UNHCR CDR Background Paper on Refugees and Asylum
Seekers from Colombia
PREFACE
Colombia has been an important source country of refugees and asylumseekers over a number of years. This paper seeks to define the scope,
destination, and causes of their flight.
In the first part, the paper provides a statistical overview of Colombian
refugees and asylum-seekers in the main European asylum countries,
describing current trends in the number and origin of asylum requests as
well as the results of their status determination. The data are derived from
government statistics made available to UNHCR and are compiled by its
Statistical Unit.
The second part of the paper contains information regarding the conditions
in the country of origin, which are often invoked by asylum-seekers when
submitting their claim for refugee status. The Country Information Unit of
UNHCR's Centre for Documentation and Research (CDR) conducts its work on
the basis of publicly available information, analysis and comment, with all
sources cited.
1. Colombian Asylum Seekers in Europe - Trends in Applications and
Decisions *[1] Asylum applications
Approximately 1,800 Colombian nationals applied for asylum in Europe in
1997, an increase of about 30 per cent over 1996, when nearly 1,300
Colombians applied for asylum (see top of page 1 of the Tables). During
1997 the United Kingdom received three out of four Colombian asylum
applications in Europe, about the same percentage as in 1996. During 19901991 Colombians applied for asylum mostly in France, then in in Spain
during 1993 and 1994, and in the United Kingdom in 1992 and in 1995-1997
(see bottom of page 1 of the Tables). For 1997, the number of Colombian
asylum applications (1,800) constituted one per cent of the total number of
applications submitted in Europe (see top of page 6 of the Tables).
1951 UN Convention status recognitions
About 80 Colombian asylum seekers were granted 1951 UN Convention
refugee status during 1997, an increase from 50 during 1996 and the highest
number since 1991 (see top of page 2 of the Tables). In 1997, Switzerland
granted Convention status recognition to 30 Colombian asylum seekers, and
the United Kingdom to nearly 20. This represents a change from the early
1990s, when France was the leading country granting asylum to Colombians
(see bottom of page 2 of the Tables). Thus, the number of Convention status
recognitions granted to Colombians (80) was less than one per cent of the
total number of Convention status recognitions (38,000) during 1997.
Humanitarian status
The number of humanitarian status recognitions granted to Colombians (70)
in 1997 was similar to the levels in 1995 (50) and 1996 (50) (see top of page
4 of the Tables). The total number of persons granted humanitarian status
recognition in Europe in 1997 was approximately 19,000.
Recognition rates
In 1997, the UN Convention recognition rate for Colombian refugees was 11
per cent, an increase from 1994-1996 (see top of page 5 of the Tables), but
still lower than the 1997 European average for all nationalities (15 per cent
). The rate was the highest in Switzerland (60 percent in 1997, and 75 per
cent during 1990-1997), but relatively low in the United Kingdom, the
largest destination country of Colombian asylum applicants (around 5 per
cent). The total recognition rate (including both Convention and
humanitarian status recognitions) for Colombians was 21 per cent (see
bottom of page 5 of the Tables). In other words, of all positive and negative
decisions taken on Colombian asylum applications in Europe during 1997,
two out of ten ended in either Convention or humanitarian status
recognition (mostly first instance decisions only). This was very close to the
total recognition rate for all nationalities (23 per cent) in 1997.
Applications and decisions in North America
A table is included at the end with relevant statistics on Colombians asylum
applications in the United States and Canada. The United States receives
the largest share of Colombian asylum applicants in North America. A peak
in the number of Colombian applications was recorded in 1993 and 1994,
with nearly 1,300 submissions in the U.S. in each of those years. The U.S.
registered a slight increase in the number of Colombian asylum applications,
from 890 in 1996 to 960 in 1997. The 1990-1997 recognition rate for
Colombian asylum seekers was about 39 per cent in Canada and 26 per cent
in the United States.
2. Profile of the Situation in Colombia
The Republic of Colombia is situated in the northwest of South America,
with coasts on the Caribbean sea in the north and the Pacific Ocean to the
west, surrounded in the east by Venezuela and Brazil and in the south by
Peru and Ecuador, and with Panama, to its west, providing a link with
Central America (Europa World Yearbook, 1991, 931). It has a diversified
climate system, with tropical rain forest in the coastal areas, temperate
zones in the plateaux, and permanent snow on its Andean peaks (Ibid.). The
official language is Spanish. Catholics make up about 95 per cent of its
population, and there are small Protestant and Jewish minorities (Ibid.). In
1996 its population was 39.5 million, of whom 60 per cent are of mixed race
(Mestizos), followed by minorities of European (20 per cent) and African (18
per cent) origin, and a variety of indigenous groups (2 per cent) (Economist
Intelligence Unit, Country Profile 1997-98, 19; Encyclopedia of the Third
World, 1992, 391).
Executive power is vested in the President, who is elected by popular
suffrage for a four-year term and is constitutionally forbidden to seek a
consecutive term. The President appoints his Cabinet and the Council of
State. Legislative power rests with Congress, which consists of a Senate and
a Chamber of Representatives, and judiciary power rests with the Supreme
Court (Ibid.). There is a strict separation of powers between the three (EIU
Country Profile 1997-98, 6).
2.1 Background to the Current Conflict
For more than a century, Colombia has been ruled by two political parties,
the Liberals (Partido Liberal) and the Conservatives (Partido Conservador).
These two parties, which differed little in their political ideology, apart
from the role of the Catholic Church (the Liberals were associated with anticlericalism, federalism and free trade, while the Conservatives favoured a
strong central government, protectionism and a close alliance with the
Church), were composed of groups of large landowners (caciques) together
with urban elites, who were able to mobilize the peasant population in the
areas they controlled (Europa World Yearbook, 1991, 931; Encyclopedia of
the Third World, 1992, 395; Costello, P., Writenet, August 1996). When
peaceful competition between them failed, however, violent confrontation
erupted: the nineteenth century saw six civil wars, including the 1899-1902
War of a Thousand Days, “fought between all (or part) of one party against
the other”, which resulted in a culture of strong party identification (EIU
Country Profile 1997-98, 4; Costello, P., August 1996).
The traditional party structures began to be challenged in the 1930s when
the economy began to modernize, and the coffee boom stimulated the
construction of infrastructure, the start of industrial development in the
cities and a larger export-oriented agriculture (Ibid.). These events
“generated both rural-urban migration, but also movement outwards from
the Andean areas to the agricultural frontier by peasants in search of land”,
thus giving greater power to peasant organizations and trade unions who
began to voice their demands (Ibid.). Efforts to break with the traditional
party elites in order to build support among the new social groups were
brought to an end on 9 April 1948, with the assassination of Jorge Eliécer
Gaitán, a popular Liberal Party politician who called for the overthrow of
the bipartisan elite (Ibid.). This event triggered a ten-year period of mostly
rural violence (La Violencia), in which an estimated 200,000-300,000 people
died (South America, Central America and the Caribbean, 1997, 202;
Costello, P., August 1996; EIU Country Profile 1997-98, 3). Initially partyorganized “with Conservative-led government troops fighting against Liberal
landowners who created peasant-guerrilla armies” (Costello, P., August
1996), some of the new guerrilla groups began to distance themselves from
the landowners and ranchers who had armed them, leading to the creation
in many areas of “a kind of banditry in which local feuds and land struggles
were resolved under the cover of party violence” (Ibid.). An estimated two
million peasants fled their lands, either to the towns or new agricultural
areas (UN Commission on Human Rights, E/CN.4/1995/50/Add.1, 3
October 1994) .
Thus, La Violencia set the stage for the conflict which continues today: the
nucleus of today’s guerrilla movements was formed by Liberal guerrillas who
refused to disarm (Ibid.), and the army more than doubled in size, evolving
into a modern professional force during the military government (1953-57)
of General Gustavo Rojas Pinilla (Pearce, J., 1990). The bipartisan elite,
however, emerged unchanged, and in 1958 established a system of powersharing known as the National Front (Frente Nacional), alternating the
presidency between the two parties and guaranteeing the other side a share
of government jobs (EIU Country Profile 1997-98, 3). Although the National
Front pact ended formally in 1974 when a fully competitive electoral system
was introduced, most heads of state continue to offer cabinet positions to
the opposition (Ibid.).
In the 1970s a new force came into play: the drug economy. The
institutional weakness of the Government, plus the existence of large
expanses of agricultural land in hard-to-reach areas of the country, created
a favourable environment for the introduction of new crops like marihuana
in the 1970s, followed by coca in the 1980s and by poppy in the 1990s
(Comisión Andina de Juristas, 1990). Drug traffickers provided financial
support to peasants and indigenous people to set up coca plantations; they
also became financially involved with regional politics as they supported
local politicians and lobbyists on local concerns, in many cases financing
their campaigns in exchange for their support of proposals benefitting the
drug industry (de Roux, F.J., in “The Culture of Violence”, 1994). The
guerrillas then hired out their protection services to the coca growers until
tensions between the two groups arose over territorial control, which led
the drug traffickers to join forces with the landowners’ private armies
(Ibid.). The army saw this as an opportunity to combat the guerrillas and
joined forces with the drug traffickers and their private armies, leading to
the creation of paramilitary groups (Ibid.). These short-term alliances of the
armed forces and the guerrillas with other partners such as the drug
traffickers led to endless local conflicts, revealing the inability of the State
to keep an exclusive hold on the use of force and thus leading to the
decentralization of the exercise of violence (Labrousse, A., in “Economie
des guerres civiles”, 1996).
2.2 Recent Political Developments Political Violence
Since 1995, the problems of political violence, human rights violations and
internal armed conflict have worsened dramatically in Colombia, affecting
the civilian population and causing internal displacement on a scale
previously unknown (Comisión Colombiana de Juristas, Colombia, Derechos
Humanos y Derecho Humanitario: 1996, 1997). The armed conflict has
spread and intensified during the government of Ernesto Samper, elected
president in 1994, and it escalated significantly in 1995, following the
breakdown of the Government’s proposals for peace negotiations with the
main armed opposition groups, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia
(Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia - FARC), the National
Liberation Army (Ejército de Liberación Nacional - ELN), and the Popular
Liberation Army (Ejército Popular de Liberación - EPL) (Amnesty
International, October 1994).
The breakdown in public order in many rural areas, resulting from the
continuing conflicts among guerrilla and narcotics trafficking organizations,
economic interests, and the police and the armed forces, has caused the
internal displacement of more than 525,000 citizens during the years 1995
to 1997 (U.S. DOS Country Reports for 1997, 1998). Moreover, civilian
participation in the conflict has grown, prompted in part by the guerrillas’
increasing strength and presence in a greater number of municipalities, and
in part by the Government’s failure to ensure security throughout the
country (Ibid.). Colombia also has one of the highest homicide rates in the
world, averaging 76 murders per 100,000 inhabitants between the years
1988 and 1995 (Comisión Colombiana de Juristas, 1997). In the political
arena, there is a crisis of government brought about by the infiltration of
drug-traffickers’ money into the electoral campaign of President Samper,
which seriously imperiled the development of institutional policies
(Instituto Interamericano de Derechos Humanos, Abril 1997). In August
1997 a large majority in Congress, including formerly friendly leaders of his
Liberal Party, requested President Ernesto Samper to resign in light of his
failure to govern the country and bring about public order in Colombia
(Latin America Weekly Report, 19 August 1997). Congressional elections
were held on 8 March 1998, resulting in an overwhelming victory for
candidates of the Liberal Party, which got 50 per cent of the 102 seats in
the Senate and won over the main opposition Conservative Party by “more
than two-to-one in the race for the 161-member House of Representatives”,
with the remainder of the seats distributed among various independent and
coalition groups (Reuters, 9 March 1998). Presidential elections are
scheduled for May 1998, to be followed by the handover of power three
months later, in August 1998 (Ibid.).Peace initiatives
Serious attempts at negotiating with the guerrilla movements began in 1982,
during the presidency of Belisario Betancur (1982-86) who declared a broad
amnesty for guerrillas and reconvened the Peace Commission that had been
established in 1981 (EIU Country Profile 1997-98, 4; Europa World
Yearbook, 1991, 931). Although a cease-fire agreement had been reached
with the FARC, the Government remained the target of attacks by the ELN
and the M-19, which was then operating as an urban guerrilla group and in
1985 staged the dramatic siege of the Palace of Justice that resulted in the
deaths of more than 100 people, including 41 guerrillas and 11 judges
(Europa World Yearbook, 1991, 931). The cease-fire agreement with the
FARC broke down during the presidency of Virgilio Barco (1986-90), when
the Government failed to respond effectively to a 1985-87 campaign of
assassinations directed by right-wing paramilitary groups against members
of the Patriotic Union (Unión Patriótica), the political party composed of
demobilized members of the FARC, which resulted in nearly 450 deaths
(Ibid., 1991, 931). In 1989, however, M-19 was persuaded to abandon the
armed struggle and to enter the democratic political process: its leader and
candidate for the 1990 presidential elections, Carlos Pizarro, was killed, and
his successor, Antonio Navarro Wolff, came third in the elections (EIU
Country Profile 1997-98, 4).
In 1991, the Government of President César Gaviria developed a ‘National
Strategy’ against violence, which was to serve as a basis for initiating peace
dialogues with the guerrillas and for instituting measures to reintegrate drug
traffickers and others outside the legal order through a “subjection to
justice” policy (UN Commission on Human Rights, E/CN.4/1995/50/Add.1,
3 October 1994). During the course of 1990-91 three smaller guerrilla
groups, the EPL, the PRT (Revolutionary Workers Party) and the Quintin
Lame Front demobilized under special agreements with the Government of
President Gaviria, leaving the ELN and the FARC, and a dissident faction of
the EPL, in the field (EIU Country Profile 1997-98, 4; Revolutionary and
Dissident Movements, 1991, 54). However, an escalation of guerrilla
activity during 1992 prompted the Government to intensify anti-insurgency
measures and to exclude the possibility of further peace negotiations with
the rebel groups (Europa World Yearbook, 1991, 933).
In 1995 the Government of President Samper offered the FARC an
opportunity to participate in the legislative and consultative processes in
exchange for their surrender of arms, which the FARC conditioned on the
Government’s successful withdrawal of its troops in the northeastern region
of La Uribe (Europa World Yearbook, 1991, 933). Similar offers were made
to the ELN and dissident groups of the EPL and the M-19, but all negotiations
were severely undermined by renewed offensives by the FARC and the ELN,
as well as an escalation of violent clashes between guerrilla forces and
paramilitary groups in the northwestern region of Urabá (Ibid.). In 1997
President Ernesto Samper appointed two prominent officials to ‘explore’ the
possibility of opening peace talks with the guerrillas (LAWR, 29 July 1997).
Their recommendations for starting peace negotiations appeared in a
September 1997 report, which was dismissed by the guerrillas as being “too
vague to be of much use” (LAWR, 16 September 1997).
The ELN reportedly seeks international involvement both by nongovernmental organizations and the member countries of the Esquipulas II
peace accords (Costa Rica, Guatemala, Venezuela, Holland, Sweden, France
and Spain). A letter signed by imprisoned ELN leaders Francisco Galán and
Felipe Torres called on the group of ‘friendly countries’ to become more
assertive in their mediation efforts (LAWR, 12 August 1997). The FARC’s
proposals for peace are said to include a demand for 50 per cent of the
national budget to be spent on social welfare projects and ten per cent on
scientific research, demands which are believed to be designed to rule out
real negotiations (LAWR, 12 August 1997).
At a peace plebiscite held simultaneously with local elections on 26 October
1997, Colombians pledged to commit themselves to “helping with the
construction of peace and justice, to protecting life and to rejecting all
violent acts”, calling on the state, the guerrillas and the paramilitaries to (i)
resolve the armed conflict by peaceful means; (ii) not involve children of
less than 18 years in the war; (iii) not kidnap citizens; (iv) not ‘disappear’
citizens; (v) not force people to leave their homes, and (vi) not arm civilians
or involve them in any way in the war (LAWR, 12 August 1997).
Effect on the economy
The political violence and instability have affected the economy negatively,
and during the first three months of 1997 Colombia’s GDP dropped 1.3
percent while unemployment reached a ten-year high of 13.6 per cent
(LAWR, 19 August 1997). Guerrilla attacks against the oil pipeline from Caño
Limón, in the department of Arauca, to Coveñas, on the Caribbean coast,
have caused a loss of US$50 million to the national oil company Ecopetrol
(Empresa Colombiana de Petróleos) (Ibid.). A report from the National
Association of Financial Institutions (Asociación Nacional de Instituciones
Financieras), warns that foreign direct investment could drop from US$3.9
billion in 1997 to US$1.7 billion by the year 2000 if the government does not
adopt more effective counter-insurgency measures (LAWR, 26 August
1997(b)).
2.3 Profiles of Political Parties
Liberal Party (Partido Liberal - PL)
Founded in the 1840s, its orientation is centrist, favouring free enterprise
and privatization of state companies. The PL has been the dominant party in
Colombia since the 1930s and currently holds a majority of seats in both
houses of Congress. The party is presently divided over the issue of drugmoney financing of President Samper’s 1994 campaign, and at least ten
other Liberal members of Congress have been indicted for links to the Cali
cartel. Nevertheless, the majority of its members have remained loyal to
President Samper and have ensured his acquittal by the two investigating
panels (Political Parties of the Americas and the Caribbean, 1992, 95; EIU
Country Profile, 1997-98, 7).
Social Conservative Party (Partido Social Conservador - PSC)
Founded in 1849, its orientation is conservative, and until recently
advocated talks with the Medellín drug cartel and opposed the extradition
to the USA of the drug barons. At present the PSC is divided into several
factions: the main one, which supports President Samper and has helped to
keep him in office, the National Salvation Movement and the New
Democratic Force (Ibid.).
National Salvation Movement (Movimiento de Salvación Nacional - MSN)
Founded in 1990 and led by Alvaro Gómez Hurtado until his assassination in
1995. Its orientation is said to be right-wing traditionalist (EIU Country
Profile, 1997-98, 7).
New Democratic Force (Nueva Fuerza Democrática - NFD)
This party’s orientation is described as “middle-of-the-road social
conservative”. It is led by Andrés Pastrana, who lost the 1994 presidential
election to Ernesto Samper (Ibid.).
Patriotic Union (Unión Patriótica - UP)
Founded in 1985 by the Communist Party of Colombia (Partido Comunista de
Colombia - PCC) and other left-wing groups and trade unions as a way to
integrate the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Fuerzas Armadas
Revolucionarias de Colombia - FARC) guerrilla group into Colombia’s
political system following former President Belisario Betancur’s peace
initiatives in the early 1980s. Described as left-wing and Marxist, the UP
exposed international drug traffickers, and consequently thousands of its
members have been killed, allegedly by “right-wing” paramilitary groups
(South America, Central America and the Caribbean, 1997, 218; Political
Parties of the Americas and the Caribbean, 1992, 97). The victims have
included two presidential candidates, around twenty congressmen, dozens
of mayors and deputies and around 2,500 of its leaders and members (Pérez
Casas, L.G., June 1995).
Corriente de Renovación Socialista (CRS)
Formed in 1994 after the demobilization of a breakaway faction of the
National Liberation Army (Ejército de Liberación Nacional - ELN). The party
withdrew its candidates for the October 1997 local elections in the
Caribbean coast region after two of them were killed and others were
threatened by paramilitary groups (LAWR, 5 August 1997).
2.4 Contending Armed Groups
The Military
The Colombian armed forces are said to consist of 146,300 soldiers, of whom
121,000 are in the Army, 27,000 in the Navy, and 7,300 in the Air Force (EIU
Country Profile 1997-98, 10). To counter guerrilla offensives in different
parts of the country, the Army has created three specialized counterinsurgency brigades, known as the Mobile Brigades (Brigadas Móviles).
Mobile Brigade No. 1 is tasked with protecting the department of
Cundinamarca (capital: Santa Fé de Bogotá) against guerrilla advances from
other parts of the country. Mobile Brigade No. 2 is regarded as one of the
most effective, not only in combating guerrillas but also in the antinarcotics
war; it has conducted successful offensives against drug cartels operating in
the eastern plains of Guaviare and Caquetá. Mobile Brigade No. 3, consisting
of 1,500 elite professional soldiers and including a fleet of helicopters and
combat planes, was created in October 1997 as a special counter-insurgency
brigade to tackle the numerous setbacks incurred in the last two years by
the Army at the hands of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia
(FARC) in the south of the country (El Tiempo, 5 de marzo de 1998(a)). On 3
March 1998, Mobile Brigade No. 3 was ambushed by FARC guerrillas, as it
conducted an offensive operation in the region of Caguán, in the
department of Caquetá. Approximately 100 elite troops were killed in what
was reported to be the worst military defeat in the ten-year armed conflict
(El Tiempo, 5 de marzo de 1998, (a),(b),(c)).
CONVIVIR (Cooperativas de Vigilancia y Seguridad Rural)
The formation of these ‘Rural Watch Cooperatives’ was approved by Decree
356 of 1994, ostensibly to act as civilian intelligence and information
support groups for the armed forces (U.S. DOS Country Reports for 1997,
1998; Alternativa, Número 8, 1997). In addition to intelligence gathering
activities, the Convivir groups have reportedly joined military manoeuvres
and use weapons banned for private ownership, such as machine guns,
mortars, grenades and assault rifles (HRW World Report 1998, 101). Over
400 groups are said to be legally authorized, and another 300 are believed
to be operating as such, but without due authorization (Amnesty
International, January 1998). Despite their official licensing, the identities
of members of Convivir associations “remain anonymous even to local
authorities” (HRW World Report 1998, 101). Human rights organizations
regard them as little more than paramilitary groups (LAWR, 29 July 1997).
For example, Human Rights Watch claims to have received reports during
1997 that Convivir groups in the Middle Magdalena and southern César
regions “were led by known paramilitaries and had threatened and killed
Colombians deemed sympathetic to guerrillas who refused to join” (World
Report 1998, 101). In November 1997 the Constitutional Court reiterated
the constitutionality of the Convivir groups, but warned that they should not
be permitted to act as “death squads” or to violate human rights. They
were therefore ordered to relinquish their weapons, which had been issued
to them by the armed forces. Furthermore, the Government announced
modifications whereby one-half of the groups would be transformed into
Special Service Groups (Servicios Especiales) and one-half into Community
Service Groups (Servicios Comunitarios) (LAWR, 29 July 1997).
Paramilitary groups
According to Amnesty International, army-backed paramilitary groups have
terrorized rural Colombia for more than ten years, “torturing, killing and
‘disappearing’ with virtual impunity” (August 1995). Initially recruited,
armed and trained by the Army brigade commanders and intelligence units
attached to brigades and batallions in the conflict zones, these ‘selfdefense’ squads were subsequently given economic support by large
landowners, industrialists, regional politicians and, later, drug traffickers
(Ibid.). The U.S. Department of State refers to a September 1997 report by
the Presidential Exploratory Peace Commission which noted a clear
relationship between local political and economic elites in some parts of the
country and the self-defense groups, both in their financing and in the
direction of their activities (U.S. DOS Country Reports for 1997, 1998).
Moreover, in 1996, HRW/Americas and HRW Arms Project reported on the
partnership between the Colombian Military and paramilitary organizations
(November 1996). Amnesty International further states that During the
1980s the paramilitary phenomenon grew rapidly. From the mid-1980s the
‘self-defence’ groups increasingly merged with private armies of gunmen
formed by drug-traffickers who had bought vast tracts of rich farmland in
areas with a guerrilla presence. A community of interests developed
between drug-traffickers and local army commanders in that both sought to
eliminate members of rural communities who might sympathize with or
support armed insurgents, and to deprive guerrilla groups of their social
base. From small local groups intended to augment the military’s capacity
to protect private farms and rural communities from guerrilla attack, by
1988 the paramilitary organizations had become powerful military structures
capable of coordinated action throughout the country (Ibid.).
This diverse collection of regional-based paramilitary groups has assumed a
dominant role in the country’s armed conflict: their activities escalated not
only in areas that have long endured the concentration of violence such as
Meta, Urabá, Córdoba and César, but they are now present in parts of
Antioquia beyond Urabá, the Middle Magdalena region and the departments
of Sucre, Guaviare, Caquetá and Putumayo, resulting in a considerable
expansion of their political and military influence into a number of areas
previously dominated by the guerrillas (U.S. DOS Country Reports for 1997,
1998). Paramilitary groups were said to be responsible for 69 per cent of all
politically motivated extrajudicial executions committed during the first
nine months of 1997 (Ibid.). They are diverse in their motivations,
structure, leadership and ideology, and their victims are usually unarmed
non-combatant civilians, such as teachers, labour leaders, community
activists, mayors of towns and villages, town councilmen, some members of
indigenous communities and, above all, peasants whom they either kill or
forcibly displace for their perceived ties to the guerrillas (Ibid.).
The Peasant Self-Defense Group of Córdoba and Urabá (Autodefensas
Campesinas de Córdoba y Urabá - ACCU)
- Led by Carlos Castaño, whose landholdings reportedly extend through the
departments of Córdoba, Antioquia and Chocó (Alternativa, Número 13
[Internet: accessed 21 February 1998]). Their position was published in
1997: “we respect all persons who are outside the conflict, but we do not so
consider guerrillas camouflaged as peasants engaged in espionage” (U.S.
DOS Country Reports for 1997, 1998). ACCU is reported to hold the worst
record of human rights abuses in 1997, having committed at least 22 of the
massacres in the first eight months of the year, including the five-day attack
in July in the town of Maripirán, in the department of Meta, which left
nearly 40 people dead (HRW World Report 1998, 1997). ACCU has
expanded its area of operations, moving south from the Caribbean coast into
the departments of Bolívar, Magdalena, Santander, Sucre, and César, with
massacres, killings, death threats, and forced displacement marking its
advance” (Ibid.). Since October 1996 ACCU forces have reportedly entered
Panamá repeatedly and killed or threatened local villagers accused of
providing guerrillas with food and medicine (Ibid.).
United Self-Defense Groups (Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia - AUC) - is
a national umbrella organization established in April 1997 by the largest
illegal paramilitary groups from Córdoba, Urabá, the Middle Magdalena and
the eastern plains of the country (U.S. DOS Country Reports for 1997,
1998).
Colombia Without Guerrillas - (Colombia sin guerrillas - COLSINGUE)
This group reportedly appeared around 1993-94. In its public
communications, it has allegedly used information from trials which was
available only to members of the armed forces and the judiciary (Oficina
Internacional de Derechos Humanos-Acción Colombia, February 1996)
Death to Communists and Guerrillas - (Muerte a Comunistas y
Guerrilleros - MACOGUE) - A group which operates in the region of Segovia,
in the northeast of the department of Antioquia, who claim to love the
motherland, to support the army and to want to expel the guerrillas from
Segovia (Amnesty International, November 1996).
Death to Kidnappers - (Muerte a Secuestradores - MAS)
The group emerged in 1982 in the city of Medellín, in the department of
Antioquia. It claimed to be against groups which carried out abductions to
finance their operations, and it targeted suspected guerrillas, trade
unionists and peasants. MAS is believed to be responsible for the 1982
deaths of M-19 leader Camilo Restrepo and the amnestied leader of the ELN,
Henry Castro, and for the 1984 death of Fr. Alvaro Orcue, the only Roman
Catholic Indian priest in Colombia and campaigner for peasant rights
(Revolutionary and Dissident Movements, 1991, 52). A 1983 investigation
revealed links between the MAS paramilitaries and the military, and MAS is
also believed to be “linked from its formation to the drug trade and to have
received financial backing from drug dealers” (Ibid.). In 1989 the MAS
reportedly killed Communist Party and Patriotic Union leader José
Antequera and wounded then-Liberal Party leader and now President
Ernesto Samper, ostensibly under orders from one of the drug cartels
(Political Parties of the Americas and the Caribbean, 1992, 100).
The Black Serpent (La Serpiente Negra) This is said to be a private army of more than 2,000 men set up by
Colombia’s “emerald king”, Victor Carranza (Reuters, 25 February 1998(a)).
Human rights groups allege that, during the six-year war for control of the
emerald industry during the 1980s, Black Serpent militiamen “killed
hundreds of left-wing activists and drove peasants off resource-rich land in
the emerald region of central Boyacá province and the oil-rich eastern
plains” (Ibid.). Victor Carranza’s wealth is said to include vast land holdings,
cattle raising, drug trafficking and money laundering (Reuters, 25 February
1998(b)). On 24 February 1998, he was arrested and charged with financing
and sponsoring right-wing paramilitary death squads (Washington Post, 26
February 1998; Reuters, 25 February 1998(a), (b)).
Los Tangueros
One of the many groups responsible for the violence in the Urabá region, it
was organized by Fidel Castaño Gil (brother of ACCU leader Carlos Castaño).
The group is named after his farm “Las Tangas”, which serves as their base.
The group forms part of the advance forces used to attack and displace
guerrillas and their social base (Grupo de Apoyo, June 1995).
Death to Revolutionaries of the Northeast (Muerte a Revolucionarios del
Nordeste - MRN) / The Realists (Los Realistas)
This group is believed to have issued death threats against residents of the
city of Segovia, in the northeast of Antioquia, prior to the 11 November
1988 massacre which left 43 people dead (Amnesty International,
November 1996).
Other, less well-known paramilitary groups include the “Mochacabezas”, so
called because they decapitate their victims, and reportedly operate mainly
in the department of Chocó (Alternativa, No. 10, 1997 [Internet]); the
“Masetos”, accused of numerous killings, operating mainly in the oilproducing region of Casanare (Ibid.); Dignidad por Antioquia (Dignity for
Antioquia) and Resistencia Campesina (Peasant Resistance), also believed
to be operating in the northeast of the department of Antioquia (Amnesty
International, November 1996).
Guerrilla groups
According to the U.S. Department of State, there are three distinct
communist rebel armies -- the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia
(Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia - FARC), the National
Liberation Army (Ejército de Liberación Nacional - ELN), and the Popular
Liberation Army (Ejército Popular de Liberación - EPL) -- which reportedly
command from 10,000 to 15,000 full-time guerrillas, operating on more than
100 fronts in an estimated 30 of the nation’s 32 departments (U.S. DOS
Country Reports for 1997, 1998). Tied loosely into the Simón Bolívar
Guerrilla Coordinating Group (Coordinadora Nacional Guerrillera Simón
Bolívar), they are said to exercise considerable influence in 57 per cent of
the nation’s 1,071 municipalities (Ibid.). Their tactics are said to be similar
to those of the paramilitary groups: extrajudicial killings, kidnappings,
torture, targeting of civilian populations and installations, and the forced
recruitment of children under the age of 15 (Ibid.). In August 1997, a local
observer noted that the guerrillas have become Colombia’s “great power”,
not only for their military might but also for their economic capacity, which
has enabled them to maintain a powerful propaganda and political
negotiating apparatus, mainly in Europe and other Latin American countries
such as México (Semana, 18-25 de Agosto de 1997 [Internet]).
By the middle of 1997 evidence began to surface that guerrilla groups were
coordinating their actions. For example, the early July 1997 there was a
succession of attacks, first by the ELN and then by the FARC, against the
hydroelectric dam installations at Guatape, east of Medellín (LAWR, 8 July
1997), as well as a series of attacks against the 780-kilometre Caño LimónCoveñas oil pipeline, believed to have been coordinated by the two groups
(LAWR, 22 July 1997). Also evident was the guerrillas’ ability to deploy
larger units in simultaneous operations in different parts of the country,
with analysts predicting that in one year they would be able to double the
number of fighters they had in the field at that time (LAWR, 8 July 1997). In
August 1997 the two groups were said to be working in conjunction in the
departments of Arauca and Norte de Santander, and military intelligence
speculated that they might be discussing the establishment of a single
command structure (LAWR, 5 August 1997).
Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia - Popular Army
(Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia - Ejército Popular FARC-EP)
Founded in 1966 by Manuel Marulanda Vélez, alias “Tirofijo” (Sure Shot),
and other members of the Communist Party’s central committee, it is Latin
America’s oldest and largest guerrilla army (Revolutionary and Dissident
Movements, 1991, 52; Reuters, 24 February 1998; LAWR, 29 July 1997). A
short-lived truce with the Government resulted in the formation in 1985 of
the political party Patriotic Union (Unión Patriótica), whose members were
former FARC guerrillas (Revolutionary and Dissident Movements, 1991,
52). However, the lack of progress towards a final peace settlement became
evident after the new Liberal administration took over in 1986, which
gradually led to a renewal of hostilities between FARC guerrillas,
Government troops and paramilitary units (Ibid.). At present the FARC, like
the ELN, calls for a revision of development policies for Colombia’s oil
industry (LAWR, 17 June 1997). In July 1997 the group claimed to have
killed 26 of the men accused of the massacre of 35 residents of Mariripán, in
the department of Meta, on the grounds that the gunmen were not
paramilitaries but “counter-insurgency troops of the army’s IV division,
masquerading as civilian militiamen” (LAWR, 12 August 1997).
In December 1997 members of the 9th Front, located in the department of
Antioquia, detained four journalists and six elected mayors for several days
in protest at the increased activity by paramilitary forces throughout the
country (El Espectador, 20 December 1997(a), [Internet]). FARC guerrillas in
the eastern department of Santander also kidnapped nine officials of the
three palm growing companies in the region, threatening further
kidnappings if the ransom demanded for them was not paid (El Espectador,
20 December 1997(b)). The FARC reportedly has a strong presence in the
southern and central departments of Huila, Caquetá, Putumayo, Guaviare,
Meta and Nariño (El Tiempo, 5 de marzo de 1998(a)). However, it is the
FARC’s southern block, with traditional power bases in the Putumayo
province, the leading cocaine-producing area of the country, which is
considered to be the best organized militarily (Reuters, 5 March 1998, 14
February 1998; El Tiempo, 5 de marzo de 1998(a) [Internet]). Composed of
11 fronts plus a guerrilla group known as Teófilo Forero, totalling at least
1,500 armed men, the southern block has dealt severe blows to the
Colombian military in the last two years (El Tiempo, 5 de marzo de
1998(a)(b) [Internet]; The Economist, 10 January 1998). The most recent of
these occurred in the first week of March 1998 in the department of
Caquetá, where an attack against an elite mobile brigade, consisting of
approximately 120 professional soldiers, is believed to have left a death toll
of 70 to 100 soldiers (Reuters, 5 March 1995(c)).
National Liberation Army (Ejército de Liberación Nacional - ELN)
The ELN was established in January 1965 under the leadership of Fabio
Vasquez Castaño and with support of a (Maoist) Workers’, Students’ and
Peasants’ Movement (MOEC). Initially it operated in the department of
Santander, but it has spread to other parts of the country. Its most famous
member was the priest Camilo Torres, who advocated a ‘Christian
revolution’ to overthrow the existing social order, and who was killed in a
clash between the ELN and an army unit in 1966 (Revolutionary and
Dissident Movements, 1991, 54). The group is currently led by Manuel
Pérez. Two other senior commanders, Francisco Galán and Felipe Torres,
are in prison (LAWR, 29 July 1997). The ELN, like the FARC, calls for a
revision of Colombia’s oil industry development policies: in 1985 it declared
the oil sector a military target, in protest against the oil exploration
contracts signed by the national petroleum company, Ecopetrol, with
foreign companies, which it felt undermined national sovereignty (LAWR, 17
June 1997). It has mostly targeted the Caño Limón-Coveñas oil pipeline as
well as military installations and personnel: on 6 July 1997 ELN guerrillas
shot down a military helicopter, killing 29 soldiers as they rushed to the
scene of another act of sabotage (the 35th in 1997) against a stretch of the
oil pipeline in the eastern plains, in the department of Arauca (LAWR, 8
July 1997). The ELN is divided into numerous fronts, such as the Frente
Bolcheviques del Líbano, believed to be responsible for the 15 February
1998 kidnappings of two Liberal party candidates of the municipality of
Líbano in the department of Tolima (El Tiempo, 22 February 1998); the
Frente Camilo Torres; the Frente Carlos Alirio Buitrago; the Frente José
David Suárez, which in June 1997 declared that all personnel and
installations of the Cupiaga oil field, in the eastern department of Casanare,
were to be considered as ‘military targets’ (LAWR, 17 June 1997); the
Frente María Cano, which is active in the department of Antioquia, where,
together with the FARC, it has “conduct[ed] a systematic campaign of
kidnapping town mayors” (LAWR, 1 July 1997). The ELN was responsible for
a large number of kidnappings of elected officials and candidates in the runup to the October 1997 municipal elections (U.S. DOS Country Reports for
1997, 1998).People’s Liberation Army (Ejército Popular de Liberación EPL)
Formed in 1968 by the (Maoiste) Colombian Communist Party -- MarxistLeninist, which had broken away from the (Marxist-Leninist) Colombian
Communist Party in 1965. It initially conducted its activities in the
department of Córdoba. In 1980 the party reportedly consisted of 60 fronts,
and by 1983 it was considered to be the third largest guerrilla group in
Colombia. In 1987 the EPL joined the Simón Bolívar Coordinating Group
(Coordinadora Nacional Guerrillera Simón Bolívar), and in January 1991 it
signed a peace agreement with the Government of then-President César
Gaviria, in exchange for two seats in the Constituent Assembly and its
members’ reintegration into civilian life. By March 1991 2,000 EPL members
had handed over their weapons. The group subsequently joined the political
mainstream as the Hope, Peace and Liberty party (Esperanza, Paz y
Libertad - EPL) (South America, Central America and the Caribbean 1997,
218; Revolutionary and Dissident Movements of the World, 1991, 54). One
dissident faction, however, remained within the “Coordinadora Simón
Bolivar” retaining the original name of the group, and was reported to have
been responsible, together with the FARC and the ELN, for extrajudicial
killings in 1997 (Amnesty International, January 1998; U.S. DOS Country
Reports for 1997, 1998).
Simón Bolívar National Coordinating Group (Coordinadora Nacional
Guerrillera Simón Bolívar) - This group was organized in 1987 as a central
unified command for six Colombian guerrilla factions: the Revolutionary
Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC); the National Liberation Army (ELN); the
People’s Liberation Army (EPL); the Workers’ Revolutionary Party (Partido
Revolucionario de Trabajadores - PRT), and the Quintin Lame Front. When
many of these groups reached peace agreements with the Government in
1991, only the FARC and the ELN remained in the “Coordinadora Simón
Bolivar”. In 1992 it also included a dissident faction of the EPL
(Revolutionary and Dissident Movements, 1991, 54).
3. Human Rights Situation
3.1 International and National Legal Framework
Colombia has ratified the 1951 UN Convention relating to the Status of
Refugees (10 October 1961) and its Protocol (4 March 1980); the
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and its Optional Protocol
(29 October 1969); the International Covenant on Economic, Social and
Cultural Rights (29 October 1969); the International Convention on the
Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (2 September 1981); the
Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading
Treatment or Punishment (8 December 1987); the Convention on the
Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (27 October 1959); the
Convention on the Political Rights of Women (19 January 1982); the
Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women
(19 January 1982); the Convention on the Rights of the Child (28 January
1991); the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of all
Migrant Workers and Members of their Families (24 May 1995), and the
Agreement Establishing the Fund for the Development of the Indigenous
Peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean (9 May 1995).
Constitution of 1991
In July 1991 President Gaviria presented the nation with a new Constitution,
which aimed, inter alia, to encourage greater political participation by
opening up the system to minority groups and interests; to protect a
comprehensive list of civil liberties, including the right of every citizen to
social welfare, education and recreational facilities and the right to equality
of women and young people, as well as to restructure the judiciary through
modernization and streamlining (Europa World Yearbook, 1991, 932; EIU
Country Profile 1997-98, 7). The 1991 Constitution banned the extradition of
Colombian nationals, and presidential re-election, but it called for the
popular election of regional governors, who had previously been appointed
by the president (Ibid., EIU Country Profile 1997-98, 7). The inclusion of
extensive references to human rights and the creation of a number of
mechanisms for their protection, such as the post of Defensor del Pueblo,
was seen as one of the most important measures for the protection of
human rights in Colombia (UN Commission on Human Rights,
E/CN.4/1995/50/Add.1, 3 October 1994). However, the Defensor del Pueblo
was not invested with the power to investigate human rights abuses, and his
office appeared to be underfunded and not represented in the whole of the
country (Ibid.).
The 1991 Constitution, therefore, is said to work better in theory than in
practice: it has failed to break the stranglehold on power of the two
traditional political parties; the courts continue to be overloaded and
inefficient, and it severely restricts the Government’s ability to react to
problems of internal order (EIU Country Profile 1997-98, 7). Moreover,
clauses relating to the armed forces were said to have remained mainly
unchanged, and provisions recognizing the democratic rights of indigenous
groups did not extend to their territorial claims (Europa World Yearbook,
1991, 932).
3.2 General Respect of Human Rights
The Constitution of 1991 introduced measures for the protection of human
rights, such as the establishment of the Office of the Ombudsman, the
Department for Human Rights within the Office of the Public Prosecutor and
the Division for Human Rights within the Office of the Attorney-General.
The Office of the Public Prosecutor in turn set up permanent offices on
human rights in the main cities of the country, and in 1997 an Office of the
United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights in Colombia was
established (UN International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights,
CCPR/C/79/Add.76; Human Rights Watch, World Report 1998, 1997; UN
Commission on Human Rights, E/CN.4/1997/11, 24 January 1997, and
E/CN.4/1995/50/Add.1, 3 October 1994). Other non-governmental human
rights organizations active in the country include the Catholic Bishops
Conference; the Colombian Commission of Jurists; the Intercongregational
Commission for Justice and Peace; the Permanent Committee for the
Defense of Human Rights; the Center for Investigations and Popular Resarch;
the Advisory Committee for Human Rights and Displacements; the Latin
American Institute for Alternative Legal Services; the Committee in
Solidarity with Political Prisoners; the Association of Families of Detained
and Disappeared Persons; the Reinsertion Foundation (for demobilized
guerrillas), the Pais Libre Foundation (focused on the rights of kidnap
victims), and the VIDA Foundation (dealing with the rights of victims of
guerrilla violence) (U.S. DOS Country Reports for 1997, 1998). The ICRC
has expanded its operations, with offices in Bogotá and 11 other conflict
zones. In collaboration with the presidential human rights adviser and the
public security forces, it helped provide training programmes in
international humanitarian law (Ibid.).
Nevertheless, the human rights crisis in Colombia continues to deteriorate
due to the intensification and expansion into more areas of the country of
the ten-year armed conflict, especially since the 1995 breakdown of the
Government’s proposals for holding peace talks with the main armed
opposition groups, the FARC, the ELN and the EPL (Amnesty International,
January 1998; HRW World Report 1998, 1997).
Extrajudicial executions, forcible disappearances and torture are said to be
widespread, while arbitrary arrest and detention, as well as prolonged pretrial detention, remain “fundamental problems” (U.S. DOS Country Reports
for 1997, 1998; Amnesty International, January 1998; HRW World Report
1998, 1997).
The U.S. Department of State reports that during the first nine months of
1997 security forces committed 7.5 per cent of all politically motivated
extrajudicial killings and were responsible for several instances of forced
disappearance, and that police and soldiers tortured and beat a number of
detainees (Ibid.). Amnesty International notes that a decrease in the past
few years of abuses directly attributable to the military has had a
corresponding increase in abuses committed by paramilitary groups
“operating with their support or acquiescence” (January 1998). Human
Rights Watch adds that despite the police and the military’s incorporation
of human rights into their public statements, and their meetings with human
rights groups, there was no consistent action against paramilitaries, who
“operated freely in heavily militarized areas and significantly expanded
their operations” (HRW World Report 1998, 1997, p. 99).
Paramilitary groups allegedly committed 69 per cent of all politically
motivated extrajudicial killings, and those groups which increasingly took
the offensive against the guerrillas reportedly perpetrated targeted killings,
massacres, and forced displacements of the guerrillas’ perceived or alleged
civilian support base; their active policy of depopulation was said to be the
main cause of the growing problem of internal displacement in Colombia
(U.S. DOS Country Reports for 1997, 1998).
Armed opposition groups were also responsible for deliberate and arbitrary
killings as well as for kidnapping and holding hostage hundreds of civilians
(Amnesty International, January 1998). During the first nine months of 1997
they were responsible for 23.5 per cent of all politically motivated
extrajudicial killings, as well as for disappearances, and for more than 50
per cent (867) of all formally reported kidnappings (U.S. DOS Country
Reports for 1997, 1998).
Only 30 per cent of political killings are said to occur during actual combat
between the military, paramilitaries and guerrillas (National Catholic
Reporter, 24 October 1997). According to Human Rights Watch, All parties
routinely attacked perceived enemies within the civilian population,
meaning that non-combatants -- among them farmers, elected officials,
teachers, banana workers, merchants and children -- remained Colombia’s
most frequent victims of political violence (World Report 1998, 1997).
Amnesty International further illustrates the problem by providing the
Procurator-General’s analysis of the Government’s counter-insurgency
strategy:
The state of security and defence agencies are trained to persecute a
collective enemy and generally consider that victims form part of that
enemy. In a substantial number of cases they act on the premise that
prevailed in the war in El Salvador of “removing the water from the fish”,
which means that they establish a direct link between, for example, the
trade unions or peasant organizations, with the guerrilla forces and when
they carry out counter-insurgency operations these passive subjects are not
identified as “independent” victims but as part of the enemy. In effect, the
state security and defence forces assault the human rights of independent
passive subjects because they commit the mistake of considering them to be
the enemy or allied to the enemy (August 1995).Extrajudicial execution
According to the U.S. Department of State, political and extrajudicial
killings continue to be a serious problem, with more than 3,500 persons said
to have died in such acts, committed by both state and non-state agents
during 1997 (U.S. DOS Country Reports for 1997, 1998). The Inter-American
Commission for Human Rights (Comisión Interamericana de Derechos
Humanos - CIDH) indicates that the internal armed conflict, involving acts
committed by armed rebel groups, State agents, paramilitary groups, drug
traffickers and organized crime, and the resulting violations to basic human
rights and international humanitarian law, are the sources of a
“lamentable” number of deaths, of which 3,000 are directly attributable to
the political violence (Organization of American States, Press Release No.
20/97, 8 December 1997). Figures released by the Institute for Legal
Medicine indicate a 1997 homicide rate of 66 deaths per 100,000
inhabitants, 74 per cent of which are said to go unreported while
approximately 98 per cent go unpunished ((U.S. DOS Country Reports for
1997, 1998). Human Rights Watch reports that it recorded 24 cases of
extrajudicial executions attributable to the security forces during the first
six months of 1997, citing the case of the Middle Magdalena region and
southern César department, where “army units patrolled openly with groups
of armed civilians, killing and threatening supposed guerrilla supporters”
(World Report 1998, 1997). It adds, however, that the paramilitary group
known as the Peasant Self-Defense Group of Córdoba and Urabá (ACCU)
“committed at least twenty-two of the massacres reported in the first eight
months of 1997 . . . [and that] . . . guerrillas committed serious abuses
during 1997, among them massacres” (Ibid.). Amnesty International has
published numerous reports detailing massacres, extrajudicial killings and
other human rights violations committed by all sides of the conflict in
different parts of the country, such as Segovia, in northeastern Antioquia,
(November 1996); the department of Sucre (June 1996); the departments of
Norte de Santander and César (August 1995), among others. In 1997, The
Special Rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers, Mr. Param
Cumaraswamy, referred to urgent appeals he had transmitted to the
Government of Colombia concerning death threats or assassination of
human rights lawyers (E/CN.4/1997/32, 18 February 1997).
In February 1998, 48 people were reportedly killed by paramilitaries in “ten
days of bloodshed” in the port city of Puerto Asís, in the southern
department of Putumayo (Reuters, 11 February 1998). Elsewhere, a
paramilitary group was reported to have killed 11 peasants in the
municipality of La Ceja, in the northeast of the department of Antioquia (El
Espectador, 25 February 1998).
Forced disappearance/Kidnappings
The U.S. Department of State reports that an estimated 3,000 cases of
forced disappearance have been formally reported to the authorities since
1977, with only very few cases having been resolved. It cites data collected
by the Intercongregational Commission for Justice and Peace and the Center
for Investigations and Popular Research (CINEP) which indicates that 136
persons ‘disappeared’ during the first nine months of 1997 (U.S. DOS
Country Reports for 1997, 1998).
Human Rights Watch notes that “kidnapping remained a common tactic of
paramilitaries and guerrillas, who routinely took family members of
combatants as hostages” (World Report 1998, 102). Guerrillas were believed
to be responsible for over 50 per cent (867 victims) of the 1,693 kidnapping
cases formally reported to the National Police during 1997 (U.S. DOS
Country Reports for 1997, 1998). The Working Group on Enforced or
Involuntary Disappearances reported that most instances of forced
disappearance have occurred in those region where the level of violence is
highest, and that some of its victims are persons belonging to civic or human
rights groups who publicly denounced abuses committed by members of the
security forces or paramilitary groups (UN Commission on Human Rights,
E/CN.4/1998/43, 12 January 1998). Foreigners are said to account for five
per cent of those kidnapped, posing attractive targets for both the FARC and
the ELN, which generally demanded “exorbitant ransom payments for their
release” (Ibid.). From August to October 1997, FARC and ELN guerrillas
conducted a massive campaign against candidates for the 26 October
departmental and local elections in which “hundreds of persons were
kidnapped, held for several days or weeks, lectured, and subsequently
released, typically after promising to withdraw their candidacies” (Ibid.).
On the other hand, since 1996 ACCU paramilitary groups have kidnapped
over a dozen relatives of guerrillas, some of whom were released on 26
March through the good offices of the International Committee of the Red
Cross (ICRC) (Ibid.). On 18 April 1997, presumed members of a paramilitary
group in the city of Bucaramanga kidnapped the sister and brother-in-law of
Nicolas Rodríguez, the deputy commander of the ELN, ostensibly as part of a
campaign begun in 1996 to give guerrillas “a taste of their own medicine”
(U.S. DOS Country Reports for 1997, 1998). Guerrillas also kidnapped and
subsequently released two electoral observers from the the Organization of
American States (OAS, Press Release No. 20/97, 8 December 1997).
In February 1998, El Tiempo reported the kidnappings by the FARC of the
mayor and two councilmen of the municipality of Planadas (22 February
1998), the mayor of the town of Roncesvalles (26 February 1998), and two
Liberal party candidates from the municipality of Líbano (22 February 1998),
all in the department of Tolima; the mayor and two councilmen of the
municipality of Medina, in the department of Cundinamarca (27 February
1998(a)); the abduction of an agronomist, the ninth being held in captivity,
from the main palm growing company in Puerto Wilches, in the department
of Santander (26 February 1998), and of a wealthy university student who
was subsequently rescued, in Bogotá (21 February 1998). El Tiempo also
reported the lack of information on two mayors from the municipalities of
San Calixto and Convención in the department of Santander, kidnapped five
months earlier by the ELN (27 February 1998(a)), or on the fate of three
American missionaries kidnapped on 3 January 1993 by the FARC (27
February 1998(b)).
Torture
Although the Constitution prohibits torture, as well as other cruel, inhuman
or degrading treatment or punishment, the U.S. Department of State
indicates that there were continued incidents torture or mistreatment of
detainees carried out by the police and the military (U.S. DOS Country
Reports for 1997, 1998). It further indicates that the Office of the AttorneyGeneral for Human Rights reported investigating 462 cases of torture
committed by the police, army, prison officials, DAS (Department of
Administrative Security) and other agents of the State in the period from
June 1995 to October 1996 (Ibid.). Paramilitary and guerrilla groups were
also said to be responsible for many instances of torture, as evidenced by
the signs of torture and disfiguration on the bodies of a great many persons
detained and subsequently killed by these groups (Ibid.).
3.3 The Situation of Specific Groups
In 1995, Amnesty International reported that Colombian security and
paramilitary forces frequently targeted civilians active in popular and civic
organizations such as trade unions, peasant organizations, human rights
organizations and members of legal political opposition parties (August
1995). These sectors are considered subversive not only by the armed forces
and paramilitary groups, but also by traditionally dominant sectors whose
interests are challenged by popular activists and organizations as well as
opposition party politicians. Consequently, people considered to be guerrilla
collaborators are included in “death lists” drawn up by the security forces
and then used by them and the paramilitary groups to target civilians
(Ibid.). The U.S. Department of State reported that there were numerous
instances of people pressured into self-exile for their personal safety, and
that these included politicians, human rights workers, slum-dwellers,
business executives, and rural farmers, who were threatened by diverse
sources such as elements of the military, paramilitary groups, guerrilla
groups, narcotics traffickers, and other criminal elements (U.S. DOS
Country Reports for 1997, 1998). The Office of the Presidency is said to
have assisted the international relocation of threatened persons in more
than 150 cases, when it was decided that the Government was unable to
ensure their security anywhere in the country (Ibid.).
Human rights activists
Human rights defenders are said to be one of the groups most affected by
the violence, whether they are attached to important government, non-
governmental, state, church or academic institutions most often involved in
providing legal protection and humanitarian assistance to the displaced
population (Instituto Interamericano de Derechos Humanos, Abril 1997).
Some have been detained on charges of collaborating with guerrillas, others
have been killed, and most of them have been forced to flee their places of
origin, either becoming internally displaced themselves or seeking asylum or
refuge in other countries (Ibid.). At least ten governmental and nongovernmental human rights workers were reportedly killed during 1997: two
workers associated with CINEP, Mario Calderón and Elsa Alvarado, along
with her father, were killed in a pre-dawn attack on 19 May by five armed
individuals; the head of the Meta Committee for Human Rights, Josué
Giraldo, who was then under “protection” of the Inter-American Court of
Human Rights, was killed in October 1996; on 4 June 1997 a small bomb
exploded at the Medellín office of the Colombian Red Cross when the ICRC
was coordinating the release of 70 government troops held by the FARC;
also targeted were the offices of an association helping displaced people
(U.S. DOS Country Reports for 1997, 1998). In December 1996, the Special
Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, Bacre Waly
Ndiaye, reported that the risks facing human rights activists are believed to
have led several organizations to suspend their activities
(E/CN.4/1997/60/Add.1, 23 December 1996). The Special Rapporteur
provided lists of people either under threat or killed, which in addition to
human rights and civic workers included lawyers, priests, members of
political opposition parties, trade unionists, peasant and indigenous leaders,
and minors (Ibid.). In 1995, the Special Rapporteur referred to the targeting
of people regarded as ‘disposable’ (desechables) such as prostitutes,
homosexuals, beggars, drug consumers and street children, killed by ‘death
squads’ in ‘social cleansing’ operations (E/CN.4/1995/111, 16 January
1995).
Journalists
According to the U.S. Department of State, Colombian and international
journalists work in an atmosphere of threats and intimidation. Journalists
who denounced the drug trade and its influence on all facets of Colombia
life were either threatened or killed: Francisco Santos, an editor of the
Bogotá newspaper El Tiempo and a critic of the drug cartels, received an
anonymous phone call threatening to kill him and to blow up the
newspaper’s office; Gerardo Bedoya, editor of Cali’s El País, also a vocal
critic of President Samper for accepting drug money and a cousin of former
chief of the military General Harold Bedoya, was shot and killed on 20 March
1997; a car bomb containing about 550 pounds of dynamite was deactivated
in front of the offices of Medellín’s El Mundo newspaper. Seven journalists
were reportedly killed in separate attacks during the year (U.S. DOS
Country Reports for 1997, 1998). In December 1997, presidential press
spokesman William Parra and radio journalist Luis Eduardo Maldonado were
allegedly kidnapped (and subsequently released) by the Jaime Bateman
Cayon movement, a small splinter group of the demobilized M-19
movement, and four other journalists were kidnapped by the FARC (Ibid.).
In June 1997, the FARC had announced that it would regard journalists who
wrote what they considered an “apology for militarism” legitimate military
targets (HRW World Report 1998, 101). Journalist Alvaro Molano was
threatened by paramilitaries because of his work for the government’s High
Commissioner for Peace (Ibid.). On 3 March 1998, Didier Aristizábal, a radio
journalist who had worked closely with police by helping them set up a radio
station in the city of Cali, was reported killed in a gangland-style shooting
on his way home (Reuters, 3 March 1998).
Politicians/Elected officials
During 1997, more than 200 incumbents or candidates for public office, of
all political orientations, were reportedly killed by guerrillas, as the FARC,
ELN and EPL publicly declared their armed opposition to electioneering in
areas under their control (U.S. DOS Country Reports for 1997, 1998). At
least 60 mayors or mayoral candidates, and numerous candidates for lesser
local offices were abducted, and more than 2,000 of the 42,500 candidates
for office nation-wide, including all four gubernatorial candidates for
Putumayo, were forced to withdraw their candidacies ahead of the October
1997 elections (Ibid.). According to Human Rights Watch, even candidates’
families were the frequent targets of death threats and kidnapping (World
Report 1998, 101). Moreover, mayors themselves became the targets of
army investigations for supposed ties to guerrillas, and in May 1997 an army
intelligence report leaked to the newsweekly Semana alleged that 650, or
more than half of all the municipal governments in Colombia, had direct
ties to the guerrillas or collaborated with them (Ibid.).
Teachers
Guerrillas and paramilitary groups reportedly targeted elementary and
secondary level teachers in areas of conflict, with 23 teachers killed and six
others disappeared in the first half of 1997, primarily in the departments of
Córdoba and Antioquia (Ibid.). Also targeted were university-level
academics engaged in the study of the internal conflict or human rights
(Ibid.). In a 1996 report about human rights violations in the department of
Sucre, Amnesty International refers to a list of teachers who were under
threat presented by the Sucre Association of Teachers (Asociación de
Educadores de Sucre - ADES) to the Departmental Committee of Teachers
under Threat (Comité Departamental de Amenazados). In it were the names
of 19 teachers who had been forced to leave the region, 27 teachers
reportedly named on a “death list”, as well as seven other names (June
1996). In the words of a member of the ADES executive board, “it would be
wrong to believe that left-wing teachers were the only ones under threat,
those to the right are also under threat as well as those who keep away
from politics” (Ibid.)
Peasants
Peasant farmers who are not active in popular organizations are equally the
target of human rights violations, including death threats, torture,
extrajudicial execution and forced “disappearance”, merely on the basis
that they live in areas of guerrilla activity and are therefore considered by
the armed forces or the paramilitaries to be guerrilla collaborators or
sympathisers (Amnesty International, August 1995). In its August 1995
report on political violence in the eastern departments of Norte de
Santander and César, Amnesty International cited numerous incidents of
evident collaboration between security forces and paramilitary groups as
they attacked entire villages or individuals whose names appeared on their
lists, which often resulted in death (Ibid.). On 23 February 1998, a group of
armed men believed to be members of the Peasant Self Defense Groups of
Córdoba and Urabá (Autodefensas Campesinas de Córdoba y Urabá - ACCU)
reportedly broke into several homes in the municipality of La Ceja, in the
eastern part of the department of Antioquia, and indiscriminately shot and
killed their occupants as they slept (El Espectador, 25 February 1998; El
Tiempo, 26 February 1998(c)). Elsewhere in the country, in the oilproducing eastern department of Santander, four peasants selected from a
list were killed by an unidentified group of 20 armed men (El Espectador,
25 February 1998.).
Former guerrillas and members of left-wing political parties
According to the U.S. Department of State, former members of guerrilla
groups who laid down their arms following peace agreements with the
Government were targeted both by paramilitary groups and by their former
comrades-in-arms. By the end of 1996, 258 of the 5,897 guerrillas from at
least six rebel armies formally demobilized during 1990-94 had been killed,
and an additional 82 had been killed by the middle of August 1997, two-
thirds of them in the departments of Antioquia and Sucre (U.S. DOS Country
Reports for 1997, 1998). At least 19 members of the Socialist Renovation
Current (CRS), which broke away from the ELN and demobilized in 1994,
were killed during 1997 (Ibid.). Likewise, since 1985 approximately 3,000
members of the Patriotic Union and Communist parties were the victims of a
campaign of assassinations initially set off by Medellín cartel leader
Rodríguez Gacha, with 600 of these murders taking place in the department
of Meta (Ibid.).
Homosexuals
Although homosexual behaviour between consenting adults is not considered
a criminal offense in Colombia, society in general has a negative attitude
towards homosexuality. Death squads target homosexuals, and the most
serious violations of fundamental rights are said to be committed against
transvestites and sex workers or prostitutes. Other abuses, such as rejection
in educational institutions and denial of housing or employment, are said to
occur frequently, but the victims do not denounce these violations for fear
of scandal or additional problems (The Third Pink Book, 1993, 270). Serious
risks are said to be faced mostly by homosexuals who engage in high-profile
activism or who are considered “disposable” (desechables) and as such
become victims of “social cleansing” murders (Ibid.).
Women and Children
During its 1997 visit to Colombia, the Interamerican Commission on Human
Rights noted the plight of many women and children, despite the existence
of legal mechanisms designed to ensure their protection (OAS, 8 December
1998). Women and children have been particularly affected by internal
displacement; women continue to be the victims of domestic violence, and
children are vulnerable to forced recruitment by the army, paramilitary and
guerrilla groups (Ibid.). Amnesty International reported that
[t]ens of thousands of peasant women, many of them recently widowed,
have been forced to flee their rural homes with their children, abandon
their livestock and possessions, and take precarious refuge in shanty towns
surrounding towns and cities. There, they, but particularly their children,
may be preyed upon by urban death squads or forced into a life of crime and
prostitution in order to survive (October 1997).
Women are said to constitute 58 per cent of internally displaced persons,
the majority of them being heads of families; some 75 per cent of the
displaced are under 25 years old, several thousand of them also being heads
of families because of the death of one or both parents (Ibid.).
The U.S. Department of State indicates that women constitute 88 per cent
of the estimated 239,400 victims of sexual abuse annually; 82 per cent of
sexual abuse victims are minors, and an estimated 25,000 boys and girls
under the age of 18 work in the sex trade (U.S. DOS Country Reports for
1997, 1998).
Indigenous populations
Colombia has more than 80 distinct groups among the 800,000 indigenous
inhabitants (1.7 per cent of the population) living in a variety of ecological
zones, most notably the Arhuaco, Embera, Guambiano, Wayúu, Nukak,
Kuna, Kogi, Paez and Zenu (World Directory of Minorities, 1997, 77; U.S.
DOS Reports for 1997, 1998). They are protected by the Constitution of
1991, which called for the establishment or upgrading of indigenous
reserves, recognizes their territorial rights, as well as their right to selfgovernment and management of their internal resources (Ibid.; UN
Commission on Human Rights, E/CN.4/1995/50/Add.1, 3 October 1994).
The Constitution also provides for a special criminal and civil jurisdiction,
based on traditional community laws, within Indian territories (U.S. DOS
Country Reports for 1997, 1998). Indigenous communities can educate
their children in traditional dialects and in the observance of cultural and
religious customs, and indigenous men are not required to do military
service (Ibid.). Most threats or attacks against them stem from land
ownership disputes concerning the designated Indian reserves, and some 40
indigenous communities had no legal title to land they claimed as their own,
while an estimated 100 other groups had title claims that were not
recognized or reconciled (Ibid.).
The Interamerican Commission on Human Rights reported in 1997 that
indigenous towns, together with Afro-Colombian communities, have been
particularly vulnerable to the political violence in the country, and
expressed its concern over the Zenu community in San Andrés de Sotavento,
in the department of Córdoba, where despite the existence of legal
protection mechanisms several “protected” inhabitants have been
assassinated or ‘disappeared’ (OAS, 8 de diciembre de 1998). Amnesty
International has also voiced its concern about the Zenu community of El
Volao, in the region of Urabá in Antioquia, where a wave of killings in 1995,
culminating in the death of the community’s leader, José Elías Suárez, at
the hands of EPL guerrillas, led to the exodus of almost the entire
community of 700 people from their lands (October 1997). It adds that
indigenous communities have been displaced by the armed forces
throughout Colombia, leading the Regional Indigenous Council of Tolima
(Consejo Regional Indígena de Tolima - CRIT) to publicly criticize the
displacement of several indigenous families following the murder of their
leaders, military harassment, paramilitary actions and guerrilla attacks
(Ibid.). More than 87 indigenous leaders have reportedly been murdered
since 1990 (UN Commission of Human Rights, E/CN.4/1997/71/Add.1).
3.4 Internal Displacement
According to the U.S. Department of State, an active policy of
depopulation pursued by some paramilitary groups against communities
suspected of supporting guerrillas is the main cause of the growing internal
displacement problem in Colombia (U.S. DOS Country Reports for 1997,
1998).
During the civil war known as La Violencia between 1948 and 1958,
approximately two million people were forced to flee their homes and
lands, and subsequent sporadic waves of violence have caused further
forced migration (Amnesty International, October 1997). More recently, in
the upsurge of violence between 1985 and 1997, more than one million
people, constituting 68 per cent of the total rural population of the country,
have been displaced by the violence. An estimated 600,000 people were
displaced between 1985 and 1994, the majority of them being women,
children and peasant farmers from rural areas affected by the armed
conflict; between August 1994 and the end of 1996 a further 300,000 people
were forced to flee their homes (Ibid.). Forty-three per cent of internally
displaced people are said to arrive in the major cities with no assistance, to
enlarge the ranks of the poor living in marginalized shanty towns (Amnesty
International, October 1997; HRW World Report 1998, 1997). About
280,000 have arrived in the capital, Santa Fé de Bogotá. The great majority
never return to their place of origin, nor do they know why they lost their
lands (Alternativa, Número 10, 1997 [Internet]). Their plight is said to be
compounded by a dramatic lack of solidarity among regional authorities,
who attempt to regard the waves of displaced people from other
departments as an external problem (Semana, 24 Noviembre-1 Diciembre de
1997 [Internet]).
During a 1994 visit to Colombia, the UN Secretary-General’s Representative
for Internally Displaced Persons, Mr. Francis Deng, observed that
[t]he drama of the internally displaced lies in the fact that they more often
than not feel compelled to flee in absolute silence, since a displaced person
is considered to be a person with a ‘problematic’ past. This is exacerbated
by the fact that the most ‘visible’ displaced are those who have some
organizational links with a political organization. Others, like many of the
displaced, especially in Bogotá, who had a prominent role in local society
prior to being displaced, upon arrival actually have to hide their
achievements for fear of renewed persecution (United Nations, Commission
on Human Rights, E/CN.4/1995/50/Add.1, 3 October 1994).According to
the Colombian Advisory Committee for Human Rights and Displacement, in
1996 mass displacements occurred in 208 municipalities spread over 27
departments, with residents of Antioquia constituting 31 per cent of all
displaced persons, and in the first seven months of 1997 an additional
120,000 or more persons became were internally displaced (U.S. DOS
Country Reports for 1997, 1998).Some of the more important areas of
displacement are:
Norte de Santander and César
The departments of Norte de Santander and César, in the northeast of the
country, contain extensive areas of fertile land. Small farmers have faced
increasing pressure from “a process of land concentration by large
landowners, cattle-ranchers and drug traffickers” (Costello, P., August
1996). While both the FARC and the ELN had a number of units in this
region, a strong network of civic and popular organizations also emerged
over the years (Ibid.). The military has a specialized counter-insurgency
unit, known as a mobile brigade (brigada móvil), as well as several other
military units operating under the command of Santander’s Fifth Brigade
(Ibid.). Their strategy has been characterized by “targeting those sectors
suspected of being linked to the guerrillas, that is, members of civic and
popular organizations and peasant farmers” (Amnesty International, August
1995). Paramilitary groups are also said to be operating in this region,
forcing peasant farmers and their families to flee their homes in order to
protect the interests of the more economically powerful sectors (Ibid.).
While some peasant farmers are forced to flee the lands they own, others
are forced out of those belonging to large landowners which are due for
redistribution to the peasants under a new plan devised by the Colombian
Institute of Agrarian Reform (Instituto Colombiano de Reforma Agraria ICORA) (Ibid.).
Chocó (Urabá)
In the northwestern department of Chocó, the violence is foreshadowed by
the battle for political and socio-economic control of the area: for the
guerrilla groups, the Gulf of Urabá is of strategic importance for the entry
of weapons, while drug traffickers use it as a point of exit for narcotics and
entry of chemical products (Alternativa, Número 10, 1997 [Internet]).
Chocó is also rich in mineral deposits, biodiversity, wood and land: its soil
provides 82 per cent of the total national gold production, 18 per cent of
platinum and 13.8 per cent of silver. There is also bauxite, manganese,
radioactive cobalt, tin, chrome, nickel and oil, plus the enormous timber
reserves in its forests (Amnesty International, June 1997; Alternativa,
Número 10, 1997 [Internet]). The northern area of Chocó, Urabá, has been
chosen for a proposed canal linking the Pacific Ocean with the Caribbean
Sea, the construction of the missing link to the Pan American Highway,
railroads, oil pipelines and hydroelectric projects (Ibid.). Thus, according to
Amnesty International, paramilitary offensives in the region correspond to
efforts by powerful economic interests to secure possession of rich land
(June 1997). The non-governmental Human Rights and Displacement
Consultancy (Consultoría de Derechos Humanos y el Desplazamiento CODHES) has concluded that
[v]iolence is a trump card. The best lands and strategic areas become a key
objective of violent forces who by creating confusion and protected by
impunity, effect the expulsion of the most vulnerable inhabitants (Ibid.).
Construction of the interoceanic canal is due to begin in the municipality of
Riosucio. In December 1996, an attack by paramilitary groups left countless
decapitated bodies floating down the Atrato river. Of the original 38,238
inhabitants of the municipality, more than 30,000 are said to be dispersed
throughout different areas (Alternativa, Número 10, 1997 [Internet]). Much
of the land in this region has therefore changed hands through violent
means (Ibid.).
According to Amnesty International, many peasants fleeing the violence in
Chocó to seek refuge in Panamá have been forcibly repatriated by the
Panamanian authorities, in collaboration with the Colombian air force, and
returned to areas where their safety cannot be ensured (June 1997). Others
have been targeted by paramilitary groups during their armed incursions
into Panamanian territory (Ibid.).
Antioquia
The northeastern part of the department of Antioquia is rich in mineral
deposits, especially gold, which is mined by international companies which
employ 5 per cent of the economically active population. However, nearly
45 per cent of the working population live in the region’s urban marginal
areas, subsisting on panning for gold at sites abandoned by transnational
mining, and the remainder work in the agricultural sector (Amnesty
International, November 1996). The economic marginalization of large
segments of the population gave rise to popular activism and support for
legal opposition parties advocating alternative socio-economic schemes to
those offered by the traditional political groups in power. Thus, the
Communist Party and then the Patriotic Union found strong support in the
region, as did the FARC and the ELN (whose Frente María Cano and
Compañia Cimarrón were said to be influential in urban sections of the city
of Segovia) (Ibid.). Northeastern Antioquia is thus strategically important
because of its gold and silver deposits, as well as the construction of the
Colombian oil pipeline, and therefore mining and other economic interests
are keen not to be challenged by guerrillas or legal left-wing political groups
(Ibid.). Large-scale massacres by paramilitary groups were committed in
November 1988 and April 1996. The 1988 massacre occurred after local
elections for mayor were won by a member of the Patriotic Union (Unión
Patriótica). The 1996 killings took place in districts inhabited mainly by
urban popular militias attached to the ELN and by “peasant farmer families
who [had] fled violence in the countryside and have often been labelled as
guerrilla sympathisers by members of the armed forces” (Ibid.)
The Magdalena Medio
The Magdalena Medio is an economically profitable valley between the two
main Andean mountain ranges of the country. It has important ports on the
Magdalena river connecting the interior with the coast, as well as vast
agricultural potential and oil, coal and natural gas reserves (Costello, P.,
August 1996). The rural areas were populated by successive waves of
migration, especially by peasants fleeing La Violencia who colonized large
tracts of land (Pearce, J., 1990). They were followed by ELN and FARC
guerrillas, who established fronts building support among the new rural
communities. The guerrillas’ harassment of local ranchers led to the
establishment of a permanent army presence in the region, which in the
1980s organized the population into peasant self-defense groups (Ibid.). A
1982 meeting of ranchers, oil company representatives, army officers and
local politicians and businessmen established the group known as Death to
Kidnappers (Muerte a Secuestradores - MAS), which unleashed the worst
violence in the region, targeting suspected guerrilla and communist
sympathizers, killing peasant organizers, trade unionists and also Liberal
party dissidents (Ibid.). Many of those displaced arrived in towns such as
Barrancabermeja, with paramilitary forces following in their footsteps and
attacking their shelters, such as the Albergue Campesino (Peasant Shelter)
(UN Commission on Human Rights, E/CN.4/1995/50.Add.1, 3 October
1994).
Meta
The central department of Meta is an area rich in emeralds and, more
recently, cocaine production. It was in Meta, along with Caquetá and
Guaviare to the south, where the FARC developed its roots in the 1960s and
1970s among peasant colonizers, setting itself up as an organization
defending peasants from landowners and the military (Pearce, J., 1990).
The military’s interest in exerting control over the local population who
support the FARC converges with the local economic interests in an area of
emeralds and drug trafficking: Colombia produces about 55 per cent of the
world’s emeralds, and in Meta the largest emerald producing company is
owned by Victor Carranza Niño, who also controls the paramilitary group
known as Serpiente Negra (the Black Serpent) (Costello, P., August 1996).
This group is responsible for an increase in the number of killings and forced
disappearances, targeting guerrilla members and Patriotic Union (Unión
Patriótica) activists. Peasants who denounced their activities became in
turn victims of the repression, and in 1995 the FARC responded by
selectively murdering suspected members of the Black Serpent (Actualidad
Colombiana, 24 January 1995).
Bibliography
Actualidad Colombiana
[Bogotá],
“Meta: recrudece accionar paramilitar”, No. 169,
22 December 1994 - 24 January 1995
Alternativa,
“Córdoba herida y sola”, Número 13 [Internet:
http://www.alternativa.com.co, accessed 21 February 1998]
__________,
“La tierra p’al que la codicia”, Número 10. [Internet:
http://www.alternativa.com.co, accessed 21 February 1998]
Amnesty International, “1998 UN Commission on Human Rights - Building on past
achievements”, IOR 41/01/98, January 1998
___________________, “Just what do we have to do to stay alive?, AMR 23/48/97,
October 1997
___________________, “Panama/Colombia: Refugees: the right to escape from death”,
AMR 44/06/97, June 1997
___________________, “Segovia - a recurring history of serious human rights violations”,
AMR 23/61/96, November 1996
___________________, “Extrajudicial killings, ‘disappearances’, death threats and other
political violence in the department of Sucre”, AMR 23/30/96,
June 1996
___________________, “Political violence in Norte de Santander and south of Cesar
departments escalates”, AMR 23/37/95, August 1995
Comisión Colombiana de Colombia, derechos humanos y derecho humanitario: 1996.
Juristas,
Santafé de Bogotá, 1997
____________________ Violencia en Colombia. Lima: Códice ediciones, 1990
________,
de Roux, F.J., S.J.,
“The impact of drug trafficking on Colombian culture”, in The
Culture of Violence. Tokyo: The United Nations University, 1994
The Economist,
“Colombia - another beating”, 10 January 1998
Colombia Country Profile 1997-98. The Economist Intelligence
The Economist
Intelligence Unit,
Unit, London, 1997
____________________ Colombia Fourth Quarter Report, 1997. The Economist
________,
Intelligence Unit, London, 1997
El Espectador,
“Ataque a patrulla del ejército”, 3 de marzo de 1998 (Internet:
http://www.elespectador.com.co, accessed 25 February 1998]
“Once campesinos, víctimas de nuevas masacres”, 25 de
____________,
____________,
____________,
febrero de 1998 ) [Internet: http://www.elespectador.com.co]
“Liberan a periodistas y alcaldes”, 20 de diciembre de 1997(a)
[Internet: http://www.elespectador.com.co, accessed 24
February 1998]
“Puerto Wilches quiere ser otro territorio de paz”, 20 de
diciembre de 1997(b)
[Internet: http://www.elespectador.com.co, accessed
____________,
Encyclopedia of the
Third World,
The Europa World
Yearbook 1997,
Grupo de Apoyo a
Organizaciones de
Desplazados,
Human Rights Watch,
24 February 1998]
“Guerra llegó a Bagadó”, 29 de enero de 1997 [Internet:
http://www.elespectador.com.co, accessed 24 February 1998]
4th edition, Vol. 1. Facts on File, Oxford (UK), 1992
38th edition, Vol. 1. Europa Publications Limited, London, 1997
Urabá: el mayor éxodo de los últimos años. Bogotá, June 1995
World Report 1998, New York, 1997
“Colombia’s Killer Networks - The Military-Paramilitary
Human Rights
Watch/Americas / Human
Rights Watch Arms
partnership and the United States”, New York, November 1996
Project,
Instituto Interamericano Secretaría Técnica, Consulta Permanente sobre Desplazamiento
de Derechos Humanos, Interno en las Américas (CPDIA), Informe final, Misión in situ de
asistencia técnica sobre desplazamiento interno en Colombia,
Labrousse, A.,
Latin American Weekly
Report,
Abril 1997
“Pérou-Colombie: Violence politique et logique criminelle”, in
Economie des guerres civiles. Paris: Hachette/Pluriel, 1996
“Samper puts onus on guerrillas: envoys’ report calls for
significant concessions”, 16 September 1997
____________________ “Radio scandal haunts Samper”, 26 August 1997(a)
_______,
____________________ “Threat to businesses”, 26 August 1997(b)
_______,
____________________ “Congress urges Samper to resign”, 19 August 1997
_______,
____________________ “Leading senator murdered in Cúcuta”, 12 August 1997
_______,
____________________ “Companies say they are staying put”, 5 August 1997
_______,
____________________ “Bedoya given his marching orders”, 29 July 1997
_______,
____________________ “Guerrillas link up to attack oilfields”, 22 July 1997
_______,
____________________ “Military helicopter shot down by ELN”, 8 July 1997
_______,
____________________ “Peace mission off to uncertain start”, 1 July 1997
_______,
____________________ “Enter Bedoya, from the right”, 24 June 1997
_______,
____________________ “Guerrillas target Cupiagua field”, 17 June 1997
_______,
“Economics fuels return of La Violencia”, 24 October 1997
National Catholic
Reporter,
[Internet: http://www.natcath.com/archives/102497]
Oficina Internacional de Los derechos humanos en Colombia en 1995: violaciones a
Derechos Humanos Acción Colombia
granel e impunidad. Brussels: OIDHACO, February 1996
(OIDHACO),
Organización de los
Comunicado de Prensa No. 20/97, Santafé de Bogotá, 8 de
Estados Americanos,
diciembre de 1997
Pearce, J.,
Colombia: Inside the labyrinth. London: Latin America Bureau,
Pérez Casas, L.G.,
1990
“Violaciones a los derechos humanos durante la administración
Philadelphia Enquirer,
Political Parties of the
Americas and the
Caribbean,
Regional Surveys of the
World,
Reuters,
______,
______,
______,
______,
______,
______,
______,
del Presidente Samper”, in Coordinación Belga por Colombia,
Conferencia Europea sobre los Derechos Humanos en Colombia:
Memoria. Brussels: SAGO, June 1995
“‘Emerald King’” held in Colombia [Internet:
http://www.phillynews.com/inquirer]
Longman Group UK Limited, Harlow, Essex (UK), 1992
South America, Central America and the Caribbean 1997, 6th
edition. Europa Publications Limited, London, 1996
“Ruling party wins Colombian congressional vote”, 9 March 1998
“Army says 100 may have died in Colombia fighting”, 5 March
1998(a)
“Colombia army pours more troops into battleground”, 5 March
1998(b)
“Ex-Colombia army chief says Samper betrayed troops”, 5 March
1998(c)
“Colombia military licks wounds, searches for dead”, 5 March
1998(d)
“Journalist shot dead in southwest Colombia”, 3 March 1998
“Colombian emerald king seized on death squad charge”, 25
February 1998(a)
“The rise and fall of Colombia’s emerald czar”, 25 February
______,
1998(b)
“At least four killed by bomb in southern Colombia”, 24 February
1998
“At least four killed by bomb in southern Colombia”, 23 February
1998
“Police believe Colombia rebels launch counterattack”,
______,
14 February 1998
“48 said slain by death squad in south Colombia”,
______,
______,
Revolutionary and
Dissident Movements of
the World,
Semana,
11 February 1998
3rd edition. Longman Group UK, Harlow, Essex, 1991
“La gran vergüenza”, 24 Noviembre - 1 Diciembre de 1997
______,
[Internet:
http://semana.com.co/users/semana/nov24/pombo.htm]
“La nueva Colombia (o los nuevos poderes...)”, 18-25 de
Agosto de 1997
[Internet:http://semana.com.co/users/semana/nov24/
The Third Pink Book: A
Global View of Lesbian
and Gay Liberation and
Oppression.
El Tiempo,
________,
________,
________,
pombo.htm]
Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 1993
“Secuencia de golpes con múltiples efectos”, 5 de marzo
de 1998(a) [Internet: http//www.eltiempo.com.co]
“Comunicado del ejército”, 5 de marzo de 1998(b) [Internet:
http//www. eltiempo.com.co]
“Catástrofe militar”, 5 de marzo de 1998(c) [Internet:
http//www.eltiempo.com.co]
“A quién se enfrenta el Ejército?”, 5 de marzo de 1998(d)
________,
[Internet: http//www.eltiempo.com.co]
“EE.UU. pide a las Farc informar sobre condición de misioneros
secuestrados”, 27 de febrero de 1998(a) [Internet:
http://www.eltiempo.com.co, accessed on 27 February 1998]
“No hay pistas de alcaldes santandereanos secuestrados”, 27 de
febrero de 1998(b) [Internet: http://www.eltiempo.com.co,
accessed on 27 February 1998]
“Secuestrado alcalde y dos concejales de Medina”, 27 de
________,
febrero de 1998(c) [Internet: http://www.eltiempo.com.co,
accessed on 27 February 1998]
“Secuestrado alcalde de Roncesvalles, Tolima”, 26 de
________,
febrero de 1998(a) [Internet: http://www.eltiempo.com.co,
accessed on 27 February 1998]
“Las Farc secuestran a otro palmicultor”, 26 de febrero
________,
________,
de 1998(b) [Internet: http://www.eltiempo.com.co,
________,
________,
accessed on 27 February 1998]
‘Paras’ estarían en La Ceja(c)”, 26 de febrero de 1998 [Internet:
http://www. eltiempo.com.co, accessed 27 February 1998]
“Cuatro muertos y 39 heridos por atentados de las Farc”, 24 de
febrero de 1998 [Internet: http://www.eltiempo.com.co,
________,
accessed on 27 February 1998]
“Secuestran alcalde de Planadas”, 22 de febrero de 1998
________,
[Internet: http://www. eltiempo.com.co, accessed 27 February
1998]
“En un rescate cayó el jefe nacional de milicias de las Farc”,
United Nations,
_____________,
21 de febrero de 1998 [Internet: http://www.eltiempo.com.co,
accessed on 27 February 1998]
Commission on Human Rights, Report of the Working Group on
Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances, E/CN.4/1998/43, 12
January 1998
Commission on Human Rights, Report of the Special
Rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers,
_____________,
Mr. Param Cumaraswamy, E/CN.4/1997/32, 18 February 1997
Commission on Human Rights, Report of the United Nations
_____________,
High Commissioner for Human Rights on Colombia,
E/CN.4/1997/11, 24 January 1997
Commission on Human Rights, Report of the Special
Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary
_____________,
Executions, Mr. Bacre Waly Ndiaye, submitted pursuant to
Commission on Human Rights resolution 1996/74,
E/CN.4/1997/60/Add.1, 23 December 1996
Commission on Human Rights, Report by Mr. Maurice GléléAhanhanzo, Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of
racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related
_____________,
intolerance, Addendum, Mission to Colombia,
E/CN.4/1997/71/Add.1, 13 January 1997
Commission on Human Rights, Report of the Representative
of the Secretary- General, Mr. Francis Deng, submitted
_____________,
pursuant to Commission on Human Rights resolution 1993/95,
Addendum, E/CN.4/1995/50/Add.1, 3 October 1995
Commission on Human Rights, Joint report of the Special
Rapporteur on the question of torture, Mr. Nigel S. Rodley,
and the Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or
arbitrary executions, Mr. Bacre Waly Ndiaye, submitted
pursuant to Commission on Human Rights resolutions
_____________,
U.S. Department of
State,
Washington Post,
World Directory of
Minorities,
1994/37 and 1994/82, E/CN.4/1995/111, 16 January 1995
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, Concluding
observations by the Human Rights Committee, Colombia.
CCPR/C/79/Add.76, 3 May 1997
Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 1997.
Washington, D.C.: Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights,
and Labor, 30 January 1998
“Emerald king’ held in Colombia”, 26 February 1998
Colombia. Minority Rights Group, London, 1997
All sources are cited. This paper is not, and does not, purport to be, fully
exhaustive with regard to conditions in the country surveyed, or conclusive
as to the merits of any particular claim to refugee status or asylum.
[1]* Note on the Statistical Tables: As Colombia is a relatively minor country
of origin of asylum seekers in Europe, a number of asylum countries do not
report on Colombians separately. Thus, a dash in the Tables may mean that
the value is zero, not applicable, or not available.