vivanco called uribe’s reaction unworthy of a democratic leader.