This month we bring you news from Brazil, Colombia, Peru and Venezuela. A recent military operation in Colombia seems to have gone wrong, a reminder of the ‘false negatives’ extra judicial killings of the past being investigated by the JEP transitional justice court, where we report on new developments. We review the appalling record on human rights and the environment under the present government in Brazil and the possible excessive use of force by the police in Peru, where six demonstrators have died during protests against the increased cost of food, fuel and fertilizers. We look at the challenges faced by the new office of the International Criminal Court in Venezuela and the main candidates for the forthcoming presidential elections in Colombia and Brazil.
REGIONAL
On 27 April, Amnesty published a new report on the impact of the COVID 19 pandemic in Latin America and the Caribbean. The report Unequal and Lethal explains the factors behind the region’s disproportionate death toll and calls on governments across the region urgently to ramp up spending on the right to social protection and health in order to tackle the region’s “obscene socio-economic inequality that has proven fatal during the COVID pandemic”. [Read more…]