COLOMBIA: NGOs Urge EU Not to Support Paramilitary Disarmament

By Constanza Vieira Reprint | | Print |

Constanza Vieira*

BOGOTA, Sep 2 2005 (IPS) - The European Union should reject the process for the demobilisation of Colombia’s extreme-right paramilitary groups, said 155 civil society organisations, including 75 from Europe and 68 from Colombia.

The so-called “law on justice and peace”, which sets the rules for the disarmament of the United Self-Defence Forces of Colombia (AUC) paramilitary umbrella group, will provide no guarantee of justice for the victims of attacks, and the perpetrators will not have to pay for their crimes, the non-governmental organisations (NGOs) stated in an open letter to the European Union.

The letter, issued ahead of a Sep. 6 EU meeting that will decide whether or not the bloc will support the AUC demobilisation process, says “The European Union should not support a demobilisation process in Colombia that contributes neither to justice nor to peace.”

The document was signed Wednesday by civil, social and religious groups from Austria, Belgium, Britain, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland, Colombia, Chile and Paraguay, as well as global organisations like the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) and the World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT).

The Colombian government is obtaining financial and political support from the United States for the disarmament process.

Last December, the EU also announced that it would help finance the process, which formally got underway in July 2002, on the condition that the law created to guide the demobilisation was in line with international standards and that the paramilitaries respected the ceasefire they declared in 2002 in order to take part in the ongoing negotiations with the right-wing government of Alvaro Uribe.

But neither of these criteria have been met, according to the open letter.

Just before the law was passed in June, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights office in Colombia pointed out that the Colombian state had an obligation to respect the basic rights of the victims of the grave crimes committed in this country.

The U.N. office said the law on justice and peace failed to guarantee the victims’ rights to truth, justice and reparations – essential conditions for eventual reconciliation among Colombians, whose country has been caught up in armed conflict for more than four decades.

Under the new law, 20 special prosecutors have 60 days to investigate the crimes committed by demobilised paramilitaries. The law also provides for sentence reductions for AUC members who hand in their weapons.

On Aug. 30, the International Day of the Disappeared, the U.N. Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances described the law on justice and peace as an “implicit amnesty” that would result in “impunity”.

It also expressed alarm over “the lack of reporting of cases of disappearances at national and international levels,” which is “largely due to the fear of reprisals by paramilitary armed groups.”

A report released Thursday by the London-based rights watchdog Amnesty International documented the “demobilisation” of the Bloque Cacique Nutibara – one of the groups forming part of AUC – in Medellín, which began to disarm in November 2003.

The Amnesty press release said the report, “Colombia – the Paramilitaries in Medellín: Demobilisation or Legalisation?”, found that the “paramilitaries continue to operate as a military force, to kill and threaten human rights defenders and local community activists, to recruit and to act jointly with the security forces.”

It also noted that “Thousands of possible human rights abusers have already benefited from de facto amnesties under the law, while those responsible for backing and funding paramilitarism, including members of the security forces, are unlikely ever to be exposed and brought to justice.”

In addition, said Amnesty, the law on justice and peace “aims to regulate the demobilisation by granting ‘demobilised’ members of illegal armed groups significantly reduced prison sentences. But the law asks the paramilitaries for nothing in return – those who refuse to tell the whole truth about human rights violations they have committed are still likely to enjoy all the benefits under the law.”

“This law leads neither to justice nor to peace,” said Amnesty International expert on Colombia Jörg Lehnert.

So far, an estimated 10,000 members of AUC have handed in their weapons in disarmament ceremonies – a number that could double since AUC has continued recruiting during the negotiations with the government.

The U.N. holds the paramilitaries responsible for 80 percent of the atrocities committed in Colombia.

The Amnesty report observes that while “All parties to Colombia’s 40-year-old armed conflict – the security forces, army-backed paramilitaries and guerrilla groups – have committed serious human rights abuses and shown a blatant disregard for international humanitarian law….the vast majority of non-combat politically-motivated killings, ‘disappearances’, and cases of torture have been carried out by army-backed paramilitaries.”

In a survey of demobilised members of AUC conducted in June by around 50 students from private colleges in Bogotá, one of the respondents said “We coordinated with the army or the police in all of our operations. Sometimes they pulled out as we arrived, at other times they gave us protection when we withdrew, and they almost always gave us intelligence reports.”

The orders “depended on the superior officer. If he wanted us to, we killed everyone, but if he was in a good mood, we only took out the ones who were on our list – guerrillas dressed as civilians – and killed them in front of their families,” said another interviewee.

A summary of the survey is available in Spanish on the web site of the non-governmental Consultancy on Human Rights and Displacement (http://www.codhes.org.co).

Colombian human rights organisations like CODHES blame AUC for more than 2,000 killings and disappearances and the forced displacement of at least 570,000 people since the paramilitaries declared a ceasefire in December 2002.

AUC leaders themselves have admitted that 70 percent of their income comes from drug trafficking. The Colombian press has begun to report that several AUC chiefs who have led the negotiations for demobilisation are actually drug barons.

AUC is listed as a terrorist group by both the U.S. government and the European Union.

According to experts, 4.5 million hectares of Colombia’s best land has changed hands violently as a result of the terror spread by the paramilitaries. But under the disarmament process, many paramilitaries will keep their illegally acquired property.

The number of people forcibly displaced from rural areas, who have swollen the ranks of the urban poor, has climbed to three million in this country of 42 million.

The open letter by the NGOs states that a decree that complements the law on justice and peace “will mean that paramilitaries registered as demobilised will receive economic benefits equivalent to forty times the help the government is giving to displaced families.”

This week, the secretary-general of the Organisation of American States (OAS), José Miguel Insulza, publicly stated his support for the regional organisation’s mission that is overseeing the paramilitary disarmament process in Colombia, which has drawn fire from civil society.

But Insulza acknowledged to Colombian human rights organisations that the mission should be reformulated and its mandate revised in order to ensure “effective verification of the ceasefire” and “effective demobilisation, so that forces do not demobilise on one hand while mobilising on the other.”

He also said “the presence of a substantial group to verify the situation of human rights” is necessary in Colombia.

With respect to the law on justice and peace, he said the challenge is “to avoid generating permanent impunity.”

The director of the OAS mission, Sergio Caramagna, justified his silence with regard to violations of the paramilitary ceasefire by arguing a shortage of funds.

In many cases, the paramilitaries have joined up out of the need for a job and an income, “Because ‘there was nothing else to do’ in the rural or urban areas where they were recruited,” says the survey by the college students.

The demobilised paramilitaries hope the government will live up to its agreement to pay them 156 dollars a month (just under the minimum monthly wage) for two years, as well as providing a 3,500 dollar grant for them to set themselves up in some kind of business.

According to a respondent in the survey, if the government fails to make good on its pledge, they might go into the drug trade or even take up arms again, “because there are still things to be done.”

Some of them have been invited to join paramilitary groups operating along the border with Venezuela. “They are rearming themselves in Catatumbo and need people with experience,” said another of those surveyed.

At President Uribe’s request, security companies have begun to hire demobilised members of AUC as watchmen and security guards. And the government agency that oversees the private firms announced its intention to oblige all buildings and neighbourhoods to hire these security companies, most of which belong to retired members of the military.

Like the NGOs that signed the open letter, Amnesty International also called on the international community to refrain from providing political and economic support to the disarmament process “until the Colombian authorities put in place a legal framework for demobilisation that fully conforms to international standards of truth, justice and reparation.”

* With additional reporting from Kirsten Prestin in Bonn, Germany