Mexican Senator Rosario Green, President of the Committee of the Human Rights of Parliamentarians of the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU), gave her report to the IPU Governing Council on the last day of the 124th IPU Assembly in Panama City. The Committee had examined the individual situations of 374 parliamentarians in 39 countries, among them public cases in Bangladesh, Belarus, Burundi, Cambodia, Colombia, Ecuador, Eritrea, Iraq, Lebanon, Madagascar, Malaysia, Mongolia, Myanmar, Palestine, the Philippines, the Russian Federation, Rwanda, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Turkey and Zimbabwe.
Among the new cases presented to the IPU Governing Council, Senator Green referred to once concerning a number of Colombian legislators. Senator Green had led a Committee delegation visit to Bogotá, at the invitation of the Colombian Congress, in October 2010. The delegation had exchanged views with the new Colombian authorities, and with the victims and their families. The delegation focused on the investigations into the murders of members of the Congress, protection for those at risk and the question of full respect for the right to fair trial for Congress members. The delegation also met with former parliamentarian Alvaro Araújo, in the prison in the north of Colombia where he was serving his sentence before being released in February this year.
In her report, Senator Green highlighted the case of former Senator Piedad Córdoba. Days before the IPU delegation reached Bogota, the Colombian Procuraduría, through a disciplinary sanction and in the absence of a criminal conviction, debarred Senator Piedad Córdoba from holding public office for 18 years in the belief that she promoted Colombia's largest guerrilla group FARC. "The Committee is appalled at the harshness of what is a disciplinary sanction and the fact that it was imposed when criminal proceedings were still under way. It also believes that there is still suspicion that she was punished for what in fact should be considered a political activity. An appeal is pending and the Committee is exploring the possibility of sending a trial observer", said Senator Green.
The second new case concerns death threats against members of the opposition party Democratic Alternative Pole by groups that look much like the paramilitary groups that the authorities said they had dismantled. "The Committee is extremely concerned about these threats, all the more as the history of the Patriotic Union shows how political persecution can take shape, and with what devastating consequences, if it is not immediately stopped. The Committee therefore calls on the authorities to do everything they can to identify and bring the culprits to trial and to provide those who have been threatened with effective protection", said the President of the Committee on the Human Rights of MPs.
Senator Green also presented, for the first time, the case of 180 former legislators in Thailand. They were members of one of four Thai political parties. Through two separate decisions, the Constitutional Tribunal dissolved those parties and disbarred all parliamentarians from exercising their political rights for five years. It did so after finding a total of five individuals in these parties guilty of corruption and electoral fraud.
"The Committee is deeply concerned at the collective disbarment, which was based on legal provisions adopted after the military coup in September 2006, and which have the effect of retroactively punishing entire groups for the behaviour of a few individuals. The Committee is likewise concerned that their disbarment deprives the significant part of the Thai population that they represent of its voice in Parliament and of a free choice to elect its representatives in elections scheduled for mid-2011. The Committee calls on the competent Thai authorities, including the Parliament, to do everything possible to modify the sweeping legal provisions that were applied in this case, and to look at ways to have the disbarment of the parliamentarians reconsidered", concluded Senator Green.
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