John Lindsay-Poland Comments At SOA Board Of Visitor's 2012  http://www.soaw.org/category-table/3945-jlp-bov

Comment before the Board of Visitors of the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, June 28, 2012 John Lindsay-Poland, Fellowship of Reconciliation I would like you to understand something about the critics of WHINSEC. Their point of departure, very often, is the suffering of the victims of state terrorism. As you know, the Americas, including the United States, have a painful history of carrying out state terrorism, some of it very recent, some of it on a large scale. While violence against civilians from any source is devastating, when it is carried out by state agents, it is especially grievous, because it ratifies the idea that there is nowhere to turn for redress, especially if those agents are never sanctioned. When you start with the suffering of victims, and with an interest in justice and prevention of future violations, you ask Why? Where did this bloodletting come from? What led those perpetrating this violence on their path? That is a very different point of departure than the question, Is our curriculum professional? Or, Are we teaching international humanitarian law? Fundamentally, the measure for effectiveness of the training received in a military institution should be in behaviors – what is the behavior of those who come through here after they leave? Anecdotes do not measure this. And if respect for human rights is a core objective for both policy and specific training assistance, then we will seek to measure the human rights conduct of those receiving training. This requires a much higher level of follow-up with graduates than previously done. New provisions of the Leahy Law also explicitly require ongoing documentation of all units receiving US training and other assistance and of the unit to which individuals receiving US training are deployed. Evaluation for a military school will require the cooperation of Security Assistance Officers and Defense Attaches in embassies. I will offer you an example. From March 2002 to March 2003, then-Major Jaime Lasprilla Villamizar was an instructor here. He taught the Captains Career course and what was then called the General Staff and Command course. When he returned to Colombia, he rose in the ranks, and as colonel commanded the Ninth Brigade in the Department of Huila, in 2006 and 2007. While he was with the Ninth Brigade, troops under his command reportedly committed at least 58 extrajudicial executions, one of the highest levels in Colombia. You cannot have that many extrajudicial killings without a level of planning that indicates commander responsibility, at the very least by omission. However, he has not been charged with responsibility for any of these killings, consistent with a 97% rate of impunity for reported extrajudicial killings in Colombia. Subsequent to his time in Huila, by this a time a brigadier general, he became commander in 2009 of Task Force Omega, a critical command not only for the Colombian armed forces, but for U.S. strategy in Colombia. Evaluation of human rights impacts also means tracking back from cases of gross human rights violations, such as the thousands of cases of extrajudicial killings reportedly committed by armed forces in Colombia in the last ten years, to understand what the role of foreign assistance has been, especially when that assistance has been large scale and has helped to validate the political legitimacy of the partner military. Two years ago, we conducted a study that examined these questions in Colombia, with respect to diverse kinds of assistance to more than 500 units of the Colombian armed forces. Our conclusions were not definitive, but they were disturbing. We found that reported extrajudicial killings increased on average in areas after the United States increased assistance to units in those areas. I am leaving you with a copy of this report in English and Spanish. [1]