Chile: UN on the Offensive Against Iraq Mercenaries
IPS16 July 07 - Mercenary recruitment agencies that send former soldiers to Iraq have been accused in Chile of human right abuses, illegal association, possession of explosives and unauthorised use of army weaponry, and are the target of a special United Nations mission.
Daniela Estrada and Gustavo González/IPS, Santiago - The UN Working Group (UNWG) on the "use of mercenaries as a means of violating human rights and impeding the exercise of the right of peoples to self-determination", established in July 2005 by the then UN Commission on Human Rights, conducted a fact-finding mission about the recruitment firms in Chile this week, and then planned to head to Montevideo.
Senator Alejandro Navarro, of the governing coalition Socialist Party, is the prime mover behind the visit by the delegation, which arrived in Santiago on Monday. He stated that these firms declare legal residence in Uruguay, and that contracts are signed in international airspace while the mercenaries are being flown to the Middle East.
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Navarro said that U.S. private security companies such as Blackwater and Triple Canopy, who recruit guards at the request of the U.S. government to send into armed conflict zones to protect strategic installations, tend to subcontract to South American firms like Red Táctica Consulting Group.
The owner of the Washington-based Red Táctica is José Miguel Pizarro, a retired general of the Chilean army who lives in the U.S. He is also known as a commentator on Iraq security issues for the U.S. news service CNN.
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According to Navarro’s estimates, close to 1,200 former members of the Chilean military, mostly retired and with an average age of 40, have gone to Iraq since 2004. They were recruited by private companies who operate in several different countries in order to evade future responsibilities, he said.
At a meeting Tuesday with academics and university researchers, Gómez del Prado emphasised the exponential increase in the number of mercenaries involved in armed conflicts since the invasion of Iraq in March 2003.
The use of mercenaries is a form of "privatising war," which involves human trafficking and other practices that violate human rights, said Gómez del Prado and Benavides de Pérez.
The UNWG rapporteurs pointed out that "private security guards" had participated alongside U.S. soldiers in the cases of torture perpetrated in the Iraqi prison of Abu Ghraib in 2003.
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http://www.humanrights-geneva.info/article.php3?id_article=1972