Meeting To Focus On Human Rights In Colombia

Award-winning journalist Mario A. Murillo, an associate professor at Hofstra University and former host of Wake Up Call on WBAI Pacifica Radio in New York City, will talk on “The Imperial Presidency of Alvaro Uribe: Human Rights in Colombia,” offering an overview of the state of human rights in Colombia in the midst of the ongoing internal conflict.

The free meeting, sponsored by Amnesty International Group 74, will be held on Sunday, December 6 at 11 a.m. at the Ethical Humanist Society of Long Island, which is located at 38 Old Country Road in Garden City (at the western end of Old Country Road, next to the water tower).

Murillo will look at why, despite growing opposition, President Alvaro Uribe is moving closer to changing the constitution to allow him to have a third term in office. He will ask why the U.S. is complicit in some of the pervasive problems facing Colombia today.

Murillo is an authority on Colombia. He was the recipient of a Fulbright Research Fellowship in 2008, where he worked in Colombia at the Javeriana University in Bogotá. He is the author of “Colombia and the United States: War, Unrest and Destabilization” (Seven Stories, 2004), and is currently finishing a book about the indigenous movement in Colombia.

Murillo is chair of the Radio, Television and Film Department at Hofstra University. He has worked in commercial, public, community and university radio for 25 years.