Human Rights and Genocide

Washington, D.C., September 19, 2023 – Colombian President Gustavo Petro should comply with the 2014 sentence of the Inter-American Human Rights Court (IACHR) and ask U.S. President Joe Biden to declassify all pertinent U.S. records on the Palace of Justice case, according to Helena Urán Bidegain, the daughter of a court magistrate believed to have been tortured and assassinated by the Colombian Army in the aftermath of the conflagration.

September 8, 2023, Washington D.C. - “In the Eisenhower period, we would be heroes,” Henry Kissinger told President Richard Nixon several days after the overthrow of Salvador Allende in Chile, lamenting that they would not receive credit in the press for this Cold War accomplishment. Fifty years later, as Chileans and the world commemorate the anniversary of the U.S.-backed military takeover that brought General Augusto Pinochet to power, a fierce debate over the extent of the U.S. contribution to the coup continues.

Washington, D.C., August, 25, 2023 - On the morning of the U.S.-backed military coup in Chile, the CIA briefed President Nixon that Chilean military officers were “determined to restore political and economic order” but “may still lack an effectively coordinated plan that would capitalize on the widespread civilian opposition,” according to the President’s Daily Brief (PDB) dated September 11, 1973, declassified today almost 50 years after it was written.

Washington, D.C., August 28, 2023 – On the 20th anniversary of the Peruvian truth commission’s final report, the National Security Archive posts a core collection of declassified U.S. documents chronicling 20 years of conflict across three presidential administrations along with records relating to the 2001 decision to establish a commission to investigate the violence.

Washington, D.C., August 8, 2023 - As the commander in chief of the Chilean army, Gen. René Schneider, lay dying in a hospital after being shot in a CIA-backed coup plot in October 1970, President Nixon placed a phone call to his national security advisor, Henry Kissinger, to ask “What is happening in Chile?” according to a transcript of their conversation posted today by the National Security Archive.

Washington, D.C., April 14, 2023 - Tomás Zerón’s rehabilitation tour has begun.

Washington, D.C., April 18, 2023 – A Colombian taxi driver who last month was handed a 36-month prison sentence for his part in secretly delivering cash payments from Chiquita Brands International to a right-wing “paramilitary” organization played a more extensive role in the scheme than has been reported and was a key intermediary in the 1990s betwe

Washington, D.C., April 3, 2023 - Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE) today announced that the National Security Archive and its partner, Reveal from the Center for Investigative Reporting, are winners of a 2022 IRE Award for “Longform Journalism in Audio” for producing the After Ayotzinapa podcast.

In selecting After Ayotzinapa for the award, IRE judges called it “a jaw-dropping chronicle of a horrendous crime and the lengths that Mexican authorities went to cover it up.”

Washington, D.C., March 10, 2023 - Years before 43 young men from the Ayotzinapa teachers’ college were attacked and forcibly disappeared in Iguala, Guerrero, the Mexican military had the school under surveillance and considered its students to be subversives, according to internal communications and documents from the Mexican armed forces published today by the National Security Archive.