News stories by Constanza Vieira, page 9

A declassified U.S. State Department cable dated January 1999 blames Colombian soldiers for the killings of civilians rescued by the military operation to retake the Palace of Justice from guerrillas who had seized the building in November 1985.

'You look as good as ever,' was the radio message that Olga Valderrama sent over the airwaves to her son, army corporal Antonio Sanmiguel, who is being held captive somewhere in the jungles of Colombia by the FARC guerrillas.

'Coming to Colombia is to enter a world that is always intense, captivating and heart-wrenching at the same time,' Susana Villarán, a former member of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), wrote in April 2008.

'Colombia’s indigenous people find themselves in a serious, critical and profoundly worrying human rights situation,' says the preliminary report by United Nations special rapporteur James Anaya, who just completed a visit to this country.

With parliament in recess, the Colombian government of Álvaro Uribe confirmed that it would give the United States access to at least three military bases.

Philip Alston, the U.N. rapporteur on extrajudicial executions, said this practice is 'systematic' in Colombia. But he added that he did not have evidence that it was a state policy, as many victims and human rights defenders argue.

In the midst of civil war and repression in San Vicente del Caguán, a municipality in southern Colombia, local communities and activists continue to hold forums to draw attention to human rights abuses. What keeps them going?

Former Colombian paramilitary chief and drug lord Diego Murillo, alias 'Don Berna', testified in a U.S. court that he helped finance President Álvaro Uribe’s first election campaign, in 2002.

A delegation of seven British Labour members of parliament and 10 trade union leaders from the U.S., Canada and Britain said they were in a 'state of shock' over what they heard during a week-long fact-finding mission to Colombia.

Extrajudicial executions, difficulty for victims’ families to gain access to justice, persecution of human rights defenders, kidnappings, and continued armed activity by previously demobilised members of paramilitary groups are the main concerns of the office in Colombia of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR Colombia).