Colombian police cause deaths of 20 protesters

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Written by northsouth

Category: Americas

Published: 09 June 2021

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By ASTRID SUÁREZ

BUCARAMANGA, Colombia — An international monitoring group on Wednesday accused police officers in Colombia of responsibility for the deaths of 20 people and other violent actions against protesters during recent unrest, including sexual abuse, beatings and arbitrary detentions.

Human Rights Watch in a report said it has “credible evidence” indicating police killed at least 16 protesters or bystanders with “live ammunition fired from firearms,” while three other people died when police used nonlethal weapons. The report said another person died after being beaten repeatedly.

“These brutal abuses are not isolated incidents by rogue officers, but rather the result of systemic shortcomings of the Colombian police,” José Miguel Vivanco, the group’s director for the Americas, said in a statement. “Comprehensive reform that clearly separates the police from the military and ensures adequate oversight and accountability is needed to ensure that these violations don’t occur again.”

The report portrays more widespread violence than Colombian authorities have acknowledged. It says Human Rights Watch has received “credible information” of a total of 68 deaths during the protests, 34 of which it was able to confirm, including two police officers.

Colombia’s government has reported 18 deaths related to the protests and says an additional nine are under investigation. The country’s human rights ombudsman, meanwhile, reported late Monday that it had confirmed 58 deaths related to the protests.

Thousands of Colombians have turned out across the country for mostly peaceful protests against the administration of President Iván Duque. The protests started over proposed tax increases on public services, fuel, wages and pensions, but it has morphed into a general demand for the government to do more for the most vulnerable in society, such as Indigenous and Afro-Latino people.

The administration withdrew the tax proposal just days after the protests began, but the unrest has continued and grown as reports emerged of police violence, deaths and disappearances.

Human Rights Watch said its investigation into police response to the nationwide protests that began April 28 found that the majority of fatal victims suffered injuries to vital organs, including head and chest, which experts said “are consistent with being caused with the intent to kill.”

The report says that among those killed by police was Kevin Agudelo, who died during a demonstration May 3 in Cali, a city in southwestern Colombia that has been the epicenter of the protests. Witnesses said antiriot police fired flash-bang cartridges and teargas when demonstrators blocked cars at a traffic circle, prompting several demonstrators to throw rocks.

“One witness said he heard shots that sounded like live ammunition,” the report says. “He said that Agudelo, who had been hiding behind a post, then ran toward him along with another protester. The witness said he saw a police officer shoot Agudelo from a short distance. The other protester was also injured, he said. Human Rights Watch reviewed three videos that appear consistent with the witnesses’ accounts, in which Agudelo is seen lying next to the injured protester”

TA photo of his body showed wounds to the chest and arms, which the report said forensic experts concluded were consistent with being shot by live ammunition.

Authorities have been slow to investigate the reports of violence, and as of Saturday, only four people had been indicted in connection with two homicides that occurred during the protests. Of the 170 police officers under disciplinary investigation, only two have been suspended, according to Human Rights Watch. Official public data indicates most of these investigations are for abuse of authority and 13 are linked to deaths.

Police have also been accused gender-based and sexual violence. The Ombudsman’s Office, an agency in charge of protecting human rights, has reported 14 cases of sexual assault and 71 cases of gender-based violence, including physical and verbal assault.

Police have arrested more than 1,000 people for crimes allegedly committed during the protests, but hundreds of them were released for lack of evidence or due process violations.

The president has said all cases of police abuse will be investigated and duly punished. However, Duque has insisted that they are isolated cases.

“Colombia is not a country that violates human rights, we have difficulties, but we face them with justice,” presidential counselor for human rights, Nancy Patricia Gutiérrez, told reporters Tuesday.

Representatives of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights were in Colombia investigating the alleged human rights violations.

During a news conference Wednesday, Vivanco characterized the U.S. government’s reaction to allegations of human rights violations in Colombia as ““disappointing.”

“Our impression is that current government officials are unwilling to issue comments or judgments and to condemn these events in clear terms as they would in other countries in the region simply because of the strategic alliance they have with Colombia and specifically with the police,” he said.

U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken told lawmakers Monday that the Colombian government has to “assure people that they can express their opinion peacefully” and called on the police to respect this right.

In UK for first foreign trip, Biden to announce vaccine plan

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Written by northsouth

Category: Americas

Published: 09 June 2021

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By JONATHAN LEMIRE and AAMER MADHANI

MILDENHALL, England — Embarking on the first overseas trip of his term, President Joe Biden is eager to reassert the United States on the world stage, steadying European allies deeply shaken by his predecessor and pushing democracy as the only bulwark to rising forces of authoritarianism.

Biden has set the stakes for his eight-day trip in sweeping terms, believing the West must publicly demonstrate it can compete economically with China as the world emerges from the coronavirus pandemic.

Shortly before arriving at Royal Air Force Mildenhall, where Biden was to speak to U.S. troops, people briefed on the matter confirmed that the Biden administration had brokered an agreement with Pfizer to purchase 500 million COVID-19 vaccine doses to be donated to 92 lower income countries and the African Union over the next year.

Two hundred million doses — enough to fully protect 100 million people — will be shared this year according to two people briefed on the matter, with the balance to be donated in the first half of 2022.

National security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters Wednesday on Air Force One that Biden was committed to sharing vaccines because it was in the public health and strategic interests of the U.S. As Biden embarks on his first foreign trip, he is aiming to show “that democracies are the countries that can best deliver solutions for people everywhere.”

“As he said in his joint session (address), we were the ‘arsenal of democracy’ in World War II,” Sullivan said. “We’re going to be the ‘arsenal of vaccines’ over this next period to help end the pandemic.”

Before leaving Washington, Biden told reporters the trip is about making clear to the leaders of China and Russia that the United States and Europe “are tight.”

Building toward his trip-ending summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Biden will aim to reassure European capitals that the United States can once again be counted on as a dependable partner to thwart Moscow’s aggression both on their eastern front and their internet battlefields.

The trip will be far more about messaging than specific actions or deals. And the paramount priority for Biden is to convince the world that his Democratic administration is not just a fleeting deviation in the trajectory of an American foreign policy that many allies fear irrevocably drifted toward a more transactional outlook under former President Donald Trump.

“The trip, at its core, will advance the fundamental thrust of Joe Biden’s foreign policy,” said national security adviser Jake Sullivan, “to rally the world’s democracies to tackle the great challenges of our time.”

Biden’s to-do list is ambitious.

In their face-to-face sit-down in Geneva, Biden wants to privately pressure Putin to end myriad provocations, including cybersecurity attacks on American businesses by Russian-based hackers, the jailing of opposition leader Alexei Navalny and repeated overt and covert efforts by the Kremlin to interfere in U.S. elections.

Biden is also looking to rally allies on their COVID-19 response and to urge them to coalesce around a strategy to check emerging economic and national security competitor China even as the U.S. expresses concern about Europe’s economic links to Moscow. Biden also wants to nudge outlying allies, including Australia, to make more aggressive commitments to the worldwide effort to curb global warming.

The week-plus journey is a big moment for Biden, who traveled the world for decades as vice president and as chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and will now step off Air Force One onto international soil as commander in chief. He will face world leaders still grappling with the virus and rattled by four years of Trump’s inward-looking foreign policy and moves that strained longtime alliances as the Republican former president made overtures to strongmen.

“In this moment of global uncertainty, as the world still grapples with a once-in-a-century pandemic,” Biden wrote in a Washington Post op-ed previewing his diplomatic efforts, “this trip is about realizing America’s renewed commitment to our allies and partners, and demonstrating the capacity of democracies to both meet the challenges and deter the threats of this new age.”

The president first travels to Britain for a summit of the Group of Seven leaders and then Brussels for a NATO summit and a meeting with the heads of the European Union. It comes at a moment when Europeans have diminished expectations for what they can expect of U.S. leadership on the foreign stage.

Central and Eastern Europeans are desperately hoping to bind the U.S. more tightly to their security. Germany is looking to see the U.S. troop presence maintained there so it doesn’t need to build up its own. France, meanwhile, has taken the tack that the U.S. can’t be trusted as it once was and that the European Union must pursue greater strategic autonomy going forward.

“I think the concern is real that the Trumpian tendencies in the U.S. could return full bore in the midterms or in the next presidential election,” said Alexander Vershbow, a former U.S. diplomat and once deputy secretary general of NATO.

The sequencing of the trip is deliberate: Biden consulting with Western European allies for much of a week as a show of unity before his summit with Putin.

His first stop late Wednesday will be an address to U.S. troops stationed in Britain, and the next day he sits down with British Prime Minster Boris Johnson. The two men will meet a day ahead of the G-7 summit to be held above the craggy cliffs of Cornwall overlooking the Atlantic Ocean.

The most tactile of politicians, Biden has grown frustrated by the diplomacy-via-Zoom dynamics of the pandemic and has relished the ability to again have face-to-face meetings that allow him to size up and connect with world leaders. While Biden himself is a veteran statesman, many of the world leaders he will see in England, including Johnson and French President Emmanuel Macron, took office after Biden left the vice presidency. Another, Germany’s Angela Merkel, will leave office later this year.

There are several potential areas of tension. On climate change, the U.S. is aiming to regain its credibility after Trump pulled the country back from the fight against global warming. Biden could also feel pressure on trade, an issue to which he’s yet to give much attention. And with the United States well supplied with COVID-19 vaccines yet struggling to persuade some of its own citizens to use it, leaders whose inoculation campaigns have been slower will surely pressure Biden to share more surplus around the globe.

Another central focus will be China. Biden and the other G-7 leaders will announce an infrastructure financing program for developing countries that is meant to compete directly with Beijing’s Belt-and-Road Initiative. But not every European power has viewed China in as harsh a light as Biden, who has painted the rivalry with the techno-security state as the defining competition for the 21st century.

The European Union has avoided taking as strong a stance on Beijing’s crackdown on Hong Kong’s democracy movement or treatment of Uyghur Muslims and other ethnic minorities in the western Xinjiang province as the Biden administration may like. But there are signs that Europe is willing to put greater scrutiny on Beijing.

The EU in March announced sanctions targeting four Chinese officials involved with human rights abuses in Xinjiang. Beijing, in turn, responded by imposing sanctions on several members of the European Parliament and other Europeans critical of the Chinese Communist Party.

Biden is also scheduled to meet with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan while in Brussels, a face-to-face meeting between two leaders who have had many fraught moments in their relationship over the years.

Biden waited until April to call Erdogan for the first time as president. In that call, he informed the Turkish leader that he would formally recognize that the systematic killings and deportations of hundreds of thousands of Armenians by Ottoman Empire forces in the early 20th century were “genocide” — using a term for the atrocities that his White House predecessors had avoided for decades over concerns of alienating Turkey.

The trip finale will be Biden’s meeting with Putin.

Biden has taken a very different approach to Russia than Trump’s friendly outreach. Their sole summit, held in July 2018 in Helsinki, was marked by Trump’s refusal to side with U.S. intelligence agencies over Putin’s denials of Russian interference in the election two years earlier.

Biden could well be challenged by unrest at home as Russia looks to exploit the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection and the debate over voting rights to undermine the U.S. position as a global role model. The American president, in turn, is expected to push Russia to quell its global meddling.

“By and large, these are not meetings on outcomes, these are ‘get to know you again’ meetings for the U.S. and Europe,” said Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations. “It’s about delivering a message to Putin, to reviving old alliances and to demonstrate again that the U.S. is back on the right course.”

US President's fiscal year 2022 defence budget

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Written by northsouth

Category: Americas

Published: 29 May 2021

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WASHINGTON - Statement by Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III on the President's Fiscal Year 2022 Budget

"As the Secretary of Defense, my chief priority is defending America from enemies foreign and domestic and ensuring our troops remain the world's preeminent fighting force. President Biden's FY 2022 Defense Budget meets this commitment with critical investments to help us match resources to strategy, strategy to policy, and policy to the will of the American people. The budget provides us the mix of capabilities we need most and stays true to our focus on the pacing challenge from the People's Republic of China, combating the damaging effects of climate change on our military installations, and modernizing our capabilities to meet the advanced threats of tomorrow. Importantly, this budget invests in our people, the brave women and men in uniform around the world who serve on behalf of this great nation." – Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III

The Biden-Harris Administration today submitted to Congress the President's Fiscal Year (FY) 2022 Budget request of $752.9 billion for national defense, $715 billion of which is for the Department of Defense (DOD). The FY 2022 Defense Budget submission reflects President Biden's priorities to end the "forever wars," invest in cutting-edge capabilities for our military and national security advantage in the future, and revitalize America's unmatched network of alliances and partnerships.

The United States military faces substantial challenges, emanating from countries like China and Russia, and from threats to global security, such as from climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic.

The budget addresses these challenges, and others, by making key investments that defend our nation, while innovating and modernizing, taking care of our warfighters, and building strong relationships with our allies and partners alongside other elements of national security.

The FY 2022 Defense Budget reflects the President's national security values and priorities. It is a strategy-based budget aligned with the President's Interim National Security Strategic Guidance, which emphasizes:

- A solemn obligation to protect the security of the American people.

- Enduring interest in expanding economic prosperity and opportunity.

- A commitment to realizing and defending the democratic values at the heart of the American way of life.

To meet these goals, the budget request:

- Takes a broader approach to national security to address threats such as climate change, Covid-19, and extremism.

- Makes smart and disciplined choices regarding our national defense, particularly by aligning our resources to evolving threats.

- Addresses strategic competition with China through calculated defense investments.

The FY 2022 President's Budget request of $715 billion when compared to the FY 2021 enacted amount of $703.7 billion, reflects a 1.6% increase. Importantly, the requested amount reflects a shift in resources to match priorities. For the Navy and Air Force, there are additional investments to address strategic competition with China. For the Army, the request reflects the President's decision to withdraw all U.S. troops from Afghanistan prior to the beginning of FY 2022.

For the first time since September 11, 2001, DOD direct war and enduring operation costs are included within the base budget request, rather than as a separate Overseas Contingency Operation (OCO) request.

The Department's FY 2022 Budget ensures that the Department will defend the nation, which includes funding for:

- COVID-19 and pandemic preparedness - over $500 million

- Pacific Deterrence Initiative - $5.1 billion

- Preparing for, adapting to and mitigating climate change - $617 million

The Department's FY 2022 Budget focuses innovation and modernization. Nuclear
Modernization ($27.7 billion). Investments include:

- B-21 Long Range Strike Bomber - $3 billion

- COLUMBIA Class Ballistic Missile Submarine - $5 billion

- Long-Range Stand-Off (LRSO) Missile - $609 million

- Ground Based Strategic Deterrent (GBSD) - $2.6 billion

Missile Defeat and Defense ($20.4 billion). Investments include:

- Sea-Based Interceptors (SM-3 IIA and SM-3 IB) - $647 million

- Sea-Based Ballistic Missile Defense System (AEGIS BMD) - $1 billion

- Ground-Based Midcourse (GMD) and Improved Homeland Defense/Next Generation Interceptors (NGI) - $1.7 billion

- Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) Ballistic Missile Defense - $562 million

- Patriot Advanced Capability Missile Segment Enhancement - $777 million

Long Range Fires ($6.6 billion). Investments include:

- Includes funds to develop and field multi-Service, multi-domain offensive Long Range Fires

Science and Technology and Advanced Capability Enablers. Investments include:

- Largest ever RDT&E request - $112 billion

- Science and Technology - $14.7 billion

- Microelectronics - $2.3 billion

- Artificial Intelligence - $874 million

- 5G - $398 million

Lethal Air Forces ($52.4 billion). Investments include:

- 85 F-35 Joint Strike Fighters - $12 billion

- 14 KC-46 Tanker Replacements - $2.5 billion

- 9 CH-53K King Stallion - $1.7 billion

- 12 F-15EX - $1.5 billion

- 30 AH-64E Apache Attack Helicopters - $825 million

Combat Effective Naval Forces ($34.6 billion). Investments include:

COLUMBIA Class Ballistic Missile Submarine - $5 billion
CVN-78 FORD Class Aircraft Carrier - $2.9 billion
2 Virginia Class Submarines - $6.9 billion
1 DDG-51 Arleigh Burke Destroyer - $2.4 billion
1 Frigate (FFG(X)) - $1.3 billion
1 Fleet Replenishment Oiler (T-AO) - $853 million
Unmanned Surface Vessels (USV) (Large) - $203 million
2 Towing, Salvage, and Rescue Ships (T-ATS) - $184 million
1 Ocean Surveillance Ship (T-AGOX(X)) - $434 million

Combat Effective Ground Forces ($12.3 billion). Investments include:

- 3,799 Joint Light Tactical Vehicles - $1.1 billion

- 70 M-1 Abrams Tank Modifications/Upgrades - $1 billion

- 92 Amphibious Combat Vehicles - $613 million

Space and Space-Based Systems ($20.6 billion). Investments include:

- 5 Launch Vehicles - National Security Space Launch (NSSL) and Rocket System Launch Program (RSLP) - $1.7 billion

- Global Positioning System (GPS) Enterprise - $1.8 billion

- Space Based Overhead Persistent Infrared (OPIR) Systems - $2.6 billion

Cyberspace Activities ($10.4 billion). Investments include cybersecurity, cyberspace operations, and research and development in support of cybersecurity and cyberspace operations.

Divestments of older and less-capable platforms and programs that no longer meet mission and/or security needs ($2.8 billion). Includes:

- Army: Divests night vision imaging system, missile launcher, electronic warfare, and IT - $47.8 million

- Navy: Decommissions ships (CG, LSD, LCS) and divests aircraft (F/A-18 A-D, RQ-21) - $1.3 billion

- Air Force: Divests aircraft (A-10, F-15 C/D, F-16 C/D, KC-135, KC-10, C-130H, E-8, RQ-4 block 20 and 30) - $1.4 billion

- USSOCOM: Divests select intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) programs- $117.9 million

The FY 2022 Budget builds on current readiness gains and modernizes for the future fight across the Services and USSOCOM ($122.1 billion). Investments include:

- Army readiness - $27.8 billion

- Navy and Marine Corps readiness - $48.5 billion

- Air Force readiness - $36.5 billion

- Special Operations Command readiness - $9.4 billion

- Driven by divestments and a focus on the future fight, the Department's request of 2.146 million military personnel is a slight decrease in end strength for FY 2022

DOD's most critical asset is its people. To ensure the U.S. military remains the preeminent force in the world, the FY 2022 Budget takes care of Service members, their families, and our civilian workforce. The budget request:

- Includes a 2.7% pay raise for both military and civilian personnel

- Sustains family support programs with investment of $8.6 billion for:

- Professional development and education opportunities for Service members and military spouses

- Quality, affordable child care for over 160,000 children

- Youth programs serving over 1 million family members

- DOD Dependent Schools educating over 74,000 students

- Establishes the Defense Center of Excellence for Sexual Assault Prevention, Response, Education, and Training

- Strengthens DOD tools to identify and address extremism in the ranks

Investing in facilities improvement and high quality housing helps our people serve safely and effectively. Facility investments include:

- Military construction and family housing – nearly $10 billion

- Military construction is 17% higher than last year's enacted amount

- Facilities sustainment, restoration, and modernization (FSRM) - $15 billion

- FSRM is $1 billion more than last year

- Full funding of all executable remediation activities for Per- and Polyfluroalkyl substances at locations closed through Base Realignment and Closure efforts

- Ensuring privatized and government housing is safe, high-quality, and well-maintained through sustained funding that is over $50 million higher than the amount requested only two years ago.

DOD leads, not merely by the example of our power, but by the power of our example. DOD succeeds through teamwork, as it will:

- Join forces with allies and partners

- Buttress diplomacy and advance foreign policy that employs all instruments of national power, creating integrated deterrence

- Prioritize rebuilding mutually beneficial defense relationships around the world to maintain DOD's competitive edge far from American shores

- Build partner nation capacity and increase interoperability

- Embrace international cooperation for a better, safer, more resilient, more prosperous world

DOD works in partnership with our Nation. The Department will help America build back better by investing in critical supply chains, the U.S. manufacturing workforce, small businesses, and military families. Those efforts include:

- Defense Production Act request to partner with U.S. companies to boost the defense industrial base and bring critical supply chains back to the U.S., including rare earth elements and microelectronics - $341 million

- Investments to accelerate DOD's response to climate change, which effects nearly every aspect of DOD missions, facilities, and operations - $617 million

- Invest in global health and medical research investments to fight COVID and prepare for future pandemics