Mary Anastasia O’Grady on FARC’s NGO friends:
The 5th Front’s territory includes a town called San José de Apartadó, which was designated as a peace community in the mid-1990s under a plan proposed by the local Catholic diocese. The idea was to create a place where civilians could live without fear of paramilitaries or guerrillas. As I reported in November 2003, “administration of this proposal, which pledged the full disarmament of all actors within the ‘peace community,’ was turned over primarily to Inter-congregational Justicia y Paz, a Colombian NGO. Justicia has had backing from Amnesty International and the Peace Brigades International.”
But the peace community of San José de Apartadó, according to Samir, was not the least bit neutral. Rather, he says, the FARC had a close relationship with its leaders dating back to the early days.
Samir says that the peace community was a FARC safe haven for wounded and sick rebels and for storing medical supplies. He also says that suppliers to the FARC met with rebels in the town, where there were also always five or six members of the Peace Brigades International.
According to Samir, the peace community helped the FARC in its effort to tag the Colombian military as a violator of human rights. When the community was getting ready to accuse someone of a human-rights violation, Samir would organize the “witnesses” by ordering FARC members, posing as civilians, to give testimony.
Sound familiar?
The Goldstone report was carried out at the behest of the UN Human Rights Council, aided and abetted by NGO’s such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. The effect of the Goldstone report, regardless of the protests of Judge Goldstone himself, was to limit Israel’s ability to retaliate against Hamas (or, for that matter, any terrorists.) No doubt that there are many useful NGO’s, but that shouldn’t obscure the point that many NGO’s work against peace and freedom in the name of some greater good. These NGO’s have become the last refuge of terrorists.
Crossposted on Soccer Dad.
These NGO’s have become the last refuge of terrorists.
Actually, it appears that they are the first refuge of the terrorists and are acting as if they were set up initially to be terrorist cover.
Sabba Hillel,
I was debating this with myself.
The way I looked at it is that first they provoked Israel and then ran to the UN & NGO’s to get Israel to stop. That’s why I chose last.
David