COSTA RICA: Controversial Plan for U.S.-Run Int’l Police Academy

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

José Eduardo Mora

SAN JOSE, Sep 18 2003 (IPS) - A proposal to open a U.S.-run international police academy in Costa Rica continues stirring up heated debate in this Central American country, where a movement of civil society groups is opposed to the initiative.

The main arguments against the proposed International Law Enforcement Academy (ILEA) are that it would undermine Costa Rica’s national sovereignty and long-standing policy of neutrality, could open the country up to potential terrorist threats, and would hurt the international image of a peaceful country that Costa Rica has long cultivated.

In June 2002, Minister of Public Security Rogelio Ramos and U.S. Ambassador to Costa Rica John Danilovich signed an agreement to establish the ILEA, which would be the first in Latin America and the fifth of its kind in the world, after academies set up by Washington in Bangkok, Thailand; Budapest, Hungary; Gaborone, Botswana; and the U.S. city of Roswell, New Mexico.

The bill that would give the green light to construction of the academy is currently being discussed by the nine-member congressional International Affairs Commission, and may be approved within the next few weeks – a majority of the Commission-members publicly support the initiative – after which it would go before the Costa Rican Congress.

”Costa Rica invests money in guaranteeing respect for human rights and creating a civilian police force, and the establishment of the academy would imply a setback in that sense,” said Arturo Fournier with the American Association of Jurists in Costa Rica.

According to the bill, the ILEA would provide training in the western hemisphere for middle-ranking police directors, prosecutors and judges in the identification and combat of transnational crimes like terrorism and the trafficking of drugs, human beings and organs.

The ILEA’s stated objective is to strengthen criminal justice institutions in Latin America, and improve the links between the hemisphere’s civilian law enforcement authorities.

But Fournier argued that ”The installation of the academy would bring geopolitical problems for Costa Rica, which could even become the target of terrorist attacks.”

According to the bill under discussion in the International Affairs Commission, the ILEA would be a strictly civilian body, and would have no military function or objective.

Fournier, however, said it would provide courses in fighting terrorism and in handling firearms and explosives.

The ILEA would be under the direction of U.S. functionaries, who would enjoy diplomatic immunity. Costa Rica would provide the property on which to build the academy, and would appoint an executive director, with merely administrative functions.

Carlos Alvarado, national director of the Costa Rican coast guard and an adviser to Minister Ramos, emphatically denied in a conversation with IPS that the ILEA would be military in nature, and insisted that it would bring benefits to Costa Rica because a higher number of slots would be reserved for law enforcement authorities from Costa Rica than from other countries.

”Those who argue that the academy will be partially military in nature are lying, and those who see any link between the academy and the School of the Americas, which used to operate in Panama, don’t know the difference between a soldier and a police officer,” he said.

A number of Latin American officers and strongmen who were involved in coups and human rights violations in their countries had received training at the U.S. army’s School of the Americas, which operated in the Panama Canal Zone until 1984 and now functions in Fort Benning, in Columbus, Georgia under a new name, the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation.

”Police, who will receive training at the academy, have the specific objective of protecting the rights established by the state, unlike the military, whose basic mission is to destroy the enemy,” said Alvarado.

He said the courses and programmes ”will be defined by the various countries of Latin America, according to their needs,” although the United States will provide the staff, build the physical infrastructure, and cover 95 percent of the costs.

But lawmaker Rodrigo Alberto Carazo of the Citizen Action Party said ”Costa Rica would not only lend the territory for their use, but would also lay out the red carpet.”

Carazo, a former ombudsman, said civil society must organise and pressure Congress to prevent the ratification of the bill that would permit the construction of the ILEA.

”We have to ask ourselves what lies behind the academy, and why they want to install it in Costa Rica,” he underlined.

The secretary-general of the National Association of Public Employees, Albino Vargas, said his trade union is ”staunchly opposed to the academy,” and criticised those who try to present it as an institution with a ”human rights” focus.

In Vargas’s view, the founding of the ILEA in Costa Rica forms part of ”a U.S. geopolitical strategy that includes Plan Colombia (an anti-drug and counterinsurgency plan in that civil war-torn country), the free trade treaty that the United States is negotiating with Central America, and the (future) Free Trade Area of the Americas.”

The creation of ”a new school for police” is unnecessary in a country that already has a National Police Academy and a Judicial School, he argued.

Costa Rica abolished its army in 1948.

The trade unionist lamented the fact that former president Oscar Arias (1986-1990), a 1987 Nobel Peace laureate, has remained silent on the question.

”I urge Mr. Arias to take a public stance on the academy. His total silence on an issue of such importance to our country is surprising to me,” said Vargas.

The bill for the establishment of the ILEA specifies the creation of a ”joint committee” comprised of representatives of the judicial and executive branches, a delegate of the Costa Rica-based Inter-American Human Rights Institute, and a representative of the office of the people’s defender (ombudsman).

Critics of the proposed ILEA say it is strange that a representative of the Inter-American Human Rights Institute would be appointed to the joint committee, since the United States does not recognise the Institute, and does not accept the decisions handed down by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, also based in Costa Rica.

The office of the people’s defender has already refused to sit on the joint committee. In a letter addressed to the chairman of the congressional International Affairs Commission, lawmaker Rolando Laclé, it argued that its participation in the initiative would ”lead to a restriction of this office’s oversight function.”

The office of the people’s defender also noted that the bill for the creation of the ILEA only mentions human rights two times, despite the argument that the academy would defend such rights.

The Costa Rican bar association and association of high school teachers are also opposed to the creation of the ILEA, arguing that it would bring more harm than benefits to this country of 3.8 million.