Using new tech to free 2 innocent Colombians

Like the overwhelming majority of nonprofit organizations, EN VERO has experienced significant difficulties in meeting its goals in terms of funding since the last year. The global pandemic has negatively impacted our capacity to reach out our usual donors as well as new ones. As a result, the project we launched in April 2020, in the midst of the COVID19 situation has encountered limited success so far. 

Our project #45724 (“Using New Technologies to Free 2 Innocent Colombians”) received $88 in Canadian Dollars (aprox. $71 USD) since our last report on January 2021. Although these numbers remain far below our objectives, this remains a perfectly understandable situation, and many other Human Rights NGOs have suffered similar unfortunate setbacks in their funding campaigns. We are nonetheless thankful to our fellow donors who were able to make a contribution to our projects and activities, no matter the amount, small or large, of the latter, especially given the financial struggles each and every one of us has had to deal with in the past few months.

As a result the limited success of our current fundraising project, our team has been working on a brand new project to be presented the upcoming month of June 2021. Our fundraising team has also been restructured, now joined by M. Gildo Galeana from Canada and Cecilia Tapia from México. M. Galeana was also one of the incipient members of EN VERO as he participated in its foundation. 

Thanks to a major addition to our team of partners in Columbia, i.e. the law firm' SOY TU ABOGADO HOY'based  in Santa Marta, one of the two cases specifically targeted by the project #45724 has shown very promising results, with new strong evidence of the detainee's innocence, which is why we are confident we will be able to obtain the detainee's complete exoneration and release within the next few months.

Freeing the innocent has also led us to intervene directly to humanize prisons and to make sure the inmates are treated with dignity and respect, and that their medical needs are properly attended by prison authorities.

We thank you for your ongoing support and your trust in EN VERO. This alone remains one major incentive to allow our team of dedicated volunteers and activists to do what is right: reforming dysfunctional systems of justice so that they work according to international norms of justice. There is no place on earth where systemic injustice should remain in place. There is no human being treated unfairly who should not be treated as our brother or sister.

David Bertet

President of the Board of Directors

www.en-vero.org

president@en-vero.org

Links:

• EN VERO News Section
• Interview with David Bertet on Wrongful Convictions
• Press Conference of the Observatory of the Amnesty Law.

Like the overwhelming majority of nonprofit organizations, En Vero has experienced significant difficulties in meeting its goals in terms of funding. The global pandemic has negatively impacted our capacity to reach our usual donors as well as new ones. As a result, the project we launched in April 2020, in the midst of the COVID19 situation has encountered limited success so far.

Our project #45724 (“Using New Technologies to Free 2 Innocent Colombians”) received $82 in Canadian Dollars (aprox. $62 USD). As for our other project #21555 (“Un-Prisonment: Freeing the Wrongfully Convicted”), it received an additional total of $ 77 CAD ($55.77 USD) during the same period of time. Although these numbers remain far below our objectives, this is a perfectly understandable situation, and many other Human Rights NGOs have suffered similar unfortunate setbacks in their funding campaigns.

We are also thankful to our fellow donors who were able to make a contribution to our projects and activities, no matter the amount, small or large, of the latter, especially given the financial struggles each and every one of us has had to deal with in the past few months.

The COVID19 pandemic has also changed some of our priorities. We have tended to focus on monitoring the sanitary situations in incarceration centers in Mexico and Colombia, and provided direct assistance to prisoners and their families so that they receive the medical assistance they needed, and will continue to do so until the global situation gets back to normal and beyond. Some governments have shown significant openness and listened to our concerns for the incarcerated, who remain one of the most vulnerable categories of people in our societies.

We were able to make a number of significant accomplishment in our mission to free the wrongfully convicted and we are especially proud of the recent Mexican Amnesty Law that finally opens the path to freedom for many prisoners who were unjustly sent to prison for minor offenses they did not commit. We would like to remind our fellow donors that our current project #45724 aims at gathering new evidence using of forensic technologies to prove beyond any doubt the innocence of two incarcerated Colombians. Forensic technology is an expensive tool (around 7.500 USD for one complete investigation) that has already shown the greatest results in North America.

In the upcoming weeks, En Vero will multiply its efforts to make our new fundraising campaign a success and reach promptly our goal to gather the $21,000 US we are still needing to obtain compelling evidence to exonerate and free two innocent Colombians.

Links:

• En Vero New Website
• Interview with David Bertet on Wrongful Convictions
• Foro Mexico: Violencia de Estado contra las Mujeres (Dic. 2020)