‘Impunity’ Film Screening at UW-Milwaukee Dec. 10

Film followed by Q & A with Cecilia Zarate Laun from CSN, “Colombia Support Network”, Madison.

In 2005, the Colombian government under President Uribe offered right-wing paramilitary soldiers reduced sentences of five to eight years if they laid down their arms and confessed their crimes. They were accused of torturing, slaughtering and “disappearing” more than 400,000 civilians and forcibly displacing millions from their land. “Impunity” mainly consists of the accused’s videotaped testimony intercut with peasants’ reactions, contrasting the cold-blooded enumeration of atrocities by those who committed them with the grief of those who suffered them.Many war-torn countries struggle to find a post-conflict equilibrium between coexistence and accountability. Judging by Juan Jose Lozano and Hollman Morris’ docu “Impunity,” the Colombian government’s much-touted Peace and Justice initiative is doing a poor, patently hypocritical job of it.’Before being extradited, the most vocal defendant, one “HH,” remarks, “When we say that we cut off a peasant’s head, raped his wife and stole his land, nobody is shocked … but when we talk about who profited, we are attacked.” ‘

A Colombian jurist’s tally of the Peace and Justice Law’s results corroborates the latter opinion: Of 31,600 demobilized paramilitary members, 3,600 were held for prosecution, 600 were tried and only two were convicted.

Link: http://www.impunitythefilm.com/