Colombian President threatens human rights workers

Perli Córdoba and Julio Abella, Colombian human rights activists

Threats against Colombian human rights activists reached a new height in September when President Alvaro Uribe linked them to guerrilla groups during a public speech.

Given the situation in Colombia, Uribe's remarks are effectively a death sentence for human rights activists, with the always willing right-wing paramilitaries as the executioners.

Uribe made his accusation after the publication of El Embrujo Autoritario (The Authoritarian Spell), a report launched by a group of NGOs that reveals a dramatic increase in human rights violations, poverty and erosion of democracy under the first year of Uribe's presidency.

The Colombian president's reaction to the report was given during a ceremony hosted by the Colombian Air Force, when Uribe pronounced during a vehement speech that NGOs were "terrorist" in nature and agents of the rebel groups. "I found the names of some theorists, with whom I respectfully disagree, among the critics. I found some respectable human rights organisations... And I also found pseudo-politicians and writers that serve terrorism and who shield themselves behind the flag of human rights," claimed Uribe. "This third group, pseudo-politicians who serve terrorism, cowardly wave the human rights flag, trying to provide terrorism with the space that the Security Forces and citizens have taken away from them. Every time that there is a security policy in Colombia ready to defeat terrorism, when the terrorists start feeling weak, they immediately send their spokesperson to speak about human rights. Many of their critiques have been taken from FARC's internet page."

Uribe's speech has raised fears among the country's human rights activists, who routinely have their lives threatened by right-wing, military supported paramilitaries. According to Amnesty International, more than 170 Colombian trade unionists were murdered last year. Years ago, the leftist party UP (Union Patriotica), a coalition of the Communist Party and other democratic organisations, was wiped out because the coalition was accused of having links with FARC. Two presidential candidates, some senators and almost all the elected UP representatives, as well as more than 5,000 militants, were killed in few years.

Two human rights activists living under threat are Luz Perli Córdoba, who represents the National Agricultural Union, and Julio Abella, a political and human rights activist. Neither of them seems surprised by Uribe's latest outburst. "What we are experiencing is the strengthening of a fascist government, of a totalitarian government, that does not allow any kind of critique or any opposition to the plans imposed by the United States or the Colombian elite. That is the reason why we have become a target for the government," explains Perli Córdoba.

Julio Abella's experience of prosecution has been even more direct. He was arrested and imprisoned last year, along with another five trade unionists and human rights workers, and accused of rebellion - a charge that entails membership of a guerrilla group. "It was a set up against social and union leaders, left-wing people, human rights defenders and members of the opposition," he says. "Their evidence comes from their informers' network. The prisons are full of people awaiting trial. Their objective is to keep us two or two and half years in prison and then we have to be released because it all is based on inexistent evidence. In our case, as they did not manage to keep us in prison, they are considering the next step: physical elimination. In July 2002 they tried to kill me. Two of our colleagues were killed while in jail."

The prosecution of human rights activists and social and political leaders is not a new phenomenon in Colombia. However, Perli Córdoba and Julio Abella feel that Uribe's presidency has worsened an already bad situation. "He is ignoring the little rights that we had managed to achieve after many years of struggle, disappearances, deaths," says Perli Córdoba. "It was not the benevolence of the government that passed the 1991 Constitution and some of the most progressive legislation. They were the product of struggle. But Uribe is ignoring all this legislation. He is undermining civil liberties to handle special powers to the security forces."

Uribe is a man of tarnished reputation. Before his election, there were some comments on his friendship with an important landowner who was being investigated for links to drugs trafficking. During his time as governor of the province of Antioquia, Uribe effectively legalised the right-wing paramilitary groups in the area, which became "security co-operatives". Human rights activists had always pointed out the link between the Colombian state and the right-wing paramilitary groups, via the military. Human Rights Watch calls these paramilitary groups the Sixth Brigade of the army. However, this is the first time that the link between a president and the death-squads has been so direct.

In February 2002, just months before the presidential elections in Colombia, negotiations between the Colombian government - then headed by Andrés Pastrana - and the FARC guerrilla group were called to an end by the administration. During his electoral campaign, Uribe had already announced that his solution for the Colombian conflict would not be based on negotiations, but on military engagement. Since then, the war - or the "conflict" as Uribe likes to call I - has been as bloody as ever.

Uribe is, however, ready to negotiate with his the right wing paramilitaries, and his plans include an amnesty for all members of the death squads. "He is negotiating peace with the right-wing paramilitaries. But really, what he is up to is to wash the face of the establishment, because these paramilitaries have been doing the work that once upon a time was the responsibility of the army," says Perli Córdoba.

"We are talking about massacres, targeted disappearances, and torture. These paramilitaries are acting under the wing of the army, sheltered by the state. And now they are talking about amnesty for these people... The negotiations of Uribe with the paramilitaries are called by everyone in Colombia 'the negotiations between me and me' because the president is talking to his own people."

A handful of Washington lawmakers have finally started recognising Uribe's sympathy for Colombia's right-wing paramilitaries, despite the fact that critics have repeatedly pointed out his past connections to the militias. At the end of September, 56 members of the US Congress sent a letter to the Colombian president stating their concerns about his plan to let right-wing paramilitaries escape justice by paying fines instead of going to prison.

There were even reports that State Department officials wanted to put a little distance between the Bush administration and the now tarnished Uribe. As a result of his amnesty plan and his recent verbal assault against NGOs, some Washington lawmakers have begun to question their support for Latin America's golden boy and the Western Hemisphere's most outspoken supporter of the Bush administration's invasion of Iraq. By contrast, the Bush administration has given its full blessing to Uribe's plan, even promising to provide $3 million in funding this year for the initial phase of demobilisation.

Nevertheless, human rights groups and social organisations are still working for peace. "The day we give up on the struggle for peace we will die, as this is our reason to exist," states Perli Córdoba. "We want a Colombia living in peace and with social justice. To achieve such an aim we will risk our lives and freedom."

With a government more interested in waging war, it has become the responsibility of civil society to build the agenda for peace. Perli Córdoba and Abella know that the longer the war, the more difficult it will be to close the wounds. And the government is using this desire and willingness for peace as another reason to stigmatise human rights defenders. "People are being harassed because the government describes everyone who defends a political solution to the conflict as a guerrilla spokesperson," says Abella. "The mention of dialogue or peace makes you a suspect in Colombia."