Impunity, arms push rights to the side

Volume 4

July - September 2002

Impunity, arms push rights to the side

IN the past two years, Colombia has experienced a dramatic increase in human rights abuses. The 38-year-old civil war between the Government of Colombia and guerrilla forces has escalated, and paramilitary groups have stepped up their campaign of politically-motivated killings, death threats and so-called "social cleansing", leaving the civilian population caught in the crossfire between the military and paramilitary on one side and guerrilla groups on the other. There are over 20 deaths per day attributed to the conflict, of which an enormous 80 percent are civilian. The government continues to fail to crackdown on paramilitary forces that are responsible for the majority of killings and disappearances, and impunity persists for serious violations of human rights and humanitarian law. Threats and violence have led to the displacement of nearly three quarters of a million civilians by the end of 2001.

Conditions worsened in February of this year when a failed attempt at peace negotiations between the Pastrana administration and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) ushered in a return to combat in an area that had been designated a demilitarised zone and ceded to rebel forces by the government. The military has subsequently begun to reclaim control of the two regions while escalating its fight against the FARC.

The FARC and National Liberation Army (ELN) guerrilla groups commit serious human rights and humanitarian law abuses, among them massacres, targeted killings, kidnapping and hostage taking, and indiscriminate attacks with gas cylinder bombs that often kill innocent civilian bystanders.

At the same time, the Colombian military has maintained links with and failed to effectively confront paramilitary organisations that were responsible for over a hundred massacres of Colombian civilians in the last year. An estimated 80 percent of serious human rights abuses are perpetrated by paramilitary forces, the largest of which is the United Self-Defense Groups of Colombia (AUC). Impunity for government security forces and the paramilitary is pervasive. The government has not made any meaningful progress in holding accountable elements of the armed forces that have been implicated in the most serious human rights abuses.

In April 2002, the UNHCHR released its annual report detailing the human rights situation in Colombia during 2001. The report, along with those recently released by the Special Rapporteur on violence against women, the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on human rights defenders, the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights and fundamental freedoms of indigenous people, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, documents the patterns of violations committed by guerrillas, paramilitaries and the government.

Appalling Act

A new security law, the National Security and Defence Act, was enacted in August 2001. A number of independent observers and organisations, including the UNHCHR and the CCJ, have pronounced the Act unconstitutional both for its substance and the clandestine manner in which it was enacted. Their concerns include that the Act:

sets up a new type of state of emergency which is outside the Constitution;
imposes military authority over civil authority;
allows for the consideration of the civilian population as one of the combatants;
fails to ensure the independence of the judiciary and may have an adverse effect on due process;
institutes a fourth power "national power" - independent from the three branches of government contemplated by the Constitution - based on the "doctrine of national security."

For those civilians that had been living under unwanted guerrilla control in the former demilitarised zone, the Act continues to deprive villagers of their right to an independent civil judiciary. Instead, the Act mandates that their claims of human rights abuses, usually committed by paramilitaries in complicity with State security forces, must be adjudicated by military tribunals.

Extrajudicial killings were commonplace and unabated in the last year. The killings are both politically motivated and targeted against the socially marginalised - homosexuals, street vendors, drug addicts, prostitutes, street children and others.

Extrajudicial killings were committed by all of the armed groups. The guerrillas stage roadblocks and kidnappings and often torture and kill their abductees. The paramilitaries are the largest perpetrator of extrajudicial killings, and their campaign of political-motivated killings and intimidation increased in the past year. Specially targeted groups include trade unionists, human rights defenders, liberal politicians, and anyone suspected of being supportive of the guerrilla groups. The International Labour Organisation reports that there have been more than 3800 unpunished assassinations of trade unionists in the past 15 years. In 2001, 162 trade unionists were killed, and 79 'disappeared'. As a result, several labour organisations have dismantled. Already in the first quarter of 2002, 85 trade unionists had been assassinated.

Human rights defenders have increasingly come under attack from the combatants. They were victims of homicides, forced disappearances, murder attempts, wire-tapping, judicial persecution and arrests. Nine members of human rights NGOs were killed between January and November 2001. Human Rights Watch (HRW) stated that "in key areas of the country, human rights monitoring has virtually stopped due to these kinds of threats".

There has been a systematic campaign of "social cleansing" in which communities of ethnic minorities are specifically targeted for violence and threats by the paramilitary forces. Several indigenous leaders were murdered in 2001, and indigenous and Afro-Colombians are disproportionately displaced from their communities. While paramilitaries commit most of the violations, the FARC have also been responsible for extrajudicial killings and threats to indigenous people.

Violence against women remains prevalent. The Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women reported that armed combatants, including the military and police, commit violent crimes and perpetrate sexual slavery against women and girls. The guerrilla groups and paramilitaries have conducted kidnappings of girls for the purposes of sexual slavery. The Special Rapporteur also reported many instances in which kidnapped women were sexually assaulted prior to being executed. Very few abuses against women were investigated and brought to trial.

The level of impunity remains alarming. Despite the large number of violations committed against the civilian population in Colombia, no effective sanctions are being applied by the State against the perpetrators. The rate of impunity for human rights violations is extremely high. Although there have been occasional dismissals from the Army of those implicated in gross human rights violations, these are largely token proceedings and seldom lead to indictment and prosecution for the underlying crimes. There had been some progress on combating impunity during the term of Attorney General Alfonso Gómez Méndez. However, his replacement, Luis Osorio, has undercut that progress. For example, within hours of taking office, Osorio interfered with his office's Human Rights Unit investigation of Army General Rito Alejo del Rio, who was under investigation for having promoted paramilitary groups. Osorio later forced the resignation of the director of the Human Rights Unit who had played a role in implementing measures of accountability for paramilitary crimes.

Forced displacements rose dramatically in 2001. Colombia had the second largest increase in internal displacement in the world, up from 190,500 to 720,000. Colombia is now among the countries with the largest internally displaced population, after only Sudan and Angola. Over two million people are estimated to have been displaced as a result of violence since 1985. Colombians were the seventh largest group of asylum seekers worldwide in 2001.

The Colombian Commission of Jurists (CCJ) reports that last year 375,000 people were displaced due to human rights violations, breaches of humanitarian law and indiscriminate pesticide spraying that is part of the US-backed drug interdiction policy. The intensification of combat this year has aggravated the problem, leading to incidents such as the mass displacement of over 10,000 people in Magdalena between January and mid-February 2002.

The internally displaced are particularly vulnerable. The Colombian government has granted emergency humanitarian aid to only 20 percent of them, and studies estimate that 70 percent of IDPs have lost their lands (UN World Food Programme, 8 September 1999), compounding the gross resource inequities that partly underlie the armed conflict.

In recent presidential elections, growing popular disillusion with guerrilla violence led to the March 25th election of a right-wing former governor, Álvaro Uribe Vélez, who promised to press for a full scale military confrontation with the guerrillas. Regrettably, the President has failed to specify a plan to deal with the right-wing paramilitaries. Indeed, many human rights observers predict extrajudicial killings, disappearances and social cleansing will only increase under Uribe, whose governorship has been linked to paramilitary actions in the past. Uribe's proposal to set up a network of one million informers to support the armed forces in the war against insurgent organisations, is reminiscent of his policy of using civilian spies, called "Convivirs," during his term as governor. HRW found that these groups were poorly supervised and regulated, and several were formed by known paramilitary leaders or became criminal gangs.

One positive development occurred on 5 August 2002, literally in the final hours of the Pastrana's presidency: ratification of the International Criminal Court (ICC). Under Article 8 of the ICC statute, the Court has jurisdiction over war crimes committed in an internal armed conflict, regardless of whether the violations are perpetrated by governmental, paramilitary or guerrilla groups. The degree to which the ICC can curtail ongoing violations, however, will depend largely on domestic political will and the ICC's yet-to-be-selected Chief Prosecutor.

Following the events of 11 September 2001, US aid to Colombia has shifted from drug interdiction to anti-terrorism measures. The policy shift from attempted peace negotiations to anti-terrorism measures, supported by the redirection of US aid and the subsequent certification of Colombian compliance with human rights preconditions on US funding, will lead to an increasingly militarised Colombia at the expense of the human rights of Colombians.

The escalating human rights crisis in Colombia requires the international community to increase its efforts to pressure the Government of Colombia to meaningfully address the recommendations made by the UNHCHR. The Colombian government must take steps to dismantle the paramilitary groups. The government must tackle impunity by guaranteeing the constitutional function of an independent civil judiciary, with the resources and protections to prosecute rights violators. And the government must address concerns related to the safety of groups in need of special protection - such as human rights defenders, trade unionists, the indigenous and socially marginalised.