Latin America's Re-Militarization

By Andrew G. Reiter and Brett J. Kyle, Jacobin

10 November 18

Even before Jair Bolsonaro's rise, Latin America's militaries had been regaining power through the court system.

n November 11, 2017, eight civilians were killed in a joint police and army security operation carried out in São Gonçalo, Brazil. Survivors and witnesses reported seeing special forces, dressed in black with laser-scoped rifles, being deployed by helicopter and shooting from a wooded area. The military, however, has refused to investigate the case or cooperate with civilian authorities. Thanks to a new law passed the previous month, it has the legal right to do so.

Law No. 13.491, passed by the Brazilian Congress in October 2017, gives military courts jurisdiction over their personnel accused of human rights violations. Prior to the law’s approval, the Ministry of Defense publicly made the case that allowing civilian courts to handle such cases would hinder policing operations. Michel Temer’s administration increasingly used the armed forces for domestic policing duties, whether in rural areas against land rights activists or in the favelas and peripheries of major cities.

Brazil’s 2008 “pacification” policy led to the deployment of military personnel to the favelas of Rio de Janeiro, and the militarization of policing intensified in the run-up to the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympic games. According to Human Rights Watch, thousands of civilians are killed by the military and police each year. The new Ministry for Public Security, created in February, is led by an army general, and in May the Brazilian military was deployed in response to the nationwide truckers’ strike that blockaded highways. This was the first time the military had been used in this way since the end of the military dictatorship in 1985.

The military courts law further enhances the ability of the armed forces to shield its members from accountability for violations, as any potential prosecution of wrongdoing comes under the authority of the armed forces itself.

Brazil is not alone in militarizing its justice system. Military courts are increasingly asserting jurisdiction throughout Latin America. In June 2015, Colombia passed a bill similar to the one adopted in Brazil, shifting jurisdiction for most crimes committed by members of the military to the military courts. The Constitutional Court struck down the first two iterations of the bill, but the government was determined to make the change and crafted a slightly narrower law that has since taken effect. Since 2005, Venezuela has been using military courts extensively to prosecute civilians involved in protests against the government. In Chile, cases of human rights violations committed by the military are still tried in military courts.

Similar laws may soon be passed in central America, where states are increasingly deploying the military on the pretext of combating crime, drug trafficking, and gang violence. Mexico removed cases involving human rights violations by soldiers from military to civilian courts in 2014, but the Internal Security Law of December 2017 grants the army substantial powers in domestic policing could lead to a backslide towards the use of military courts.

The Use and Abuse of Military Courts

Military justice systems have limited use. Military personnel are subject to codes of justice for crimes like insubordination, which have no equivalent in the civilian world. But when military courts extend their jurisdiction over their personnel for crimes such as human rights abuses — and in some instances even put civilians on trial — this parallel legal system undermines the rule of law. When military courts are able to sit in judgment of the military’s own actions, they can provide special treatment to their personnel and shield them from accountability.

There is a long history of military courts abusing their power in Latin America. Military courts were a tool of repression for most of the authoritarian regimes that ruled the region in the 1970s and 1980s. In Uruguay, civilians charged with crimes against national security were tried in military courts, and one in fifty Uruguayans was jailed at some point during the military’s rule. In Chile, under the dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet, military courts were used extensively against civilians, especially in the first five years of the dictatorship via the use of wartime tribunals under the 1973 “state of siege.”

In addition, regimes fighting insurgencies granted their militaries expansive judicial power. Up until the mid-1980s, Colombia’s military could try civilians for an array of crimes in any region when a state of siege was in place, which could be initiated by decree when the president determined the public order had been disturbed. Any homicide committed by the armed forces in these regions was legally justified as long as it took place during a planned operation.

During Guatemala’s civil war, the military created secret tribunals — termed Courts of Special Jurisdiction — to put civilians on trial, and routinely sentenced them to death by execution. In Peru, President Alberto Fujimori revived military courts as he escalated the war against the Shining Path in the 1990s. He ruled that the military had jurisdiction over any crimes vaguely defined as terrorism, and military courts regularly prosecuted civilians.

The Struggle for Reform

The struggle to reform military courts perpetuated long after the transitions to democracy across Latin America. Indeed, legal power was one of the last vestiges of authoritarian rule in many countries, with militaries staunchly resisting attempts to bring them under civilian jurisdiction. In fact, Guatemala operated under an 1878 military code of justice, which gave it sweeping judicial powers, until Congress finally reformed the code in the 1990s. Human rights violations committed by the military were not shifted to civilian courts in the Dominican Republic until 2002. It took a Constitutional Court ruling in 2004 to effect such a change in Bolivia. Ecuador and Argentina did not move non-military crimes committed by military personnel to civilian courts until 2008.

Despite changes to the laws on the books, in many countries the military has continued to obstruct civilian investigations by tampering with evidence and intimidating witnesses. In extreme cases, members of the military have made death threats against civilian investigators, as occurred in Honduras after the 2009 coup d’état. In Guatemala, defense lawyers use a variety of delaying tactics to stall cases, such as filing numerous petitions to have a judge removed from a case or requesting their recusal. In 1999, soldiers were arrested for their involvement in the 1982 Dos Erres massacre in which over two hundred people were killed. The first convictions in the case did not occur until 2011, a full twelve years after the initial arrests.

The ability to achieve any reform in these countries was a result of the sustained action of human rights activists and crucial court rulings. Domestic lawyers and judges were able to point to the landmark 1999 Inter-American Court of Human Rights case that rejected the use of military courts for the prosecution of human rights violations, citing Article 7 of the American Convention. This article requires that “anyone who is deprived of his liberty shall be entitled to recourse to a competent court” and that “this remedy may not be restricted or abolished.”

In many cases, however, reform only succeeded through direct bargaining with the military, with governments granting concessions in other areas in exchange for judicial reform. In Argentina, for example, reform only occurred when President Néstor Kirchner significantly expanded the military’s budget for the procurement and manufacturing of new equipment.

It is perhaps unsurprising that militaries across the region were reluctant to give up their legal powers. Hundreds of military members across the region have been tried for human rights violations, from low-level soldiers to former heads of state, including the now-deceased generals Augusto Pinochet in Chile and Efraín Ríos Montt in Guatemala.

Amnesty laws, negotiated as part of peace agreements or passed as prerequisites for leaving power, were meant to protect militaries, but have been systematically dismantled — circumvented by creative judges (Argentina), struck down by the inter-American and constitutional courts (Peru), and revoked by politicians under pressure from human rights organizations (Uruguay).

Armed Forces Rising

Given how repressive military courts were and how long and difficult it was for civilian reformers to finally rein them in, the re-empowerment of these courts is a frightening development. It has the potential to roll back decades of human rights law and judicial reform.

Many politicians have run on platforms promising to be “tough on crime” and have deployed the military to conduct domestic policing operations, as in Brazil, Ecuador, Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras. Elected leaders, seeking to deliver results for their voters in fighting drug trafficking and gang violence, are turning to their militaries and equipping them with increased legal powers.

Under these circumstances, democracy and the defense of human rights seem to be at odds with each other. Politicians are responding to public pressure, and in doing so are pursuing policies that contradict past progress in curtailing military power. The 2015 bill in Colombia to shift jurisdiction for most crimes committed by members of the military back to military courts passed with overwhelming support; only a minority of leftist politicians voted against it. The 2017 measure in Brazil similarly was approved in the senate by a large margin.

To stem the tide of legal empowerment of the military and reverse these recent setbacks, human rights activists will need to be increasingly vigilant and work to supplant the security narrative that has dominated recent elections in countries such as Guatemala and Honduras, and led to the rise of populist leaders on the right. A wave of leftist politicians rose to power in the past by promising redistribution of wealth and anti-poverty plans — the policies necessary to address the underlying causes of the recent rise in crime. The recent election of Andrés Manuel López Obrador in Mexico, who ran on an “Abrazos, no balazos” (hugs, not gunfire) platform perhaps is a welcome sign.

Most importantly, this will be a major test for the civilian judiciary in the region. Judicial reform has been at the forefront of domestic NGO work and international donors over the past three decades. It will largely be for naught if civilian courts cannot retain jurisdiction over the worst human rights abuses committed by the armed forces.

Constitutional and supreme courts will have to rule on these laws, possibly being put in the position of having to make judgments that go against the wishes of politicians, the military, and even popular opinion. Success will also depend on the Inter-American Court continuing to be the last safeguard for democracy in the region, providing domestic courts with legal rulings to reinforce their positions.

US Calls for Ceasefire, Keeps Attacking Yemen

By William Boardman, Reader Supported News

10 November 18

n case you missed it, US efforts to prolong the world’s most serious humanitarian crisis in Yemen continue to succeed spectacularly. US military support enables the Saudi coalition to continue to bomb markets, docks, mosques, hospitals, school buses, weddings and funerals, and other civilian targets with impunity. The Saudis’ Yemeni enemy, the Houthi rebels, have no effective air defenses. On March 26, 2015, with the blessing and tactical support of the Obama administration, Saudi Arabia and its allies launched an illegal, genocidal, aggressive war on Houthi-controlled Yemen. Yemen was – and is – in the midst of a civil war in which the long-oppressed Houthis overthrew the “legitimate” government that the US and others had imposed on Yemen. Since March 2015, the US and the Saudi coalition have subjected Yemen to daily war crimes, not only killing civilians but destroying non-military targets of all sorts, causing a form of biological warfare with a cholera plague, as well as massive famine for more than half the country’s 25 million people. The UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) head said on September 27: “Yemen is a disaster and I don’t see any light at the end of the tunnel right now.” Yemen was not a significant issue in the American election, even as the Trump administration sanctioned and supported military escalation that heightened the suffering of millions (and that has already killed tens of thousands). 

At the US State Department, on November 7, the press briefing focused on the ideological basis for punishing Iran for continuing to abide by the nuclear agreement that the US pulled out of (still joined by Britain, France, Germany, Russia, and China). The US blames Iran for Yemen, too, with little persuasive or significant evidence to support the propaganda bias. Eventually in the briefing there was a question about Yemen, and the exchange with State Department spokesman Robert Palladino went like this (edited, with emphasis added):

QUESTION: Yemen?

MR PALLADINO: Yemen? Let’s go to Yemen in the back, please.

QUESTION: The fighting around Hodedah [the Yemeni port critical to supplying food to the region’s poorest country that was a food importer before being attacked] seems to be picking up with – and UNICEF and MSF and all these aid groups who are saying children are at risk at these hospitals. And I wonder what’s happened to the U.S. call for a ceasefire.

MR PALLADINO: The – well, I would start by saying we closely are following the developments that are taking place in Hodedah. As the Secretary said, we’ve been urging all parties to come to the table, and to recognize that there’s no military victory that can be achieved in Yemen. And we continue to call for a cessation of hostilities and for all parties to support United Nations Special Envoy Martin Griffiths in finding a peaceful solution to the conflict.

QUESTION: So have there been any phone calls?...  

MR PALLADINO: We are in daily contact with the special envoy….

QUESTION: Would you call on the Saudi coalition to halt this offensive that they seem to now be bearing down on in Hodedah?

MR PALLADINO: We’ve called for a cessation of hostilities…. Please, next question….

QUESTION: Have you had a miscommunication then, with the Saud-led coalition, that they’re now beginning this offensive?

MR PALLADINO: – our assessment remains the same….

QUESTION: – to put a finer point on that, I mean, did the coalition – the Saudi coalition that the U.S. supports coordinate with or tell you in advance that they were going to increase fighting around Hudaydah or did they just ignore the Secretary’s call? 

MR PALLADINO: We’ve been clear with Saudi, Emirati, and Yemeni [government-in-exile] officials at every level that the destruction of critical infrastructure or destruction of the delivery of vital (inaudible) aid and commercial goods is unacceptable, and we are in close contact with our partners.

QUESTION: Just to follow up on that, because you’re not really answering the question, I mean, the Secretary of State issued a very explicit statement with the Secretary of Defense saying it was time for this to end and it’s not ending. Do you see that as a slap in the face, and what are you going to do about it?

MR PALLADINO: … We continue to call for a cessation of hostilities. That is a cessation of hostilities and vigorous resumption of a political track. That is the way forward. That’s how we are going to ease this humanitarian crisis. The United States’ message remains we need to end this conflict and replace this conflict with compromise, and that’s all I have on this topic for today.

Within the context of pervasive American deceit regarding Yemen, spokesman Palladino probably allows for some technical truths to appear. Yes, after the US called for a ceasefire, the Saudis escalated their bombing of humanitarian targets. The Saudis may or may not have consulted with the US, but the Trump administration has no stomach for criticizing this bloodshed any more than it actively objects to the gutting of Jamal Khashoggi. 

According to Palladino, “the destruction of critical infrastructure or destruction of the delivery of vital (inaudible) aid and commercial goods is unacceptable,” which seems to be a statement of law and decency acceptable to any humane observer. Palladino implies the lie that these crimes against humanity are unacceptable to the US, but he doesn’t actually say that. Clearly, having spent years enabling the Saudis in committing war crimes, the US finds the destruction of Yemen quite acceptable. That’s what Palladino really means when he says the US is “closely following the developments,” in the hope that Yemeni carnage can somehow persuade the Iranians to trust us. 

OK, what about that US call for a ceasefire, why isn’t that working?

On October 31, US Defense Secretary Jim Mattis spoke about Yemen at the US Institute of Peace with presumably unconscious irony. Mattis said, self-contradictorily and revealingly:

We’ve got to move toward a peace effort here, and you can’t say we’re going to do it sometime in the future. We need to be doing this in the next 30 days. We’ve admired this problem for long enough down there. 

Later the same day, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo issued a statement:

The time is now for the cessation of hostilities.... Substantive consultations under the UN Special Envoy must commence this November in a third country.... It is time to end this conflict, replace conflict with compromise, and allow the Yemeni people to heal through peace and reconstruction.

There was nary a tweet from the president in all this. Can one presume anything from that? In September, Pompeo certified to Congress, over the objections of staff, that the Saudis and their allies were doing their darnedest to reduce civilian casualties and the US should continue to support them. This was before the Saudi escalation on Hodedah. There is no credible evidence anywhere that the US is serious about doing anything to end the murder of Yemenis. Pompeo proposed that the ceasefire start with the Houthis ending their not very effective rocket attacks on Saudi Arabia. That’s the way the US deals with aggressive war in the 21st century: support the aggressor and demand that the victim stop resisting. And the Trump administration is even considering labeling the Houthi rebels as a terrorist organization, presumably following a logic that would have made the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto resistance into terrorists. Bad faith has no limits.

Both Mattis and Pompeo tried to appear as if they were taking immediate action, while in the next breath putting off any action for the near future. The supposed ceasefire has now receded toward 2019 as the UN’s Yemen envoy bows to the reality of US inaction and Saudi escalation.

If the US were actually serious about peace and humanitarian aid for Yemen, the US could exercise leadership in the UN Security Council to force a peace process. The US could unilaterally take immediate and forceful actions to stop the war. Pompeo could rescind the bad joke of certifying the Saudis as conscientious and responsible. That might not be enough, so Mattis could disengage the US military from the genocidal bombing campaign. Without US support – including cluster bombs and other ordnance – the Saudi aggression would falter if not fail. Rather than act rationally, Pompeo and Mattis chose to posture and preen in a charade of peace-loving rhetoric. 

Well, their hollow performance was on Halloween after all, and that was perhaps the point. This was high-level US dishonesty, a shabby trick-or-treat deceit. It’s all trick for Yemen and endless treats for the Saudis. And for its lack of trouble, the US gets more and more blood on its hands.

Late on Friday, November 9, the US and Saudis announced that – at some unstated future time – the US will stop refueling Saudi bombers attacking Yemen. This is a cynical charade that will do nothing to reduce the bloodbath in Yemen, but may fool the gullible in the US that protest works.

First of all, with US help, the Saudis have developed their own mid-air refueling capability. The cessation of US refueling will have zero impact on Saudi war-making capacity.

The US will continue to support the Saudi targeting program. The US will continue to provide the Saudis with military intelligence. The US will continue to supply the Saudis with weapons and ordnance, including cluster bombs (designed to kill people and most effective against civilians). The US will continue to support the Saudi naval blockade, a primary cause of hunger and famine in Yemen (as intended). None of these or other elements of US participation in this illegal, genocidal war are addressed in Defense Secretary Mattis’s expertly opaque and misleading statement:

The U.S. and the coalition are planning to collaborate on building up legitimate Yemeni forces to defend the Yemeni people, secure their country’s borders, and contribute to counter al-Qaida and ISIS efforts in Yemen and the region.

The US and the coalition are the main attackers of most of the Yemeni people. The best defense for the Yemeni people is for the attackers to stop attacking, since the Yemenis remain well within their own borders. The only part of Yemen under actual Yemeni control is the northwest, where the native Houthis have governed since 2014. Southeastern Yemen is titularly under the control of the “legitimate” Yemeni government (based in Riyadh), but is effectively under a military dictatorship run by the United Arab Emirates. Eastern Yemen, which is thinly populated, is under fragmentary control of multiple forces, including ISIS and al-Qaeda, whose fortunes have been greatly enhanced by the US-Saudi obsession with preventing the Houthis from controlling their own country.

Mattis is trying to put rouge on a monster and call it beautiful. US policy in Yemen continues to be based on profound lies with no moral justification. Oh look, Mattis seems to say, we’re washing our hands of refueling bombers committing war crimes. Even in its narrow truth, this does nothing to support life or peace, and US hands remain drenched in blood.

William M. Boardman has over 40 years experience in theatre, radio, TV, print journalism, and non-fiction, including 20 years in the Vermont judiciary. He has received honors from Writers Guild of America, Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Vermont Life magazine, and an Emmy Award nomination from the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.

Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.