TITLE: COLUMBIA HUMAN RIGHTS PRACTICES, 1994 AUTHOR: U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE DATE: FEBRUARY 1995 COLOMBIA Colombia is a constitutional, multiparty democracy in which the Liberal and Conservative parties have long dominated the political scene. Relatively peaceful national congressional and presidential elections were held in June with the Liberal Party candidate, Ernesto Samper, winning the Presidency by a very slight margin in a runoff election against Conservative Party contender Andres Pastrana. Internal security is the primary responsibility of the Ministry of Defense, which in addition to the armed forces, includes the National Police. The Department of Administrative Security, which is responsible for national security intelligence, reports directly to the President. The police and the armed forces remained responsible for widespread human rights abuse. Colombia has a mixed private/public sector economy. The Government continued an economic liberalization program and the privatization of selected public industries. Crude petroleum rivals coffee as the principal export and, after the August discovery of immense natural gas reserves, petroleum and gas exports will play an even greater role. Narcotics traffickers continued to control extensive illicit and licit enterprises. For 35 of the past 43 years, the Government has operated under declared states of emergency which enable the executive to rule by "temporary" decree to deal with civil unrest associated with the high degree of internal violence. These decrees frequently set aside fundamental judicial guarantees of due process and sometimes have been incorporated into permanent law by subsequent legislative action. Several violent guerrilla organizations continued to operate, despite regular attempts to negotiate settlements. Military cooperation with narcotics and landowner paramilitary groups in remote regions of the country continued. The Government continued to allow the military to assert jurisdiction over, and in almost all cases to fail to prosecute, abuses by military personnel. This rampant impunity from justice underlies Colombia's human rights problems; 97 percent of all crimes go unpunished. The overall human rights situation in Colombia remained critical, with a variety of violent actors--including the police and security forces--continuing to commit abuses such as political and extrajudicial killings, disappearances, torture, and other physical mistreatment. In addition to official forces, other perpetrators of human rights abuses include antigovernment guerrilla groups, narcotics traffickers, and paramilitary groups. While violence by narcotics traffickers was drastically reduced from previous years, internecine violence among the trafficking organizations still accounted for substantial numbers of homicides, kidnapings, cases of torture, and attacks against the military and the police. Guerrillas and narcotics traffickers continued to work cooperatively, especially in rural regions of the country. The victims of these abuses most commonly included politicians, labor organizers, human rights monitors,and--overwhelmingly-- peasant farmers. Violence directed against women and children also remained commonplace. Vigilante groups, often supported or condoned by the police and military, engaged in "social cleansing"--the killing of street children, prostitutes, homosexuals, and others deemed socially undesirable. The human rights situation dominated much of the new administration's agenda during its first few months in office. President Samper created a ministerial-level Human Rights Commission in August, and his Government revived a military justice reform commission intended to address the question of impunity for police and military violators. The Government reopened investigations into several important human rights cases and brought charges against policemen in another case. At year's end, however, despite positive actions by the new Minister of Defense, the Government had yet to establish effective judicial control over military abusers of human rights and thereby begin to end the long reign of impunity. RESPECT FOR HUMAN RIGHTS Section 1 Respect for the Integrity of the Person, Including Freedom from: a. Political and Other Extrajudicial Killing The total number of murders in Colombia appeared to decline slightly during the first quarter of 1994; however, it remained cause for grave concern. According to a report by the Government's Department of Planning, between 1987 and 1992 there were 77 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants, by far the highest murder rate in the world. Due to insufficient police and judicial resources to investigate and prosecute most killings and the frequently overlapping violent forces at work in the country, it is often difficult to separate political from nonpolitical murders. According to the Bogota-based nongovernmental organization (NGO) "Justice and Peace", there were 1,268 political and presumably politically motivated murders between January and September. The Andean Commission of Jurists (CAJSC) estimated that in approximately 77 percent of all reported violent deaths from March 1993 to March 1994, no perpetrator could be established. Ten candidates for political office were assassinated before the October 30 local elections. The police and military forces continued to be implicated in cases of extrajudicial killings in 1994. Members of the army's Tarqui battalion in Sogamoso attacked a civilian home with a grenade in an attempt to kill local community organizer Paulino Velandia. Velandia survived the attack, which killed two others and injured two children. The Procuraduria investigated the incident, and a separate military criminal investigation was also under way. No motive was given for the attack. The authorities brought one officer in question before a court- martial, but it had made no ruling by the end of the year. In January members of the General Gabriel Reveiz Pizarro battalion based in Arauca department killed nine peasants from the town of Puerto Lleras claiming that the attack occurred in the context of a counterinsurgency sweep. The Procuraduria filed charges against nine officers and soldiers based on its investigation that determined that the army sealed off the town, illegally detained approximately 500 townspeople, read off the nine names from a list, and summarily executed them as suspected guerrilla collaborators. According to the Procuraduria's annual human rights report that covered the 1-year period preceding April 1994, the National Police had the worst human rights record among state security agencies. The Procuraduria linked 80 percent of its disciplinary decisions that involved violations of human rights to police actions. In June two off-duty Bogota policemen stopped a bus on which they were traveling in order to intervene in a street scuffle. They fired indiscriminately into the crowd, killing one person and forcing a 9-year-old street vendor to board the bus with them. One of the agents then shot the child and threw the body out the window. Taxi drivers initially apprehended the agents; police and Procuraduria investigators later determined that they were inebriated at the time of the crime. In December a court sentenced one of the police officers involved in the killing to 60 years, or two maximum sentences. Human rights monitors also implicated the police in incidents of social cleansing, involving attacks and killings of individuals deemed socially undesirable such as drug addicts, prostitutes, transvestites, beggars, and street children. The Center for Investigations and Popular Research (CINEP) reported that between January and October there were 291 homicides, 57 injuries, and 22 threats that it considered social cleansing. This activity was particularly notable in Cali, where there were persistent reports of murders of indigent youths on or around construction sites. According to the local human rights ombudsman, 20 such murders occurred in Cali in just the first 2 months of the year. In July a group of masked armed men gunned down six individuals in a northern Medellin neighborhood frequented by drug vendors and prostitutes. The killers arrived in a taxi, lined the victims up against a wall and executed them gangland-style. In this and other cases, human rights groups persistently alleged implicit police cooperation with the "clean-up squads." The Government opened an investigation, but it produced no leads by the end of the year. Paramilitary groups also perpetrated scores of extrajudicial killings in 1994, often with the alleged complicity of military units or individuals. Indigenous community and labor leaders frequently were the victims of this violence. In March unknown gunmen murdered four Zenu Indian leaders in San Andres de Sotavento in Cordoba department. A new paramilitary group "Colombia Without Guerrillas" (Colsingue) claimed responsibility for the August assassination of Communist Party Senator Manuel Vargas Cepeda and openly threatened other members of the Patriotic Union (UP) Communist Party. Although most paramilitary killings go unresolved, in January police arrested William Infante, the paramilitary assassin of UP leader Jaime Pardo Leal in 1986. Both the Gaviria and Samper administrations regularly condemned extrajudicial killings, but rarely punished police or military personnel implicated in such cases. Soldiers and police continued to be the victims of violence perpetrated by drug traffickers, guerrillas, and common criminals on a daily basis. For example, Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) guerrillas murdered army 4th Division commander General Gil Colorado near Villavicencio in July. Guerrillas also killed noncombatants on a regular basis and assassinated several prominent politicians. FARC operatives executed the highly popular mayor of Fusagasuga after guerrillas accidentally trapped him during an attack on a highway toll station. Operatives of the Army of National Liberation (ELN) unsuccessfully attempted to kill the Treasury Minister with a car bomb in Bogota in January. There were strong indications that urban operatives of the ELN assassinated Senatorial candidate Francisco Alejandro Gonzalo Jaramillo in Medellin in January and Antioquia Congressman Arlem Uribe in September. b. Disappearance Colombia continued to suffer from extremely high overall rates of disappearance and kidnaping. According to a joint report by the Government and a human rights group, there were a total of 1,378 reported kidnapings in 1994, an increase of 35 percent over the previous year. Given the complexity of the internal disorder and the variety of perpetrators, both among the state security forces and illegal groups involved in this conflict, the disappearances for political motives and kidnaping for profit is often unclear; guerrillas were responsible for approximately half the cases. There were rarely arrests or prosecutions in any of the cases. In October the Senate passed a bill which, while narrower than the administration had wanted, codified the act of forced disappearance as a crime. However, in doing so, it stripped from the bill a proposal to transfer jurisdiction in such cases from military to civilian courts. The Senate also deleted a section which stipulated that such an act could never be considered in the line of duty for police and military service members. In June President Gaviria had vetoed an earlier bill which contained the additional provisions. Many observers perceived his veto as an administration concession to the military high command, who claimed that such legislation would provoke a rash of false accusations by the guerrillas against military officials. The Samper administration reiterated objections to the proposed bill but attempted to address the issue by proposing language that clearly stipulated that service members were not obliged to obey illegal or immoral orders, such as an order to make someone "disappear." However, this section was also deleted from the final bill. At year's end, the lower House had not passed the bill. A CAJSC report highlighted the impunity that surrounds forced disappearances in Colombia when it attributed at least 2,000 cases of forced disappearance in the last 15 years to state security forces, yet recorded only 1 case of a military criminal sanction for such activity. The Office of the Defender of the People received 110 reports of forced disappearances between January and June. In 234 such incidents for all of 1993, the Procuraduria reported that the authorities brought only 2 sets of charges. In Cali disappearances perpetrated by state security members and organized criminals reached epidemic proportions, according to the local prosecutor's office, with an average of one disappearance per day. Many of these were women and children, who according to the same source, often end up being forced to work as prostitutes. c. Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment The law prohibits torture, but incidents of police and military beatings and torture of detainees continued to be reported throughout the year. These abuses often occurred in connection with illegal detentions in the context of counterinsurgency or counternarcotics operations. Paramilitary groups that operated in rural areas of the country were also responsible for instances of torture and sometimes took credit for their macabre work with menacing notes left on the bodies of their victims. In many cases, however, it was difficult to establish the perpetrators of torture since cadavers found bearing the traces of physical torture were rarely subject to extensive forensic investigations. Justice and Peace reported an incident that occurred in June in Barrancabermeja in which members of the Nueva Granada Battalion detained the son of a local labor leader in an effort to exact information about local guerrilla activity. They tied the person naked to a stake on an anthill, threatened him with rape and then almost suffocated him with a plastic bag. Military officials originally denied holding the individual when family members questioned them but later admitted to local human rights officials that they had detained him. Police also allegedly tortured the same victim in January by electric shocks and beatings during an interrogation. Overcrowding and dangerous sanitary and health conditions in the prisons remained a serious problem. In May the Bureau of Prisons, the Office of the Defender of the People, and the Procuraduria established a pilot project in Bogota's La Picota prison, convoking a prisoners' human rights committee to work with prison and government authorities to address perceived violations of basic human rights. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) reported that it continued to have access to most prisons and police and military detention centers. However, it noted that local or regional commanders did not always prepare mandatory detention registers and follow notification procedures, resulting in a poor accounting of actual detainees. d. Arbitrary Arrest, Detention or Exile The Constitution includes several mechanisms designed to prevent illegal detention. The authorities must bring a detainee before a judge within 36 hours and the person has the right to seek, before any judge, a petition of habeas corpus that must be acted upon within 36 hours. Despite these legal protections, instances of arbitrary detention continued, and a large percentage of the prison population remained in an undetermined pretrial status. The Procuraduria singled out the police and others conducting the late-1993 search for narcotics kingpin Pablo Escobar as having engaged in more arbitrary detentions than previously believed and stated that the police violated constitutional and procedural norms during this operation. Exile is not practiced. e. Denial of Fair Public Trial The Constitution specifically provides for the right to due process. The accused has the right to representation by counsel, but historically representation for the indigenous and the indigent has been inadequate. The Government continues to battle staffing and funding inadequacies to develop a credible public defender system. The judiciary remained overburdened and often in a state of chaos during 1994. The system is largely independent of the executive and legislative branches, both in theory and practice. It continued to experience growing pains as the various courts, prosecutorial entities, and ministries attempted to define their roles and streamline their operations in the wake of the judicial reorganization brought about under the 1991 Constitution. The judiciary has long been subject to threats and intimidation when dealing with narcotics and paramilitary cases. With the decline in drug terrorism, there was a corresponding drop in the incidence of attacks on members of the judiciary, but this violence did not disappear altogether. In June unknown gunmen assassinated Luis Guillermo Lopez, head of the Medellin prosecutor's office. Several months earlier, gunmen also murdered the director of that office's technical investigative unit, Luis Fernando Correa. The police suspect narcotics trafficking organizations are involved in both incidents, which continued under investigation at year's end. The 1991 Constitution formalized the "regional" or "public order" jurisdictions, in which anonymous judges and prosecutors handle narcotics and terrorism cases. Human rights groups continued to charge that the system infringed on basic procedural legal rights. As in past years, the regional jurisdiction system continued to be overwhelmed with staggering caseloads that it was unable to process expeditiously. In May President Gaviria invoked a state of internal emergency in order to proscribe portions of the Criminal Procedures Code that would have mandated the release of many of the public order detainees whose cases had not been processed. The Constitutional Court, however, found the President's action unconstitutional and struck down the state of emergency, facilitating the release of many of these suspects 1 month later. While a late 1993 reform of the Criminal Procedures Code addressed the lack of certain procedural rights within the system, problems remained. It is still extremely difficult for defense attorneys to impeach or cross-examine anonymous witnesses, and often they do not have unimpeded access to the State's evidence. Human rights groups also took exception with the Government's surrender policy for major narcotics traffickers which involved high-level voluntary surrender and sentence negotiations. These critics charged that "small-time" defendants were, in effect, railroaded under the system while powerful criminals were treated deferentially. Critics also charged that the vast majority of cases sent to the regional jurisdiction involved low-level criminals suspected of subversive activity, and that the system did not effectively deter the major guerrilla leaders. At year's end the Attorney General began a review of plea-bargain agreements to ensure that confessed criminals had actually committed the crimes and that sentence reductions were related to genuine cooperation. f. Arbitrary Interference with Privacy, Family, Home, or Correspondence The law generally requires a judicial order for authorities to enter a private home, except in cases of hot pursuit. In remote regions of the country, the military forces have civilian prosecutorial units delegated to them. Human rights groups charged that these delegate units were unconstitutional, and Congress refused to grant them permanent status. Nonetheless, there were credible reports that they continued to function, often facilitating army searches with little regard for judicious issuance of search warrants. In one example, the Nueva Granada battalion carried out over 60 searches and detentions in the rural areas surrounding Barrancabermeja between January and March. Many of the detainees reported that soldiers mistreated and unjustly interrogated them. A judge must authorize telephone wiretaps and the interception of mail. This protection extends to prisoners incarcerated in the penal system. g. Use of Excessive Force and Violations of Humanitarian Law in Internal Conflicts The internal subversive conflict received a good deal of governmental attention in 1994. Both the Gaviria and Samper administrations urged the Congress to ratify Protocol II of the Geneva Convention. Although a Senate committee initially expressed reservations as to its internal application, Congress ratified it without reservations and President Samper signed it into law on December 16. The military forces, paramilitary groups, and particularly guerrilla organizations committed violations of international humanitarian law in Colombia's internal subversive conflict. In April members of the army's 2nd Mobile Brigade conducted a counterinsurgency operation near Barrancabermeja during which they allegedly took a local youth, Benjamin Santos, from his home in the Mesa de San Rafael. Local witnesses later reported seeing him dressed in an army uniform being marched with a patrol in the area. Shortly thereafter his body, showing signs of extreme torture, was found in a local cemetery. Military sources claimed he was an unidentified guerrilla slain in combat. Santos' family members reported the incident to the local human rights ombudsman (personero) and claimed Santos had no guerrilla ties. It is not known if the Government is investigating this incident. Paramilitary groups, often with the alleged complicity of military units or individuals, usually carried out their violent acts with impunity. In September a military court issued a detention order for former army Lieutenant Colonel Luis Becerra, who is widely believed to have cooperated with paramilitary forces by covering up the October 1993 Rio Frio massacre. In September President Samper reiterated the Government's strong opposition to paramilitary groups and rural self-defense forces and promised to investigate carefully all allegations of cooperation with these groups by members and units of the state security forces. Little, however, has been accomplished in ending the climate of impunity. The loosely organized groups of the Simon Bolivar Coordinating Board, which include the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia and the Army of National Liberation, committed a host of violations of humanitarian law during 1994. The most repugnant of these abuses was a January attack on the town of La Chinita in Uraba that left 35 agricultural workers dead. An exhaustive NGO investigation concluded that the FARC's fifth front perpetrated the attack in a move to intimidate the Communist Party stronghold for political purposes. FARC and ELN guerrilla regulars ambushed a police convoy in Purace on November 2, killing 11 police agents and 2 students. A series of bombs exploded on city buses in Cartagena on December 21, killing 10 civilians. The Government arrested three suspects linked to the urban ELN. Guerrillas frequently committed atrocities against indigenous communities. Guerrillas murdered four members of the Arzaria community in September, following a "trial" in which the four were accused of having participated in the February killing of two other tribe members allegedly working with the guerrilla groups. Guerrillas also violated norms of international humanitarian law during attacks on military installations. Eyewitness survivors reported that in attacks on a petroleum station and military installations in Putamayo in July, FARC guerrillas summarily executed defenseless wounded soldiers. Section 2 Respect for Civil Liberties, Including: a. Freedom of Speech and Press The authorities generally respected these constitutionally protected rights, but in at least one instance there was implied intimidation of the media (see below). Print and broadcast media regularly criticized the Government without recrimination. The privately owned print media published a wide spectrum of political viewpoints, especially throughout the presidential campaign. They often voiced harsh antigovernment opinions without administration reprisals. The Government imposes some restrictions on electronic media coverage of public order and drug terrorist activity and has the right to prohibit coverage of certain news events that could affect state security. In July some observers charged that the Minister of Communications' public reminder to the media of this constitutional provision during the "narco-cassette" scandal, in which President-elect Samper's campaign financing was allegedly linked to Cali drug barons, constituted a veiled threat of government censorship. In September and November, Constitutional Court decisions struck down some of the provisions on government prescreening of electronic media coverage of public order and narcotics terrorist events. All citizens have the right to seek a judicial injunction or motion (tutela) for immediate redress of violations of basic constitutional rights. This theoretically provides all persons and organizations, including the media, a mechanism to denounce both private and government violations of basic constitutional rights. Several incidents of violence directed against journalists occurred during 1994. An unidentified gunman murdered Cucuta radio and print journalist Jesus Medina in January. Unknown persons killed Medellin radio journalist and national vice president of a broadcasters' union, Martin Eduardo Munera, in September. Colleagues of Munera also reported receiving death threats. The International Press Society reported that Munera's death was the sixth slaying of a Colombian journalist since August 1993. While very few of these cases are ever definitively resolved, it is apparent that journalists are most often the victims of guerrilla groups, paramilitary organizations, and narcotics traffickers. In one case, however, the Procuraduria charged an ex-soldier with the 1991 slaying of "El Tiempo" journalist Henry Rojas. It also charged Colonel Diogenes Castellanos Guerrero, a former commander of an army unit based in Arauca, with covering up the incident. The Government generally respected academic freedom, and there exists a wide spectrum of political activity throughout the country's universities. Teachers at the elementary and secondary levels in guerrilla-controlled territory are often subject to threats and intimidation from local subversive operatives and are unable to resist guerrilla propaganda campaigns. b. Freedom of Peaceful Assembly and Association The Constitution provides for freedom of peaceful assembly and association, and the Government respects these rights in practice. The authorities do not normally interfere with public meetings and demonstrations and usually grant the required permission except when they determine that there is imminent danger to public order. Any organization is free to associate with international groups in its field. c. Freedom of Religion The Constitution provides for complete religious freedom and there is little religious discrimination in practice. Catholic religious training is no longer mandatory in public state schools, and a July Constitutional Court decision found unconstitutional any official government reference to Colombia as "the country of the sacred heart." The Government permits proselytizing among the indigenous population, provided the Indians welcome it and are not induced to adopt changes that endanger their survival on traditional lands. Indian tribes must still invite outsiders onto their reserves, and these groups remain at the disposition of the indigenous community. d. Freedom of Movement Within the Country, Foreign Travel, Emigration, and Repatriation The Constitution provides citizens the right to travel domestically and abroad. In areas where military operations against guerrillas are under way, police or military officials occasionally required civilians to obtain safe-conduct passes; guerrillas reportedly used similar means to restrict travel in areas under their control.