Stand by Colombia's Victims of Violence

LAWG-EF invited four members of Colombian victims' organizations to the U.S. in October to speak directly with policymakers in Washington and New York. They also received training from international experts on truth, memory, reparations and international justice from the International Center for Transitional Justice. The four represented victims of violence by all sides in the conflict - paramilitaries, guerrillas and the army.

Washington, DC – This Thursday, Colombia's President Alvaro Uribe will meet with President Bush at his Texas ranch. On Uribe's agenda will be firming up support for billions of dollars in future aid from the United States and his request for millions more to support his plans to demobilize up to 20,000 paramilitary fighters.

"The United States should not be such a pushover in its dealings with the Colombia government," commented Latin America Working Group Education Fund director Lisa Haugaard. "We should get some real progress in strengthening the rule of law in exchange for our billions of dollars in assistance."

Military aid on hold. The White House will be lauding Colombian President Uribe’s accomplishments. But a little-known story is that 12.5% of last year’s military aid was frozen for half the year over lack of progress in cases involving extrajudicial executions and other abuses by Colombia’s military. Under pressure from the U.S. embassy, two cases slowly advanced – on July 12, formal charges were brought against soldiers of the U.S.- funded 18th Brigade for the extrajudicial execution of three trade union leaders in August 2004, and on June 30, arrest warrants were issued for soldiers in the shooting deaths of five members of a family, aged 6 months to 24 years old, in Cajamarca in April 2004. However, this is slow progress, made reluctantly after the Colombian government initially said the unionists died in combat and the family was killed accidentally. Many other cases go nowhere. For example, little progress has been made in investigating the case of two families in San José de Apartadó who were murdered and their bodies dismembered in February 2005, with evidence, according to witness, pointing to soldiers, and the high-profile Mapiripán massacre case is still dragging through the courts.The State Department’s decision to certify that Colombia meets the human rights conditions for the remaining FY04 military aid and 12.5% of FY05 military aid will be controversial. (75% of U.S. military aid through the foreign aid bill is sent without conditions; the remaining 25% is subject to the human rights conditions in law, requiring that the Colombian government make progress in investigating and prosecuting security force members engaged in gross violations of human rights or collaboration with paramilitary forces.)A letter sent by 22 Senators on July 1st called for Secretary Rice “to refrain from certifying that the Colombian government meets the human rights conditions… until further progress is demonstrated.” Click here to see the letter.

"The State Department should use the leverage it has—not give away the store," said Lisa Haugaard. "The price of U.S. assistance should be respect for human rights."

Demobilization funding. President Uribe will also likely be asking for U.S. funding for a controversial plan to demobilize paramilitary fighters. Since 2002, the Colombian government has been engaged in negotiations with illegal paramilitary organizations under the umbrella of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, the AUC. The AUC is a major drug trafficking organization, and is also on the U.S. list of terrorist organizations.

In June, the Colombian congress approved a “justice and peace” law that will serve as the legal framework for the ongoing negotiations. The law virtually ensures impunity for paramilitary leaders who have committed human rights and drug trafficking crimes. It provides generous benefits for paramilitary leaders who demobilize, without requiring that they fully dismantle their organizations. Prosecutors will have only 60 days to investigate and charge demobilizing commanders for the atrocious crimes they are alleged to have committed. In Colombia, similar investigations routinely take a year or two before charges are formally filed. Commanders who fail to fully confess their crimes or turn over illegally obtained assets will still enjoy minimal sentences. Commanders do not have to ensure that the men under their command demobilize.

"Of course we support a just and lasting peace in Colombia. That is precisely why, with regret, we have to urge our government not to provide support for the paramilitary demobilization under the current conditions," said Lisa Haugaard. "Where is an honest balance between peace and justice? Where is the truth commission, as in most serious peace processes, or a role for victims in justice and reparations? Most importantly, where is there a guarantee that the paramilitary leaders and drug traffickers will not retain, or even strengthen, their hold over Colombian society? This demobilization is a series of disturbing, unanswered questions. Under these conditions, we should not foot the bill."

Recommendations. The Latin America Working Group Education Fund, Center for International Policy, Washington Office on Latin America and U.S. Office on Colombia produced a Blueprint for a New Colombia Policy that makes ten recommendations for improving U.S. policy to the country.

For more information, contact: Lisa Haugaard, 202-546-7010.

"We are confident that you share our admiration for journalists who risk their lives to bring us the news each day. Over the last ten years, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, Colombia has been the third most dangerous country in the world for journalists to work. Thirty journalists have been killed since 1995, and many more have been threatened and forced into exile." Read the full letter (PDF).

As the Congress wrapped up the FY06 foreign operations bill, there’s some good news and bad news for Latin America. Latin America Working Group and coalition groups won some of what we had called for in this bill, which funds US aid programs worldwide. The Congress decided to maintain the ban on military aid to Guatemala, in place since 1990. The Bush Administration pushed harder than usual to lift the ban, arguing that Guatemala had made sufficient progress, and the House lifted the ban in its version of the bill. Grassroots activists, LAWG, NISGUA, Guatemala Human Rights Commission, WOLA and other groups called on Congress to keep the ban due to continued threats and attacks against human rights and social activists and lack of progress in implementing military reforms contained in the 1996 Peace Accords. The final bill also contained $3 million in DNA analysis and support for forensic investigations in Guatemala, Mexico, Argentina and other parts of Latin America. It contained a provision we supported to stop the erosion of aid to Central America, by mandating that aid to the region not drop below 2005 levels.

The Congress approved $734.5 million for the Andean Counternarcotics Initiative, as expected. In a great disappointment, the House rejected what the Senate had done to improve the balance of aid to the Andean countries, especially Colombia – the Senate had for the first time placed a cap on military and police aid to Colombia of $278 million and had increased development funds. The final balance of aid to Colombia from the Andean Counternarcotics Initiative will be $310.8 million in military/police aid and $158.6 million in economic/judicial aid, which is the same quantity of military aid and $6.5 million more in economic aid than the year before. Colombia also receives military aid from other accounts in the foreign operations and defense bills, so that the balance of aid will remain overwhelmingly—probably still 80%—military.

The Congress also approved $20 million in aid to fund the paramilitary demobilization. Colombian human rights groups have criticized the demobilization process for providing minimal punishment to leaders responsible for massacres and assassinations; for having no truth commission; and for failing to ensure that demobilized paramilitaries disclose their crimes, structures and financial assets. The underlying concern is that paramilitary violence will continue in other forms. The Congress fortunately included conditions on the assistance, although not as strong as we would have wished. The conditions require the Secretary of State to certify that demobilized paramilitaries receiving benefits have renounced violence and disclosed their involvement in past crimes and knowledge of the paramilitary structures, financing sources, illegal assets, and the location of kidnapping victims and bodies of the disappeared. They also require State to certify that the Colombian government is providing full cooperation to the United States in extraditing individuals who have been indicted in the United States for murder, drug trafficking and kidnapping. Disturbingly, the administration plans to take the $20 million in aid for the paramilitary demobilization out of the limited existing development funds for Colombia, including alternative development and, possibly, programs for the internally displaced. However, Congress has not specifically agreed to this, and we will work to insist that it comes from other sources.

The human rights conditions for Colombia—which had resulted this year in a seven-month delay in delivering some US military aid—were maintained and a new provision added to reflect concern about the war’s impact on indigenous communities. The State Department will be required to certify that “The Colombian government is taking effective steps to ensure that the Colombian Armed Forces are not violating the land and property rights of Colombia’s indigenous communities.”

The environmental conditions on the aerial spraying program for Colombia were also maintained. The conditions also require compensation for food crops destroyed, in cases where farmers were not growing any coca or poppy. While these conditions have proven extremely difficult to enforce, maintaining them keeps certain minimal limits on the program.

The bill requires the Agency for International Development to appoint a special advisor for indigenous issues worldwide—an effort to ensure greater consultation with indigenous peoples and improve how they are affected by aid programs.

The Congress kept the requirement for the State Department and Defense Department to make public a Foreign Military Training Report on US military training programs around the globe. This report has been essential for monitoring US programs to Latin America, as documented on by Center for International Policy, LAWG and WOLA on http://justf.org/.

Thanks to all of you who worked hard to tell Congress to make aid and policies that supports human rights, denies military aid to human rights abusers, and supports humanitarian and development aid. We wish they’d listened to everything we had to say! But whether they did or not, we’re going to keep calling for the United States to support peace, justice, and human rights, and generous, well-targeted aid for poverty reduction. And we know you will too.

Action: Thank Senator Leahy (D-VT) and Rep. Nita Lowey (D-NY) for their hard work and dedication to aid for poverty reduction around the globe and policies that support human rights in Colombia and Guatemala in particular. Thank Rep. Kolbe (R-AZ) and Senator McConnell (R-KY) for retaining the ban on military aid to Guatemala. It is most important for members of Congress to hear this from their own constituents.