SCHAKOWSKY REACTS TO U.S. STATE DEPARTMENTS HUMAN RIGHTS CERTIFICATION OF COLOMBIA
July 8, 2003
JULY 8, 2003
SCHAKOWSKY REACTS TO U.S. STATE DEPARTMENT'S HUMAN RIGHTS CERTIFICATION OF COLOMBIA
CHICAGO, IL - U.S. Representative Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) issued the following statement following the U.S. State Department human rights recertification of Colombia:
"With this certification, the Bush Administration has demonstrated its blatant disregard for the welfare of the Colombian people. By continuing to fund and work closely with a military that has been implicated with committing gross atrocities against its own people while associating with groups designated as terrorists by the US, the Bush Administration is exacerbating the human right crisis in Colombia. The United States has the ability to change course in Colombia and help create a bright future for all the Colombian people," Schakowsky aid.
SCHAKOWSKY REACTS TO U.S. STATE DEPARTMENT'S HUMAN RIGHTS CERTIFICATION OF COLOMBIA
CHICAGO, IL - U.S. Representative Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) issued the following statement following the U.S. State Department human rights recertification of Colombia:
"With this certification, the Bush Administration has demonstrated its blatant disregard for the welfare of the Colombian people. By continuing to fund and work closely with a military that has been implicated with committing gross atrocities against its own people while associating with groups designated as terrorists by the US, the Bush Administration is exacerbating the human right crisis in Colombia. The United States has the ability to change course in Colombia and help create a bright future for all the Colombian people," Schakowsky aid.
Schakowsky is an outspoken critic of the Bush Administration's flawed drug interdiction policy in Colombia, which is drawing the United States deeper into Colombia's civil war, rewarding human right abuses by the Colombian military, and is weighted heavily toward a supply-side reduction, a strategy that has not decreased substance abuse in the United States.