Amnesty International Report 2002 - Colombia

Covering events from January-December 2001

Republic of Colombia
Head of state and government: Andrés Pastrana Arango
Capital: Santafé de Bogotá
Population: 42.3 million
Official language: Spanish
Death penalty: abolitionist for all crimes

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Colombia's internal conflict continued to escalate. Systematic and gross abuses of human rights and international humanitarian law persisted. Paramilitary groups acting with the active or tacit support of the security forces were responsible for the vast majority of extrajudicial executions and "disappearances"; many of their victims were tortured before being killed. Armed opposition groups were responsible for violations of international humanitarian law, including arbitrary or deliberate killings. More than 300 people "disappeared" and more than 4,000 civilians were killed outside of combat for political motives by the armed groups. Over 1,700 people were kidnapped by armed opposition groups and paramilitary forces. All parties to the conflict were responsible for the forced displacement of large numbers of civilians. The security situation of those living in conflict zones, particularly human rights defenders, trade unionists, judicial officials, journalists, members of Afro-Colombian and indigenous communities and peasant farmers, continued to worsen. Evidence emerged of the strong links between the security forces and the paramilitaries. Judicial and disciplinary investigations advanced in several high-profile cases, implicating high-ranking officials in human rights violations, but impunity remained widespread.

Escalating conflict

The intensifying internal conflict affected most areas of the country. Nariño Department saw an intensification of the conflict. Paramilitary forces managed to establish several bases in the region, despite the heavy presence of the armed forces, and carried out a series of incursions into several communities unhindered. Most of the victims of human rights abuses were civilians. Hundreds of massacres, the majority by army-backed paramilitaries, were reported in different parts of the country and over 300,000 civilians were forcibly displaced. Guerrilla attacks on security force bases continued to place civilian communities at considerable risk. Guerrilla and paramilitary forces continued to use child combatants.

Peace process

Peace talks initiated in 1999 between the government and the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC), Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, failed to make substantive progress. Agreement was reached for a limited exchange of combatants.

In September, a Commission of Eminent People presented a report with proposals to advance the peace talks. These proposals included recommendations to agree to a truce, to combat paramilitary forces and put an end to kidnapping. On 5 October the government and the FARC agreed to analyse the Commission's recommendations. However, the peace talks stalled once again when the government rejected a series of FARC demands. At the end of November contacts between the government and the FARC resumed.

Peace talks between the government and the armed opposition group Ejército de Liberación Nacional (ELN) National Liberation Army failed to progress. On 7 August, President Andrés Pastrana announced that the government was suspending peace talks with the ELN. The following day the government removed political status from the ELN. In November talks to explore restarting contacts between the government and the ELN were held in Cuba. In December the government formally reopened peace talks with the ELN.

Paramilitaries

There was a marked increase in the numbers of paramilitaries captured by the security forces. However, the Office of the Attorney General often failed to receive adequate support from the armed forces. Many arrest warrants issued were not carried out. Furthermore, many of those arrested were reportedly released or escaped from security force bases.

Paramilitaries were able to continue to carry out massacres of civilians unhindered.

• In April, over 40 civilians were massacred in the Alto Naya region, Cauca Department, by paramilitaries who were able to enter the region despite the heavy presence of the III Brigade of the Colombian Army and despite repeated warnings, including precautionary measures issued by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights of the Organization of American States, to the authorities of an imminent paramilitary incursion.

Armed forces

Reports were received of direct security force complicity in human rights violations, sometimes in joint operations with paramilitaries. Judicial and disciplinary investigations into human rights violations committed by paramilitaries operating in unison with the security forces continued to implicate high-ranking military officers.

• Criminal investigations were reportedly opened on six paramilitaries and several members of the armed forces in relation to the massacre in January in Chengue, Sucre Department. More than 100 armed men from the paramilitary group Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia (AUC), United Self-Defence Groups of Colombia, had attacked the hamlet of Chengue. They picked out 25 people from a list and hacked them to death with machetes, or shot them. Before they left, the paramilitaries set fire to the hamlet and reportedly seized 10 of the villagers, six of them children; their whereabouts remained unknown at the end of the year. Humanitarian organizations trying to get into the area to help survivors were reportedly turned back by troops of the First Marine Infantry Unit. In July the Office of the Procurator General opened formal disciplinary investigations against eight members of the armed forces. Judicial investigations into the possible involvement of military personnel in the massacre were also under way in 2001.

Armed opposition groups

Armed opposition groups were responsible for numerous abuses including the arbitrary and deliberate killing of hundreds of civilians. Journalists, indigenous leaders and politicians were among those members of civilian society particularly targeted by guerrilla forces for opposing their policies or exposing their abuses. Scores of civilians were wounded or killed in the course of indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks against military targets.

• In February, seven young trekkers were killed in the Puracé Natural Park, Cauca Department, following their abduction by FARC forces of the XIII Front. In March the FARC admitted responsibility for the massacre. In November AI wrote to the FARC leadership raising this and other cases of abuses, but no reply had been received by the end of the year.
• Pablo Emilio Parra Castañeda, the manager of a radio station in Tolima Department, was killed on 27 June, reportedly by members of the FARC who accused him of being an informant.
• ELN guerrillas of the María Cano Front killed a 73-year-old member of the indigenous community of Katío Tegual La Po in the municipality of Segovia, Antioquia Department.
• On 15 May, ELN guerrillas entered the Campo Dos area, Tibú Municipality, Norte de Santander Department. They threatened several members of the civilian population, accusing them of collaborating with the army, and killed Francisco Javier Rola and Luis Burgos.

Kidnapping

2001 saw continued high levels of kidnappings and hostage-taking. Guerrilla forces were responsible for an estimated 60 per cent of around 3,000 kidnappings. Paramilitaries also increasingly resorted to hostage-taking and were responsible for an estimated eight per cent of reported kidnappings. Hostages held by guerrilla forces were killed during confrontations with the security forces.

• On 24 September, Consuelo Araújo Noguera, a former Minister of Culture and the wife of the Procurator General, was kidnapped, together with 24 other people, by the 59th Front of the FARC, in Patillal, near Valledupar, Cesar Department. The majority of the hostages were released by 25 September. Consuelo Araújo Noguera was killed by the FARC on 30 September.
• Timothy Parks, a British citizen who was being held hostage by the ELN, was killed on 28 October during an armed confrontation between the ELN and the armed forces in Chocó Department.

The FARC and the ELN agreed to end collective kidnappings in October and December respectively.

Plan Colombia

There was continuing concern that Plan Colombia, a controversial US, mainly military, aid package, was contributing to the escalating human rights crisis.

In the south of the country, intensification of the conflict and human rights abuses led to large-scale forced displacement in areas in which US-funded anti-narcotics battalions were operating. FARC forces also committed human rights abuses in these areas. There were reports that paramilitary activity intensified in several regions where fumigations, ostensibly of illicit drug cultivation, were taking place or where US-funded units were operating.

• There were reports that between September 2000 and April 2001 at least 7,000 people had fled Putumayo Department to Ecuador and another 8,000 were internally displaced as a result of Plan Colombia fumigations and the military operations by both sides in the conflict.

Persecution of human rights defenders, social activists and other civilian sectors

Attacks and threats against national human rights organizations intensified throughout the year. Groups targeted for abuses included peasant farmers; Afro-Colombian and indigenous communities living in conflict zones or areas of economic interest; those campaigning for socio-economic alternatives or seeking to protect land rights, including trade unionists, community leaders and environmental activists; and those exposing violations of human rights and international humanitarian law, including human rights defenders, journalists and judicial officials.

At least 10 journalists were killed and many others were threatened by either guerrilla or paramilitary forces.

There was a significant increase in attacks against trade unionists. By November over 140 had been killed, the majority by paramilitaries. Investigations into the attempted murder of trade union leader Wilson Borja Díaz in December 2000, for which national paramilitary leader Carlos Castaño immediately admitted responsibility, implicated several active and retired security force officers.

• Human rights worker Yolanda Cerón, director of a human rights organization linked to the Roman Catholic Church in Tumaco, Nariño Department, was killed on 19 September by gunmen thought to be paramilitaries. Her death followed repeated threats against human rights defenders in Tumaco and the killing in August of Pepe Zabala and Angela Andrade in Tumaco Municipality. Both were members of the Multi-Ethnic People's Movement of the Nariño Pacific Coast, which had faced repeated paramilitary threats in 2000. Immediately after the killing of Yolanda Cerón, members of the national non-governmental human rights organization Sembrar received a death threat at their Bogotá offices.
• Guerrillas of the VI Front of the FARC killed Cristóbal Secue Tombe, an indigenous leader of the Corinto indigenous reserve, Cauca Department, on 25 June.
• On 29 August, Yolanda Paternina Negrete, a judicial official investigating the Chengue massacre, was killed by unidentified gunmen in Sincelejo, Sucre Department.

Impunity

The Attorney General's Human Rights Unit made significant progress in a number of high-profile human rights cases, but these remained the exception. Numerous arrest warrants remained outstanding and no decisive effort was made to arrest national paramilitary leaders. In cases which did see progress, further advances were hindered by threats, killings and questionable judicial decisions.

• In July agents of the Cuerpo Técnico de Investigación (CTI), Technical Investigations Unit of the Attorney General's Office arrested former general Rito Alejo del Río. On 5 August, a judge accepted a habeas corpus petition and ordered the release of Rito Alejo. On 13 August the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights expressed concern at the resignation of several members of the Human Rights Unit and called on the Colombian government to guarantee the safety of those responsible for the investigation. In September, José de Jesús Germán, a witness in the case, was killed in Bogotá. He had reportedly committed himself to handing over documentary evidence to the CTI regarding Rito Alejo's links with paramilitary groups.
• In November the Constitutional Court ruled that judicial proceedings under the military justice system against former general Jaime Uscateguí in connection with the 1997 Maparipán massacre of over 27 people in Meta department, were null and void and that the case should be transferred to the civilian justice system.

Legislation

In August the government signed into the statutes a National Defence and Security Law which threatened to strengthen the impunity of members of the security forces implicated in human rights violations. The law accords judicial police powers to members of the armed forces in certain circumstances and severely restricts the capacity of the Office of the Procurator General to undertake disciplinary investigations against security force personnel for human rights violations committed during security force operations. The law threatened to undermine the positive impact of the new Criminal Code, which came into effect in 2001 and limits impunity in cases of human rights violations; it defines "disappearances" and forced displacement as crimes.

Intergovernmental organizations

The UN Commission on Human Rights once again condemned the grave and persistent violations of international humanitarian law, mainly by paramilitaries and guerrillas. The Commission urged the Colombian government to take more effective measures to follow up and fully implement UN recommendations and called on all parties to the conflict to respect international humanitarian law.

In November the Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General on human rights defenders expressed her concern at the continuing human rights crisis. She condemned continued impunity and underlined the importance of guaranteeing the protection of judicial investigators, judges, witnesses and victims. She expressed her concern for the safety of human rights defenders and highlighted the continued collusion between paramilitaries and the security forces.

The UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women, its causes and consequences visited Colombia in November. She expressed her concern at the level of impunity in cases of human rights violations and condemned the sexual abuse of girls by paramilitary and guerrilla commanders. She expressed concern at the use of more than 2,500 girl soldiers, mainly in the FARC, and the fact that the girls had been "raped by rebel commanders". She also condemned the rape and killing of women by paramilitaries during incursions against civilian communities.

AI country reports/visits

Reports

• Colombia: Human rights and US military aid to Colombia: published jointly by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the Washington Office on Latin America (AI Index: AMR 23/004/2001)
• Colombia: Human rights activists in Barrancabermeja under attack (AI Index: AMR 23/014/2001)
• Colombia: Robust measures urgently needed to protect human rights defenders (AI Index: AMR 23/023/2001)
• Amicus Curiae Document on National Security Law No. 684 of 2001 presented by Amnesty International, the International Commission of Jurists and Human Rights Watch to the Constitutional Court of Colombia (AI Index: AMR 23/130/2001)

Visits

AI delegates visited Colombia in March, July, August and December.