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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781899365586 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Latin America Bureau |
| Publication date: | 06/01/2003 |
| Pages: | 276 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d) |
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CHAPTER 1
Human Rights
Colombia beats many international records. More trade unionists, journalists and mayors are killed here than anywhere else. It has the highest homicide rate in the Americas. Most notoriously, it has the highest kidnapping rate in the world. More than fifty thousand people have died in political violence since 1980 and the death rate is rising. In 1996 there were eight politically-related deaths a day, by 2001 there were 18 a day.
The statistics are so grim and the violence so widespread that it can appear a blur of incomprehensible horror. Sharpening the focus, it is possible to pick out themes: the counterinsurgency war, the dirty war, guerrilla violence and 'ordinary' criminal violence.
The armed forces and illegal paramilitaries are waging a brutal counterinsurgency war in the countryside. Paramilitaries terrorise civilians in order to undercut support for leftwing guerrillas, who have been fighting the State since the 1960s. Horrific massacres have been carried out to instil fear in the rural population. This war has created a humanitarian catastrophe. Two million people have fled their homes since 1985 and the rate of international displacement is rising. In the year 2000, 317,000 people abandoned their homes.
A military-paramilitary alliance of forces is also waging a related 'dirty war' in towns and cities. Civilians who criticise the authorities – community leaders, trade unionists, human rights workers, investigative journalists, councillors, mayors – are viewed as 'subversive' and therefore legitimate targets. 'Social undesirables' (such as the homeless, prostitutes, gays) are also being killed.
The other main source of political violence are the leftwing guerrillas. Guerrillas are responsible for less than a quarter of political killings in Colombia, but are responsible for more than half of all kidnappings. To fund their war against the state, they routinely kidnap civilians for ransom. In the year 2001 the two main guerrilla groups, the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC) and the Ejército de Liberación Nacional (ELN) abducted 1,589 people.
It is important to note that most violence in Colombia does not have an explicit political motive. In 2001, 9% of the 26,540 homicides were clearly political assassinations and less than 7% of the people who died violent deaths in that year were killed in combat (on all sides). Colombia has one of the highest murder rates in the world: nine times greater than the United States and 28 times greater than the United Kingdom. In 1991 murder became the main cause of unnatural death. There are many reasons for the high level of violence and Colombia has created a special type of social scientist – the violentologist – to analyse them. Poverty and inequality play a part, but cannot be the only explanation as Colombia is not the poorest country in Latin America nor the most unequal. Colombia's history of recurrent civil wars and resulting enmities are important factors; but it is only in recent years that the level of violence has climbed to such heights: in the 1970s Colombia had a similar murder rate to Brazil, by the 1990s it was three times higher.
Colombia is suffering a crisis of the State that encompasses the political crisis but is broader than it. For political and historical reasons examined in the next chapter, the elite no longer has confidence in the State security forces. Landowners, businesses and local politicians have resorted to hiring private gunmen to defend their interests. The general population has little faith in the justice system, correctly perceiving that there is little chance of any criminal being caught. Only 5% of crimes in the 1990s were investigated and just 1% resulted in convictions, according to government figures; this compares with a conviction rate of 5% in the 1970s and 20% in the 1960s. Drugs are not the cause of this crisis, but have exacerbated it. During the 1970s and 1980s, the establishment turned a blind eye to – or shared in the profits of – the drugs trade, enabling the cartels gradually to undermine the judiciary and penetrate the state apparatus. The cartels followed a policy of plata o plomo [silver or lead} to cow the legal profession. Forty judges and lawyers were killed each year between 1979 and 1991, and many more fled the country, left their jobs, kept quiet or accepted bribes. Similarly many police officers were corrupted or killed. This has fatally undermined the rule of law in Colombia. It has also led to a proliferation of armed criminal gangs and professional hitmen known as sicarios.
The counterinsurgency war
As dawn broke on July 15, 1997, two hundred paramilitary gunmen occupied the small town of Mapiripán, in eastern Colombia. They rounded up the town's leaders and began to search for peasants who they believed had taken part in recent protests against coca eradication. A number of residents, as well as people arriving on a river-boat, were detained. They were taken to the local slaughterhouse, where they were bound and tortured, before having their throats slit. The first man to be killed, Antonio Marfa Herrera, was hung from a hook, while the assailants chopped up his body and threw the pieces into the Guaviare River. Sinaí Blanco, a boatman, and Ronald Valencia, the local airstrip manager, were decapitated. At least 22 people were killed. Most of the bodies were thrown into the river and were disembowelled so that they would not float.
Judge Leonardo Iván Cortés reported hearing the screams from the slaughterhouse for five days while paramilitaries tortured and interrogated their victims. He sent five written pleas for help and made eight telephone calls to the regional authorities. In one letter he wrote:
'Each night they kill groups of five to six defenceless people, who are cruelly and monstrously massacred after being tortured. The screams of humble people are audible, begging for mercy and asking for help.'
But neither the police nor the local army unit – the Joaquin Paris Battalion – responded until the paramilitaries had left the town five days later.
The two hundred gunmen had arrived at San José del Guaviare airport days before the massacre, but the army made no attempt to apprehend the men. General Jaime Humberto Uscátgui, commander of the Seventh Brigade, the regional army division, later tried to falsify documents relating to the massacre. Judge Cortes and his family subsequently left Colombia after receiving death threats.
Carlos Castaño, the leader of the paramilitary group responsible, the Autodefensas Campesinas de Córdoba y Urabá (ACCU), told reporters there would be 'many more Mapiripáns'. He was right. The number of massacres rose from 286 in 1997, to 403 in 1999. In the first six months of 2000, there were 235 massacres, in which 1,073 people died. Paramilitary groups, linked to the armed forces, were formed in the 1980s ostensibly to fight guerrillas. A United Nations report for the year 2000 stated:
'The paramilitaries claim to be a counterinsurgency force. In practice they almost exclusively attack defenceless civilians in operations of deliberate and surprising cruelty involving large deployments of armed men for purely punitive ends.'
They carry out massacres as part of a strategy to eliminate real or perceived support for guerrillas among the rural population. It is a tactic known as 'leaving the fish without water'. AUC leader Carlos Castaño told one reporter: 'We realised that we could isolate (the guerrillas} and saw that this was a strategy that had very good results'. Methods such as sawing off limbs and throwing acid in victims' faces have been used to terrorise. The UN report stated:
'The majority of the massacres were committed during violent paramilitary raids ... The common characteristic of these massacres was the deliberate and extreme cruelty involved, including utter atrocities inflicted on those accused of sympathising with the insurgents. They caused unease and terror among the civilian population.'
One instance of terror in recent Colombian history led the Colombian ombudsman to say 'the chainsaw massacre is not a movie in Colombia'. On April 12, 2001, during Easter week, five hundred AUC paramilitaries descended on Alto Naya, a remote mountainous region in southern Colombia inhabited by indigenous communities. The paramilitaries trekked from village to village, murdering inhabitants with chainsaws. 'Dead bodies were left strewn in the road' reported the ombudsman. 'A 17-year-old girl had her throat cut and both hands also amputated,' he said. 'The remains of a woman were exhumed. Her abdomen was cut open with a chainsaw.' The exact number of victims is unknown. The ombudsman's office confirmed the existence of 22 corpses, but since many bodies were thrown into gorges and rivers, it is estimated that the death toll was closer to 40. The Spanish human rights group Equipo Nizkor reported that more than 100 people were killed.
Like Mapiripán, there is strong evidence that the military colluded with the paramilitaries in Alto Naya. The ombudsman's report into the massacre concluded:
'It is inexplicable how approximately 500 paramilitaries could carry out an operation of this type without being challenged in any way, especially since the area that these men entered is only twenty minutes from the village of Timba, where a base operated by the Colombian Army is located and has been staffed since March 30 of this year.'
The dirty war
The same paramilitary-military alliance is waging a dirty war in towns and cities. The first targets of this systematic killing campaign were leftwingers, trade unionists and grassroots community activists. In the 1990s it was extended to anyone who criticised the military: human rights workers, employees of the ombudsman's office, journalists, local state officials, mayors, councillors and even national congressmen. All fell under the category of 'subversive'. 'Anti-social elements' (prostitutes, drug-addicts, gays, homeless) were also targeted. The United Nations report states:
'As regards "selective" killings, during the period covered by this report [year 2000} municipal officials, candidates for a variety of popularly elected posts, demobilized servicemen, indigenous persons, academics, students, trade unionists and human rights defenders, among others, met violent deaths at the hands of paramilitaries.'
On average three trade unionists were killed each week during the year 2001. The Colombian trade union congress, Confederación Unitaria de Trabajadores (CUT), estimates that since 1986, 3,800 union leaders and activists have been assassinated. Many others have fled their homes following death threats. Teachers are one of the most targeted groups: in the department of Antioquia, 32 teachers were killed between January 2000 and March 2001. They are chosen because of their perceived position of 'influence' in the community and because the teachers' union, Fecode, has a record of militancy. A young teacher (28) and trainee teacher (26), who were both too scared to have their names published, described how working in Antioquia left them with a constant feeling of fear and unease. 'I don't talk to members of any armed group,' one said, 'not even the police.'
Oil workers are another heavily repressed sector. At least 125 members of the oil workers' union, Unión Sindical Obrera de la Industria del Petroleo, USO, have been killed in the last decade. At the time of writing in 2002, the most recent murder was that of Aury Sará, president of the Cartagena branch of USO. He was kidnapped by gunmen on November 30, 2001. His body and that of his bodyguard were found on wasteland on 5 December. Many other public sector workers have also been attacked. In December 2000, Wilson Borja Díaz, the president of Colombia's public sector union, Fenaltrase, and a leading member of the CUT, was shot by gunmen who, following judicial investigations, were found likely to have been active and retired military and police officers. Borja survived and after temporarily fleeing the country, returned and was elected to Congress.
Human Rights Workers
Human rights workers are viewed as a threat because they document abuses committed by the military and the paramilitary. They have been victims of selected assassinations for two decades, but in the late 1990s the AUC made them a priority target. Carlos Castaño said:
'[This] marks the beginning of a regrettable, but inevitable stage in the conflict ... We do not want to create panic in the non-governmental organisations, but we do call for a purge of guerrillas from said organisations, a call we extend to the human rights department of the Attorney General's office'.
One group which came under particular attack was the Association of Family Members of the Detained and Disappeared (Asfaddes). Asfaddes member Elizabeth Cañas Cano was shot dead on June 11, 2000 near her office. Two other members, Angel Quintero and Claudia Patricia Monsalves, were disappeared in Medellfn, Antioquia, on October 6, 2000. After this date, the group received constant death threats, including one in which a woman could be heard crying and begging for mercy as though she were being tortured. The group temporarily stopped its activities in December 2000 to protect the lives of its members.
The regional human rights corporation in northeastern Colombia, Credhos, was another victim of the paramilitary onslaught. Seven Credhos members have been shot dead and twelve have had to flee the region since 1992.
Collusion, lies and impunity
The government of Andrés Pastrana (1998-2002) claimed that the human rights situation in Colombia was improving. It admitted that there had been 'isolated' cases of collusion between the military and paramilitaries in the past, but asserted that the government was doing all it could to crack down on them. Nobody else agreed. In 2000, a United Nations report stated:
'Paramilitary operations against the civilian population have been stepped up in intensity and frequency; far from diminishing, they have increased; but they have not encountered any governmental action aimed at stopping them.'
Furthermore, the Colombian Office of the UN Human Rights Commission said that the government had hindered its work:
'The [UN} Office has also experienced some difficulties in dealing with the Government. Bodies through which, since starting up operations in Colombia, it has been providing the State with support and advice ... have been dismantled, sidelined by key Government policies ... the overwhelming majority of Governmental responses to Office communications about specific cases and situations (such as early warnings) have been unsatisfactory, inoperative and purely bureaucratic.'
Over 80% of arrest warrants issued by the Attorney General's office against alleged paramilitaries, including 22 warrants against Carlos Castaño, have not been carried out. The number of arrests of alleged paramilitaries fell from 120 in 1998 to just 65 in 2000. Government officials told Human Rights Watch that the military either refused to send forces to make the arrests or gave paramilitaries prior warning.
The Pastrana government devoted more energy to an international whitewashing campaign. The Human Right Watch investigation concluded:
'The Pastrana administration has spent a great deal of energy, money and time on a public relations campaign designed to show that it has made significant progress in improving human rights protections. That campaign generates a blizzard of reports, statements, graphs, tables, press releases, and pamphlets asserting that notable gains have been achieved. Yet after a review of many of these materials, Human Rights Watch concluded that they are notoriously unreliable, occasionally contradictory, often fictitious, sloppy and frequently plain wrong.'
The PR drive was particularly important because President Pastrana was trying to persuade foreign governments to contribute to Plan Colombia. One element of this propaganda campaign was to highlight the fact that abuses by military officers had fallen. Figures from the Colombian Commission of Jurists show that between 1993 and 2000 the armed forces' responsibility for human rights violations fell from 54% to 4% and one explanation for this could indeed be that the armed forces had cleaned up their act. However there is a another possible explanation: that in order to improve the military's image and to prevent it from being directly implicated in human rights abuses, the job of physically carrying out the atrocities was passed to the paramilitaries while the army's role shifted to providing 'logistical' support.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Inside Colombia"
by .
Copyright © 2003 Grace Livingstone.
Excerpted by permission of Practical Action Publishing.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements, 6,
Foreword, 7,
Introduction, 25,
Chapter 1: Human Rights, 29,
Chapter 2: History, 59,
Chapter 3: The Economy, 95,
Chapter 4: Drugs, 123,
Chapter 5: Plan Colombia, 147,
Chapter 6: The United States and Colombia, 171,
Chapter 7: Facts and figures, 203,
Bibliography, 244,
Notes, 249,
Index, 271,