President Alvaro Uribe is often credited with improving the security situation in the country due to the demobilization of the notorious Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) paramilitaries and a reduction in homicides and kidnappings. While it is true that security in Colombia is different now than it was during the 1980s era of the infamous Medellin cartels, Colombia has paid a high price for this security. Policies linked to Uribe’s strategy of democratic security have taken a toll on Colombian civilians, including Afrodescendants, indigenous, rural farmers and human rights defenders. Victims of countless massacres and atrocities committed by the AUC saw their cases languish as perpetrators continued to operate with impunity. The collaboration of members of the armed forces and politicians with paramilitary forces has been widely exposed but far from sufficiently punished. Currently, eighteen former members of the AUC, including its leadership, are in US jails facing drug charges, but not charges of murder and conspiracy to commit murder.
While Secretary Clinton will acknowledge that changes have taken place in Colombia, she must also encourage Colombians to take a new approach to security that addresses the country’s grave human rights problems. First on the list are the more than 2,000 cases of alleged extrajudicial executions committed by the Colombian armed forces funded with US taxpayer dollars, in which soldiers killed civilians and dressed them up to look like guerrillas to up their body counts. While pressure from the US government has helped to reduce the number of extrajudicial executions, there continues to be a disturbing lack of progress on reducing impunity in landmark cases, including even the most notorious, the 2008 killing of young men in Soacha. In this case, 31 military officers accused of involvement were released. A similar story of releases and delays is seen in other, far less public cases.
The Secretary should publicly condemn the recent upsurge of death threats against human rights defenders across Colombia and even in the United States. On April 10, and again on May 18, the paramilitary group Los Rastrojos sent death threats to over 60 Colombian human rights organizations, individuals and international organizations. On May 14, the U.S.-based Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA) received a death threat in its email allegedly from the Colombian paramilitary group the Black Eagles directed at over 80 Colombian human rights, Afro-Colombian, indigenous, internally displaced and labor rights organizations and individuals. On May 18, human rights defender and member of a national victims’ movement Rogelio Martinez was murdered by a group of hooded men. A few days later, Alexander Quintero, who worked closely with Afro-Colombian communities who survived the horrific Naya massacre, was also killed. Many threats have turned into reality. According to Amnesty International, eight human rights defenders and 39 trade unionists were killed in 2009. The Colombian NGO Somos Defensores puts the number of threats and attacks committed against human rights defenders in 2009 at 177.
Secretary Clinton must make it clear to the new President that Colombia’s intelligence agencies should not be used to spy on and sabotage activities of the very forces that make a democracy flourish. A still-unfolding scandal in Colombia is revealing that the government’s intelligence agency not only spied upon every conceivable player in Colombia’s democracy—from Supreme Court and Constitutional Court judges to presidential candidates, from journalists and publishers to union leaders and human rights defenders, from international organizations to U.S. and European human rights groups—but also carried out dirty tricks, and even death threats, to undermine their legitimate, democratic activities.
While it is a positive step that the United States and Colombia recently signed an action plan that seeks to eliminate forms of racial and ethnic discrimination in both countries, the State Department must not lose sight of defending the basic human rights of Afrodescendant and indigenous Colombians. These ethnic minority civilian communities are caught in the conflict, the subject of abuses by all sides, including paramilitaries, guerrillas and members of the armed forces. The recent bombings by FARC guerillas and murders of civilians utilizing chainsaws by paramilitaries in Buenaventura and Guapi, both majority Afro-Colombian areas, are evidence that simply upping the number of soldiers without addressing impunity does not improve civilians’ security. New reports of killings, threats and internal displacements of Afro-Colombian and indigenous leaders and their communities abound. For example, two months ago, eight Afro-Colombian miners were massacred and another wounded by paramilitary forces in Suarez, northern Cauca. In 2009, more than 114 indigenous persons were killed. Last year, some 280,000 persons, many of whom are ethnic minorities, became newly internally displaced due to the on-going internal armed conflict, violence and human rights abuses The situation for indigenous communities is so dire that the ONIC has launched a worldwide “extinctions” campaign to prevent another 32 indigenous ethnic groups from becoming culturally and physically extinct.
As Colombians go to the polls to elect their new President, Secretary of State Clinton can best support our Colombian neighbors by sending an unmistakable message that it is in that country’s security interest to bring abusers to justice, strengthen the rule of law, protect the society’s most vulnerable groups and uphold the work of the nation’s valiant human rights defenders. June 9, 2010
By Gimena Sanchez, Senior Associate, Washington Office on Latin America, Lisa Haugaard, Executive Director, Latin America Working Group Education Fund and Kelly Nicholls, Executive Director, US Office on Colombia
