18 December 2013
Amid growing debate over international drug control policy in Latin America, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) said that a decision by the Uruguayan parliament to legalise cannabis is a strike against international cooperation.
Yuri Fedotov, head of the UNODC, said that ‘Just as illicit drugs are everyone’s shared responsibility, there is a need for each country to work closely together and to jointly agree on the way forward for dealing with this global challenge’.
Source: UNODC | UNODC stresses the health dimension of drug use as Uruguay parliament passes legislation to legalize cannabis
8 March 2013
On 5 March, a human rights trial began in Argentina to investigate the crimes committed during the so-called ‘Operation Condor‘, involving six states, in response to the populist and socialist movements emerging throughout Latin America in the 1960s and 1970s.
The six participating states were Bolivia, Paraguay, Uruguay, Chile, Argentina and Brazil. The operation resulted in tens of thousands of people being kidnapped, tortured and killed by military regimes across the continent. Those who fled repression in one state were often targeted in another state. Al Jazeera quotes from a United States (US) intelligence report from 1976: ‘Intelligence representatives from Bolivia, Uruguay, Paraguay, Brazil, Chile and Argentina decided at a meeting in Santiago early in June to set up a computerised intelligence data bank – known as “Operation Condor”…’ Al Jazeera also notes that Operation Condor was executed with knowledge of the United States.
Source: Al Jazeera | Tracing the shadows of 'Operation Condor'