Economy & Trade, Headlines, Human Rights, Latin America & the Caribbean, North America

COLOMBIA: U.S. Aid Must Leverage Reforms, Rights Groups Urge

Matthew Berger

WASHINGTON, Oct 21 2009 (IPS) - Defending human rights in Colombia – never an especially safe endeavour – has become even more dangerous lately, several NGO leaders and Colombian human rights defenders testified on Capitol Hill Tuesday.

Human rights defenders in the country “have noticed a surge in threats against defenders and their family members, as well as a number of physical attacks and assassinations, and unexplained break-ins of defenders’ offices”, said Kelly Nichols, executive director of the U.S. Office on Colombia, an NGO that has helped organise a campaign to promote recommendations for how to protect Colombian human rights defenders.

“Colombian activists are subject to the full gamut of human rights violations,” said Andrew Hudson of Human Rights First, “including torture, threats, misuse of state intelligence, systematic stigmatisation, unfounded criminal proceedings and impunity for violations of defenders.”

The testimony came before the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission and follows on the heels of a scandal that has unfolded over the past year in Colombia in which recordings of the wire-tapped conversations of people supposed to be critics of President Álvaro Uribe – including human rights defenders, politicians, journalists and even Supreme Court justices – have become public.

The majority of blame for the eavesdropping activities, illegal under Colombian law, has been directed at the Department of Administrative Services, or DAS, an intelligence agency under the president’s authority.

DAS has grown considerably in size and scope since it was founded in the 1950s, but following the wiretapping scandals, and especially the discovery of a recording of a conversation between a Supreme Court justice and a U.S. embassy attaché, Uribe ordered the dismantling of DAS.

Uribe, a right-leaning politician who is highly popular in Colombia and is considering trying to amend the constitution to allow him to run for a third term, has also announced that a new intelligence agency linked to the presidency would be created.

At the hearing Tuesday, Nicholls commended the decision to disband DAS, but cautioned that “the capacity of the president and his advisors to order intelligence operations without safeguards or oversight” must be removed.

She called on the U.S. government, an ally of the Uribe government, to encourage and ensure these reforms.

Further U.S. oversight was a major theme of the afternoon, as the fact that the U.S. is giving 545 million dollars in aid to Colombia this year makes it, in the speakers’ eyes, a key force for reform in the country.

A recent deal to increase the U.S. military presence on Colombian bases in order to combat narcotics trafficking has only increased the perceived strength of ties between Washington and Bogotá, while also bringing condemnation from Colombia’s left-leaning neighbour governments.

While most of the attention has been directed at DAS, Nicholls pointed out that other agencies, such as military and police intelligence units, have also spied on human rights defenders in the country. “Many of these units have received U.S. support, training and equipment,” she added.

Other speakers included Principe Gabriel González, an advocate for better treatment of Colombian political prisoners, who was himself imprisoned for a year after falsely being accused commanding a guerrilla force linked to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC.

After being acquitted in 2007, he was sentenced to seven years in prison for the same charges in March, though that decision has since been appealed to the Colombian Supreme Court and the arrest warrant suspended.

This is one of many cases of baseless accusations being made against human rights defenders in Colombia with the aim of limiting and undermining their work, repeated several speakers. Another effect, according to Human Rights First, is that being charged with being a guerrilla can often draw attacks from right-wing paramilitary groups, even after the charges have been dropped.

Reynaldo Villalba Vargas, president of the José Alvear Restrepo Lawyers’ Collective, also testified. His organisation has been particularly critical of the right-wing Uribe government and has been one of the main organisations targeted by operations like those of DAS.

Alirio Uribe, a human rights lawyer with the group, told The New York Times in September, “Chills went down my spine when I discovered the lengths that DAS went through to watch my every movement.” The file he obtained of the espionage included photos of his children and evidence DAS had gone so far as to rent an apartment across from his home, according to the Times.

Files such as these should be destroyed, Margaret Sekaggya, U.N. Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Defenders, told the hearing Tuesday.

Rep. James McGovern, co-chairman of the committee, then pointed out that these files had been shared with the U.S. and other governments and that they had led to the delays in obtaining visas for the speakers from Colombia. González’s visa had taken four months to obtain, according to Hudson, and then only with the influence of McGovern.

Sekaggya visited Colombia on a fact-finding mission from Sep. 7 to 18, after which she said “much remains to be done to ensure a safe and conducive environment for human rights defenders” in Colombia.

“The government should investigate and prosecute those who have threatened [the defenders]”, she said Tuesday, and emphasised the systematic stigmatisation of defenders by government officials accuse them of being guerrillas.

Following a meeting with Sekaggya on her earlier trip, Álvaro Uribe said “The defense of human rights is a necessary and legitimate action for democracy in a country like Colombia which is proud to be completely open to international scrutiny in this field”.

Tuesday, she said, “Now the government must keep its promise.”