One for the lexicon of murderous euphemisms:
In November, the US, Colombia's largest military aid donor at about $500m (£340m) a year, suspended the eligibility for funding to several army units that were believed to be involved in the extrajudicial executions, known as "false positives".
One of those white coated euphemisms, redolent of detached scientific enquiry. I suppose the people who killed them were simply experimenting with gunfire.
This really needs a verb form. In Latin and South America, death squad victims are commonly ‘disappeared’. In India they are ‘encountered’. In the Philippines under Marcos they were ‘pinpointed’. In Colombia we seem to have a choice. Victims can either be ‘positived’ or ‘falsified’.
This kind of euphemism – like the torture that often accompanies it – seems to go back to the Spanish Inquisition, whose victims were relaxed into the control of the government, prior to burning at the stake.
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