The Human Rights Blog

Last January 21st. members of the Colombian National Army irrupted into a wedding ceremony of Wayu� indigenous people, shooting arbitrarily at the more than 100 people gathered there. The army was alledgedly looking for presumed FARC members. Several people were killed, including a minor. None of them had any links to the guerrilla. Several others were injured, a pregnant woman was beaten, animals were killed and the army stole some personal posessions of the indigenous people. Three people were arrested, including the father of one of the murder victims. They are still arbitrarily detained.

Arbitrary detentions of indigenous people have also continued in other parts of Colombia. On March 29th, nine people were arbitrarily arrested in the Quinch�a county, including several indigenous leaders. Over 150 indigenous people had been arrested in Quinchi� in 2003 and jailed for 22 months before being found innocent and freed.

(Source: Organizaci�n Nacional Ind�gena de Colombia � ONIC yand Colectivo de Abogados Jos� Alvear Restrepo)

Colombian journalist Hollman Morris has received new threats against his life. This time it's in the form of a video, distributed in the southern part of Bogota, which names Morris and other human rights defenders as being guerrilla agents. Calling journalists who expose human rights violations and human rights defenders in general terrorist agents is a common tactic. In the US itself makes that link to spy on human rights and peace activists. In Colombia, it's akin to putting you in an execution list.

He was actually put in that list last summer, when President Uribe insinuated he was linked to the guerrilla. Previously, along with two other journalists, he had received a beautiful funeral wreath.

Morris is the producer and face of Contrav�a - a show dedicated to exposing human rights abuses in Colombia. He has also produced and directed documentaries and has worked with the BBC. He's one of the very few journalists who has traveled to different parts of Colombia to interview victims of human rights violations by government or paramilitary forces.

Fourty seven human rights defenders were murdered in Colombia in 2005 alone, while 15 more were kidnapped and/or tortured. Dozens have been subject to arbitrary detentions.

Mr. Morris' life is in grave danger. International pressure *may* help save his life.

Watch a 2005 Amnesty International interview with Mr. Morris

Three students from the Colombian National Federation of Universities (FUN) have received death threats. The threats are directed to Adriana Lozano, the FUN's National Spokesperson, Miguel Angel Barriga, student representative to the Superior Council of the District University and Jos� Luis Blanco, student representative to the Academic Council of the UPTC. FUN members in Nari�o are also threatened.

The threats against these students come in the context of increased threats against student groups at many Colombian universities. Student activists have been the objects of kidnaping and killings in the past. Death squads often call social activists of any kind "terrorists" and accuse them of supporting the "subversion."

Please write to the Colombian authorities, as well as to your representatives in your own country, requesting that Colombian authorities ensure the protection of the threatened students.

The following article was written by Katrina Plotz who went on the Colombia
Action Network delegation in July to Colombia. It will be published in the
September issue of the Women Against Military Maddness newsleter
(http://www.worldwidewamm.org).

In July, four members of the Anti-War Committee and Colombia Action Network,
(Meredith Aby, Erika Zurawski, and Jon and Katrina Plotz) traveled to
Colombia to witness the impact of U.S. military aid to a government waging
war against its own people. We were hosted by FENSUAGRO, the national
peasant workers union.

The following is an Urgent Action concerning the disappearance of Walter Alvarez, a human rights defender in Colombia. He may still be alive which makes your action all the most important and urgent. Please read it and contact the suggested authorities and distribute the action through your networks. Thank You.

Colombia's largest insurgent group and President Alvaro Uribe are close to
reaching an accord to exchange dozens of jailed rebels for hostages held by
the guerrillas, but experts are sceptical that a swap will lead to peace
talks.

HUMAN RIGHTS COUNCIL
2ND SESSION

ORAL INTERVENTION OF THE COLOMBIAN COMMISSION OF JURISTS
AND THE WORLD ORGANISATION AGAINST TORTURE

PRESENTATION OF THE REPORT OF THE HIGH COMISSIONER FOR HUMAN RIGHTS ON THE SITUATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS IN COLOMBIA

28 SEPTEMBER 2006

Mr. Chairperson:

During the first four years of the present Government, more than eleven thousand persons were assassinated or disappeared out of combat in Colombia. This figure is greater than the number of victims in 17 years of Pinochet’s government in Chile. Nearly 75 per cent of these deaths and disappearances were attributed to State responsibility, either for direct action taken by state agents[1] or for tolerance or support to violations committed by paramilitary groups[2]. 25 per cent of the cases were attributed to the responsibility of guerrillas. In addition, during these four years more than one million persons were forcibly displaced. With good reason, the UN Under-Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs has qualified the situation in Colombia as the gravest humanitarian crisis of the western hemisphere[3].

It will come as no surprise to anyone that the Colombian government has strong ties to the paramilitary. The links have been denounced for years by human rights organizations. However testimony of key death squad leaders on those ties have shaken the Colombian government, as they detail how the government collaborated in the massacres of hundreds of people.

The following are articles from 3 American newspapers on the subject.

New York, Apr 10 2007 10:00AM
As thousands have fled their homes in the Nariño region in southern Colombia to escape fighting between the Government and rebel forces, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (<"http://www.unhcr.org/news/NEWS/461b63df11.html">UNHCR) today called for the protection of civilians and urged authorities to provide assistance to those affected.

Interview with Father Javier Giraldo

BOGOTÁ, May 2 (IPS) - When a murder occurs in a Colombian community, the locals know who committed it: far-right paramilitaries, leftwing guerrillas, or the security forces. They also know if fighting really took place, or if the "enemy" bodies displayed on television as "trophies" by army officers were in fact dead civilians.

A Just Ruling for Justice

José Alvear Restrepo Lawyers’ Collective
Corporación Colectivo de Abogados “José Alvear Restrepo”June 20, 2007
Editorial
Bogotá, Colombia

On January 18, 1989, 15 judiciary officials were investigating grave human rights violations in thedepartment of Santander, including the forced disappearance of 19 merchants [1]. Suddenly, theywere approached by several dozen armed men who presented themselves as members of the FARCand proceeded to disarm and hold them for the next two and a half hours. After their hands weretied behind their backs, they were put in two SUV’s and driven to a place called La Rochela. There,one after another and in a state of utter defenselessness and vulnerability, they were executed incold blood.

There have been several reports of massive human rights violations in Colombia in the last few days:

President Uribe has decreed a 90-day state of exception in Colombia, in response to a strike by judicial workers - which has left the whole justice apparatus paralyzed, and many criminals free. The Union Central Committees have rejected the state of exception, arguing that this is only a labor issue. Judicial workers are calling for raises in their salaries.

The first decrees issued under the state of exception (or interior commotion), give the authority to the Judicial Supreme Council to replace the striking judicial workers. Notaries will be placed in charge of all civil procedures, including those of adoption.

Police forces have attacked several groups of indigenous people who were demonstrating for their rights in the Cauca Valley. The police forces are said to have continued shooting even as the indigenous people were fleeing away. Army helicopters are circling the area, threatening them. At least twenty three people were injured, an unknown number were arrested.

Three indigenous persons, Leonardo Chocué, Eduardo Cotoina and Pablo Dagua, remain disappeared. They had last been seen fleeing away from the ESMAD (Colombia's riot police), and human rights organizations believe they are in police custody.

In the last week, three indigenous activists, Nicolás Valencia Lemus, Celestino Rivera and Cesar Hurtado Tróchez, were murdered in the Cauca Valley. The latter was resting in his home, when four men came in and shot him.