Attacking the Defenders in Colombia and Guatemala

Intimidation and attacks against human rights defenders in Colombia and Guatemala have surged over the past year, seriously undermining the promotion of human rights in these two countries. Although efforts to thwart the work of human rights defenders are not new to Latin America, this worrisome trend in Colombia and Guatemala calls for heightened attention and immediate action by the international community. Guatemala During Guatemala’s decades-long civil war, many courageous persons who worked to combat impunity and promote the rights of the most disadvantaged were silenced by armed groups. Anthropologist Myrna Mack Chang (1949-1990) is among many activists who were viewed as threats and subsequently killed for conducting valiant efforts on behalf of internally displaced persons and other targeted communities. Today, human rights defenders are again under attack. The National Human Rights Movement in Guatemala recorded 65 threats or attacks against human rights defenders between January and April 2006. Members of illegal armed groups, often referred to as “clandestine groups,” are widely believed to be behind most attacks against civil society. These clandestine groups are illegal networks that have close ties with elements of the security apparatus, private sector and common criminals. They have close links with organized criminal networks and so-called “hidden powers.” These represent an amorphous network of powerful individuals who use their positions and contact in the public and private sectors to enrich themselves from illegal activities and to protect themselves from prosecution for the crimes they commit.

Colombia

During the months prior to Colombia’s May presidential elections, intimidation against human rights defenders and civil society increased. Since the elections, threats and attacks have continued. All armed groups engaged in Colombia’s internal conflict continue to attack and intimidate human rights defenders and civil society leaders. As in Guatemala, some attackers, including demobilized paramilitaries, are linked to criminal networks interested in controlling geo-strategically important areas of the country for illegal and legal economic activity.

Leaders of internally displaced communities in the poorer sections of cities such as Buenaventura, Bogotá, Barrancabermeja and Medellín are especially vulnerable. Many displaced people fled to the cities because national authorities failed to provide them with protection in their regions of origin. In the cities, they are faced with the dilemma of either returning home to areas controlled by those who displaced them or seeking refuge in a poor part of the city where they again find those will do them harm. Many involuntarily end up as “intra-urban” internally displaced persons. That is a person who is forcibly displaced from one part of a city to another neighborhood within the same city.

Actions against human rights organizations by groups that call themselves “new generation” or “Colombia free forever of the Left” pose particular danger. Despite the supposed demobilization of the Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), similar groups continue to operate, indicating that the AUC has not been fully dismantled.

Amnesty International Reports

Amnesty International (AI) reports in August and September detailed many dangers to human rights defenders in Colombia and Guatemala. These include murders and attempted killings of human rights defenders, intimidation, threats and robberies.

In Colombia, the AI report points out the lack of political will to combat impunity in cases involving human rights defenders and inappropriate public comments made by high-ranking Colombian officials, accusing human rights defenders of being guerrilla sympathizers or collaborators. Such statements promote a climate that undermines the legitimacy of human rights work and endangers the human rights defenders who are named.

In Guatemala, murders and attempted murders of human rights defenders and civil society leaders and their relatives continued in 2006. AI states that, “the lack of political will to deal with the longstanding issues of impunity, weak judicial system, hostility to human rights defenders and clandestine groups in Guatemala has allowed this wave of attacks against human rights defenders to go unchallenged.”

In April, Meregilda Súchite, a Tuticupote Anajo Community leader in the department of Chiquimula, Guatemala, who had participated in numerous human rights efforts, was killed on her way to church. She was shot several times and mutilated by a machete, and her attackers also threatened to kill her family. Four months later, radio presenter Vinicio Aguilar Mancilla was shot in the mouth and wounded by two unidentified men riding on a motorcycle. That same month, Carmen Sagastume, member of the National Coordination of Marginalized Communities and Areas of Guatemala (CONAPAMG), was shot to death after two men knocked on her front door asking for her husband, a senior member of the organization.

Recent killings of activists in Colombia include the March disappearance, rape, torture and murder of Yamile Agudelo Peñaloza from the Popular Women’s Organization (OFP) and the killing of Hector Diaz Serrano, member of the USO Petroleum workers’ union. Both of these incidents took place in March in the paramilitary-controlled oil town of Barrancabermeja. The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) guerillas are allegedly responsible for the death of Wilson Faria Reatiga, President of the Collective Action Committee of Tame in Arauca. Mr. Reatiga was also a witness of the 1998 Santo Domingo massacre. The FARC is also responsible for the September 8 torture and murder of Fabián Trellez Moreno, a community leader and legal representative of the Boca de Bebará Local Community Council in Medio Atrato, Chocó.

Death Threats

Death threats continue to be a means of fomenting terror within the human rights community, with attackers upgrading their methods of intimidation by using the latest available technology. In Colombia, email appears to be popular, especially for those who wish to silence organizations that form part of the National Victims Movement. Between May and September 2006, groups claiming to have connections with paramilitaries and stating support for Colombian security forces sent five email death threats to the headquarters of numerous civil society organizations who promote human rights, peace and justice in the country. In these messages, the perpetrators warn rights groups to stop their political activities or else they will suffer the consequences.

In Guatemala, forensic anthropologist Fredy Peccerelli and his relatives received several threats, including via the text message system on their mobile phones in 2006. Mr. Peccerelli and members of his organization, the Guatemalan Forensic Anthropology Foundation, whose work includes exhuming mass graves containing the remains of the victims of the conflict, have been receiving conventional threats since 2004. Although Guatemalan authorities are aware of threats against Mr. Peccerelli and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights has granted them precautionary measures, investigations into the threats have not moved forward and the protection mechanisms granted to them by the state remain inadequate.

In Colombia, increased aggression targets “peace communities” and “humanitarian zones.” In September, a group of 30-40 armed men, some of whom identified themselves as paramilitaries, arrived at a house in San Josecito, near the peace community of San José de Apartadó in Antioquia, and told a woman living in this house they would exterminate the peace community. San Josecito is a small settlement established by members of the San José de Apartadó peace community shortly after the massacre of eight of its members, including children, in February 2005.

In Chocó, the Afro-Colombian communities of Curvaradó and Jiguamiandó continue to be threatened by “paramilitaries.” For many years, Afro-Colombian community leaders have been the target of armed groups due to their defense of their collective and human rights (as defined by Law 70 of 1993.) Civilians who resist displacement or who return to their traditional lands after displacement are met with violence and threats of violence by the armed groups. On August 16, paramilitaries warned residents of one of these communities that they planned to kill leader Enrique Petro, other members of the Curvaradó community and the human rights defenders who accompany them. These paramilitaries, who supposedly demobilized earlier this year, stated that, “we are only waiting for the commander to give the order and say when to act.” When international pressure resulted from this threat, on September 22, another paramilitary warned, on September 22, that while they couldn’t carry out their plans against Mr. Petro because of the international presence accompanying him, they could go after “what would hurt him most: his children and his family.”

Robberies

Robberies also are used as means of disrupting and silencing human rights work. This year, important information was stolen during break-ins at a number of Colombian human rights organization’s offices and homes. In August, the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights noted in a public statement that persons had taken information from the computers of various Colombian non-governmental organizations’ offices. In April and August, the offices of the Consultancy for Human Rights and Displacement (CODHES) were broken into. The perpetrators stole CODHES’s database on internal displacement and the hard drive and memory cards from two computers. CODHES maintains the most comprehensive non-governmental statistical information on internal displacement in the country.

Amnesty International reported that at least ten civil society organizations in Guatemala suffered break-ins since the beginning of 2006. In June, intruders stole a computer from the National Union of Guatemalan Women’s office in Chimaltenango, and searched computer files related to work on women survivors of the conflict. That same month, another non-governmental Guatemalan women’s rights organization also had their computers and files searched and mobile phones and faxes stolen.

International Action

International attention and action serve to protect human rights defenders and ensure that they can work effectively. Among the specific actions that international governments, organizations and non-governmental organizations can take are:

1) Support and strongly encourage the Guatemalan government to implement the Commission for the Investigation of Illegal Armed Groups and Clandestine Security Organizations (CICIACS), an initiative that is currently being renegotiated with the United Nations. The commission would assist local authorities in investigating and developing prosecutable cases against these groups.

2) Closely monitor Colombia’s paramilitary demobilization process and express concern to the Colombian government regarding the re-armament of these groups and their continuing threats to and attacks on human rights defenders.

3) Increase support for international accompaniment groups, such as Peace Brigades International, that provide unarmed physical protection to human rights organizations in Guatemala and Colombia.

U.S. citizens should contact their members of Congress to express concern for human rights defenders and ask that they work toward creating a more secure environment for human rights defenders by implementing these recommendations. U.S. policymakers and the international community must urge the governments of Colombia and Guatemala to publicly express support for those who work to promote human rights in their countries and to condemn all forms of intimidation, threats and violence against such activists.