Thread: Critics: Colombia Manipulates Crime Data

Critics: Colombia Manipulates Crime Data
Saturday, February 17, 2007 10:44 PM EST
The Associated Press
By DARCY CROWE
http://broadband.zoomtown.com/news/read ... 755&ps=919
BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) — Critics say President Alvaro Uribe's government is manipulating statistics to make Colombia appear safer than it is, casting doubt on achievements that have made him popular both at home and with the U.S. government.

One of the leading critics is Cesar Caballero, who said he quit as director of the federal statistics office in 2004 because Uribe's office told him not to release a study that found sharply higher homicide rates in major Colombian cities.

"The president's policy is that you have to maintain the perception that security has improved, no matter what the case," Caballero said.

Jose Obdulio Gaviria, a close Uribe adviser, said the government wanted to review the study before publishing it — though he did not explain why it has yet to be released. Caballero insisted the decision was political.

Uribe's aggressive tactics to tame a five-decade-old, cocaine-fueled insurgency have made him one of the most popular presidents in recent Colombian history. He has boosted the ranks of the military and seized territory held by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, the country's biggest rebel group.

The Bush administration has cited a drastic drop in kidnappings to justify continuing some $700 million in annual aid for Colombia, mainly for its military.

U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Nicholas Burns said in a November speech that with U.S. help, Uribe had reduced kidnappings by 72 percent — from 2,882 in 2002 to 800 in 2005.

There is little doubt that kidnappings have fallen since Uribe first took office in 2002. But even some of his supporters have questioned whether the drop is as steep as the government figures cited by Burns.

"Kidnappings have dropped during his presidency, but five years ago these numbers were more reliable," said Olga Lucia Gomez, director of Pais Libre, a nonprofit foundation that helps kidnap victims.

The problem, Gomez said, is that the government has added bureaucratic hurdles to classifying missing people as kidnap victims. Reports of missing people must now go through a special committee of the kidnapping police, which works with prosecutors to determine if there is evidence of an abduction.

The government has not said how many disappearances it has declined to list as abductions or what standards it uses to make such decisions, said Gomez, who supports Uribe's security initiatives but criticizes the new policy for abduction reports.

She said her organization provided assistance for 2,000 kidnapping cases last year, but at least 40 percent were not registered by the government. In many cases, relatives may have not wanted to notify the government. But Gomez fears others may not have met the government's new criteria.

Defense Ministry spokeswoman Isabel Rivera denied the numbers were unreliable and said the new method was meant in part to prevent double-counting of cases that sometimes occurs when more than one government agency receives reports.

U.S. Embassy spokesman Marshall Louis said "it is not the State Department's role to comment on Colombian government statistics."

In his November speech, Burns also cited a sharp drop in the number of Colombians displaced by political violence. But the United Nations has said Uribe's administration is underestimating the internal refugee problem by more than a million people.

The government's figure — 1.9 million — counts only those who were forced to flee their homes by actual violence — not just threats. The U.N. says the real number is 3 million and that the number has risen since Uribe took office, basing its estimate on data compiled mostly by the Roman Catholic Church.

This makes people think how much the rest of the latin/hispanic coutries manipulat statistics or I as call it LIE