Stand by Colombia's Victims of Violence

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To: Foreign Operations staffers
From: Lisa Haugaard

As you consider assistance for Colombia in the foreign operations appropriations bill for FY07, we hope the following information is useful. We strongly support continued assistance for Colombia, but believe it is imperative to readjust the aid package that has been primarily focused on military aid and aerial spraying (82% of U.S. aid since 2000 has been military/police aid).

1. Despite $4.7 billion invested by the United States in Colombia, the amount of coca planted in Colombia in 2005 was more than when funding began in 2000 (136,200 hectares at the start of Plan Colombia in 2000; 144,000 hectares at the end of 2005, according to the State Department International Narcotics Control Strategy Report for 2005). Farmers whose crops are sprayed by aerial eradication who are not given adequate economic alternatives are replanting, and coca production is spreading all over the countryside. Coca production in 2005 increased in Bolivia, Peru and Colombia. If the goal is to reduce drug abuse at home, resources must be redirected to treatment and prevention at home, and sustainable development alternatives abroad.
2. Human rights violations remain grave. While there is some reduction in violence due to the demobilization of paramilitary forces, human rights violations continue to be severe in Colombia. The number of people fleeing their homes from political violence increased 8 percent from 2004 to 2005, estimated at 318,387 people displaced in 2005 by the Consultancy on Displacement and Human Rights (CODHES). Moreover, in 2005 more grave violations than in previous years were committed directly by Colombia’s security forces, according to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights’ office in Colombia. The office reported “an upward trend” in allegations of extrajudicial executions of civilians and alteration of crime scenes by members of the army.
   
   
   Cases were denounced of coordinated actions in which the victims were allegedly handed over by paramilitaries, subsequently executed by members of the military, and then presented as members of armed groups killed in combat, particularly in the metropolitan area of Medellín (Antioquia). Another modality was observed in allegations regarding victims executed by paramilitaries and presented by members of the army as killed in combat, in Putumayo and in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta. (United Nations’ Report of the High Commissioner for Human Rights on the situation of human rights in Colombia, January 20, 2006, covering the year 2005, Part I, point 29)
3. Paramilitaries’ criminal and drug-trafficking structures remain largely intact. The demobilization of Colombia’s abusive paramilitary forces if permanent would be a very positive development, but these forces are far from completely dismantled. The OAS monitoring mission has documented the formation of new paramilitary groups and the participation of demobilizing paramilitaries in violent activities in five Colombian provinces, including committing massacres, forming new criminal bands and offering security services to drug traffickers. Paramilitary leaders have penetrated some local and national government structures; the former head of Colombia’s civilian intelligence agency, for example, is facing allegations that he colluded with a paramilitary mob boss in assassinations of civic leaders. Human rights groups and victims’ representatives have had their offices broken into and computer databases stolen, and some have received threatening messages from self-proclaimed new paramilitary groupings. The José Alvear Restrepo Lawyers’ Collective, for example, which litigates high-profile human rights cases such as the Mapiripán massacre, received this message recently:    “This is an invitation to join our crusade against terrorism or your staff will suffer the full weight of our presence, we have the support of the government’s armed forces who always supported us… And to everyone who received a copy of this message I warn you if you don’t align yourselves with this reality it is better for you to take your humanitarian ideas and go to some other place outside of our sacred Colombian territory…”In another recent example, fifteen students, employees and teaching staff at the University of Antioquia just received a death threat from the Autodefensas Unidas de Antioquia, believed to be operating since 1999 (Amnesty International alert 23/023/2006, 16 May 2006).

How should U.S. policy and aid be improved?

In FY07, US assistance should prioritize alternative development and humanitarian aid:

• increase focus on alternative development for a more sustainable impact on drug production, rather than pouring resources into expensive, ineffective and inhumane aerial eradication campaigns
• increase focus on the victims of violence: humanitarian aid for internally displaced persons and Afro-Colombian and indigenous communities
• channel assistance to efforts to strengthen justice, including funding for the Colombia office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, and for the Colombian government’s ombudsman’s office, inspector general’s office, and the Attorney General’s human rights unit and unit to implement prosecutions under the paramilitary demobilization law.

In addition, U.S. policy should get tougher in insisting that the Colombian government end impunity and thoroughly dismantle paramilitary and drug trafficking structures:

• enforce the human rights conditions in law, requiring the Colombian government to make much greater efforts to investigate and prosecute members of the security forces credibly alleged to have committed human rights violations, and greater efforts to sever all links between the armed forces and illegal armed groups; and
• insist that the Colombian government make much more vigorous efforts to fully dismantle paramilitary groups and their financial, criminal and drug trafficking structures; confiscate their financial assets and, particularly, the vast areas of land which they have obtained through violence; return lands to Colombia’s internally displaced persons; and investigate and prosecute new illegal paramilitary groups that are being created.

Additional assistance for expensive helicopters or more military training beyond the enormous investment Colombia already receives will only drain resources from these important goals and will not help Colombia reduce drug production or provide the necessary support to the justice system to strengthen the rule of law.

For more detailed recommendations, see Blueprint for a New Colombia Policywe published with the Center for International Policy, the Washington Office on Latin America, and the U.S. Office on Colombia, with input from Colombian civil society organizations.

In March, the House of Representatives made a strong statement of concern regarding lack of human rights progress in Colombia—and added several aircraft to the Colombian police and navy's drug interdiction efforts. Representatives Sam Farr and James McGovern sent a letter signed by 59 members of Congress to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, urging the secretary to withhold certification that Colombia is meeting the human rights conditions established in law. The letter urged progress on specific cases and improvements in the human rights record of the 17th Brigade of the Colombian army (Reps. Shays and Bean also sent similar letters). The State Department is currently withholding a portion of FY2005 military aid from the Colombian government due to lack of progress in investigating cases of human rights abuses. Your actions asking your members to sign helped make this a significant letter.

See the letters and signers at: http://www.lawg.org/docs/RiceCertification03-06.pdf
See LAWGEF memo on certification at: http://www.lawg.org/countries/colombia/certification2006.htm

"Certification is our only congressional oversight tool for urging the Colombian government to comply with international human rights norms," stated Congressmen Farr and McGovern. The certification process mandates that in order for the Colombian military to receive 25 percent of each year's military aid budget, the State Department must certify that significant progress is being made on cases of human rights abuses by Colombian security forces. Currently, the Department of State is withholding 12.5 percent of the approximately $640 million in police and military aid from FY2005.

The House of Representatives approved $26 million in additional assistance for Colombia's police and military last week in an amendment to the Iraq supplemental bill. Proposed by Rep. Dan Burton (R-IN), the sudden amendment was passed in the House by a margin of 250 – 172. The funds will add to the approximately $600 million in aid that Colombian security forces are already scheduled to receive this year from the United States.The amendment will fund marine patrol aircraft for the Colombian navy and helicopters for the Colombian national police. While intended for drug interdiction, these aircraft could be used for protecting spray planes and for the war effort more generally.

The original version of the amendment intended to send nearly $100 million to Colombian security forces, but Rep. Burton reduced it to $26 million in an effort to gain support. The final version of Rep. Burton's amendment was especially difficult to oppose because it did not simply add $26 million to the Iraq supplemental bill, but took the money from a program to construct more prisons in Iraq. Members were forced to choose between sending money to the Colombian security forces or sending it to Iraq for building prisons—neither a very attractive option.

Rep. Nita Lowey (D-NY), ranking member on the foreign operations subcommittee, spoke on the House floor just before the vote. Ms. Lowey had recently returned from a trip to Colombia and called for a new approach to U.S.-Colombia policy focusing on alternative development in lieu of drug crop eradication. "I think it is time that we look at a different mix for funding for Colombia, one that boosts spending on alternate development and interdiction programs and reduces funding for eradication programs which I think are ineffective at best," Lowey stated.

The Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) reported that despite the largest drug crop spraying campaign ever in Colombia in 2004, there was no change in the amount of coca produced, and similar figures are expected for 2005. The drug problem is fundamentally one of supply and demand, and in order to stop it money should be put into drug prevention and treatment programs at home in order to reduce demand, and into alternative development abroad in order to reduce supply.

This skirmish was not the major vote for aid to Colombia this year, which will still take place as the FY 2007 foreign operations appropriations bill comes to the House floor in May or June. Congress is expected to request that Plan Colombia continue as it has for the past six years, with 80 percent of the aid going directly to Colombian security forces. We support amendments to this bill that transfer aid from military assistance to humanitarian needs; we would like to see the United States prioritize aid for those most negatively affected by Colombia's conflict, including internally displaced persons, Afro-Colombian and indigenous communities, and the rural poor.

View the roll call for the vote on Rep. Burton's amendment.

Also, thank your member of Congress if they signed the Farr-McGovern letter and/or voted NO on Rep. Burton’s amendment.

"We are writing to ask you to refrain from certifying that the Colombian government meets human rights conditions...until the Colombian Army's 17th Brigade improves its human rights practices. We also believe that certification requires more substantial progress in prosecuting a number of other outstanding cases involving allegations of gross human rights violations." Read the full letter (PDF).

"I want to speak about a matter that I suspect few Senators are aware of, but which should concern each of us. On February 21, 2005, in the small Colombian community of San Jose de Apartado, 8 people, including 3 children, were brutally murdered. Several of the bodies were mutilated and left to be eaten by wild animals. This, unfortunately, was not unusual, as some 150 people, overwhelmingly civilians caught in the midst of Colombia's conflict, have been killed by paramilitaries, rebels, and Colombian soldiers in that same community since 1997. None of those crimes has resulted in effective investigations or prosecutions. No one has been punished. That is an astonishing fact. Think of 150 murders, including massacres of groups of people, in a single rural community, and no one punished." Read the full statement.

Click here to read the statement.

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.