Geneva

False Positive

‘My investigations found that members of Colombia’s security forces committed a significant number of unlawful killings in a pattern that was repeated around the country. Although these killings were not committed as part of an official policy, I found that many military units engaged in so-called ‘false positives’ or falsos positivos in which victims were murdered by the military, often for soldiers’ personal benefit or profit. Victims were generally lured under false pretenses by a “recruiter” to a remote location and then killed by soldiers who report that there was a “death in combat”, and takes steps to manipulate and cover-up the crime scene,’ Mr. Alston reported. ‘Within the military, success was equated with “kill counts” of guerillas, and promoted by an environment in which there was little or no accountability. Soldiers simply knew that they could get away with murder.’

Mr. Alston noted steps Colombia has taken to reduce the killings, including dismissing senior military officers and permitting UN and International Committee of the Red Cross monitoring, but expressed concern about continuing impunity. “The current rate of impunity for alleged killings by the security forces, up to 98.5 per cent by some credible estimates, is way too high,” the expert said. “Unless the Government ensures effective investigation and prosecution of killings by security forces, it will not be able to turn the page on the falsos positivos scandal. Victims and family members deserve justice. Colombian society and the international community need to know that security operations are lawful, or they will not be considered legitimate.”

Impunity for former paramilitaries

The Special Rapporteur also found ‘an alarming level of impunity for former paramilitaries.’ According to Mr. Alston, “Colombia’s effort to end and provide accountability for paramilitary violence is floundering. The vast majority of paramilitaries responsible for human rights violations were demobilized without investigation, and many were effectively granted amnesties. Today, the failure in accountability is clear from the dramatic rise in killings by illegal armed groups composed largely of former paramilitaries.”

Mr. Alston added that, “The Justice and Peace Law that was intended to provide accountability for paramilitary crimes has not been an effective tool for justice or truth. In order for the Government to provide accountability, there must be significant substantive and procedural changes to the law. But given Colombia’s record so far, a focus on this law alone is not enough. There is no substitute for prosecution of human rights abuses, but the Government should also consider establishing an independent truth commission to conduct a systematic investigation into the abuses committed by all sides during Colombia’s armed conflict.”

FARC and ELN guerrillas

Mr. Alston emphasized that “The FARC and ELN both carry out unlawful killings and often target or victimize the very populations on whose behalf they claim to fight. Guerilla groups cause instability in many parts of the country. The Government’s strategy has focused on military defeat of the guerillas, but it should also consider humanitarian accords and negotiation to end the conflict once and for all.”

The expert called attention to groups that are especially vulnerable to violence in Colombia. “Historically and continuing through today, all parties to Colombia’s conflict have targeted indigenous and Afro-Colombian communities, human rights defenders, trade unionists, and other rights activists. Colombia must vigorously investigate and prosecute violence and threats against these groups.” Mr. Alston also emphasized that, “Indigenous and Afro-Colombian communities in conflict zones are especially vulnerable to massacres and other abuses, and Colombia must ensure its security policies and military operations prioritize their protection.”

Alston recommendations to the Colombian government

Mr. Alston commended the Colombia Government for the high level of cooperation he received during his mission, “The Colombian Government’s willingness to open itself to international scrutiny of its security policies sets an example for other states. Government officials repeatedly told me they welcomed suggestions for reform. As Colombia addresses its security challenges, continued transparency about the content and effect of its policies and a focus on accountability for wrongdoing will benefit victims, family members and society at large, and will also have a strongly positive effect on the legitimacy of the Government and its policies.”

Professor Alston was appointed UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial executions in 2004 and reports to the United Nations Human Rights Council and the General Assembly. He has had extensive experience in the human rights field, including eight years as Chairperson of the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, principal legal adviser to UNICEF in the drafting of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and Special Adviser to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. He is Professor of Law and Faculty Director of the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice at New York University School of Law.

Related links

• The Special Rapporteur’s full report on Colombia is available at http://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/hrcouncil/docs/14session/A.HRC.14.24.Add.2_en.pdf
• For further information on the mandate of the Special Rapporteur, please visit the website:http://www2.ohchr.org/english/issues/executions/index.htm
• For more information or and media requests, please call Ms. Pasipau Wadonda-Chirwa (Tel: +41 917 9252 / email: pwadonda-chirwa@ohchr.org) or Mr. Ugo Cedrangolo (Tel +41 917 9286/ emailucedrangolo@ohchr.org )

For use of the information media; not an official record | The source of this article is the News & Media room of UN.

The government of Álvaro Uribe is committed to hold on the position that there are camps and leaders of FARC and EPL, the Colombian communist guerrillas, in Venezuelan territory and proves were presented before the Organization of American States. The Maoist guerrillas are considered by the European Community, US, Mexico, Colombia and others as terrorist organizations associated with drug trafficking, while Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, Nicaragua and other governments do not refer to them under such terms. Accusations of direct contacts with the Colombian guerrillas by governments like Caracas and Quito have been always denied by their top leaders, however the resent accusation of Colombia has been the most direct and strong of the last years, just few weeks of the end of the government of Uribe.

President Hugo Chávez opted for a strong answer to Uribe denying strictly the accusations as an ambush of Bogotá to his revolutionary process in Venezuela and a treat of invasion with the support of the United States, while showing a expectancy for the next presidential period with Juan Manuel Santos. By his part, the new elected president, who comes from the Uribe side, has avoid any declaration to the crisis that was worsen with a diplomatic breakdown by Caracas. President Chávez militarized the border with Colombia under the consideration that there is a possible Colombian attack on his country before August 7.

The Venezuelan chancellor, Nicolás Maduro, visited some South American government, especially those supposedly aligned with Caracas like Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay and proposing a regional peace process for Colombia that was refused by Bogotá as an intention of distract the attention over the main problem. For Colombia, the real regional commitment with the peace of Colombia is not allowing the presence of terrorist groups like Farc and EPL. A peace dialog is a strategy of the guerrillas to strengthen, avoiding the confrontation with the authorities, manifested president Álvaro Uribe recently. President Álvaro Uribe refused also a declaration of Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva that suggested in an interview to Prensa Latina that the Colombian – Venezuelan crisis was rather a personal interchange of words.

While Maduro was touring South America to prepare the UNASUR chancellors’ summit in Quito, his Colombian counterpart Jaime Bermúdez was preparing to bring what Bogotá says are more evidences of the presence of guerrilla troops and leaders camping in Venezuela.

The results of the summit were expected: both governments hold their positions.

President Álvaro Uribe proposed recently that the guerrilla troops in Venezuela should demobilize in that country with the presence of Colombian prosecutors and they must return to their country under the guarantees of the Justice and Peace Law, a legal frame created during the first presidential period of Uribe to promote the demobilization of armed groups in Colombia like the communist guerrillas and the rightist paramilitary troops.

Nicolás Maduro denied once more that there are guerrilla troops and leaders hiding in the Venezuelan territory and he said that everything is a lie and attack of the government of President Uribe against the Venezuelan government. He insisted that president Uribe is planning a military intervention in Venezuela before the end of his government on August 7.

We enter by sure an interregnum now: not any diplomatic action from any part will be effective after August 7, when Colombia will see the upcoming of a new president, after 8 years of a strong leader like Uribe. The first declarations of Juan Manuel Santos as president of the Colombians will be strictly a guide to predict how the relations of Colombian with its South American neighbors will evolve.

Picture from Colombiamoda 2010

But Catalonia is not the first region to buried by law the traditional fiesta brava. The first prohibition was ruled in the Spaniard archipelago of Canaries following a regional law for the protection of animals that was established in 1991. The process of Catalonia was observed with attention by those countries were bullfighting is also considered a sport and cultural tradition, among them France and Portugal.

It brought a long discussion among those who fight for the protection of animals and those who see bullfighting as an art and an ancestral tradition. By sure, the discussion will encourage groups of animal protection groups in other Spaniard regions and countries with bullfighting tradition.

In Colombia, the main cities have big plazas for the traditional bullfighting like Bogotá, Medellín, Cali and Manizales. There is also internationally recognized bullfighters like Pepe Cáceres and César Rincón. There has been even female bullfighters like Berta Trujilla, known as La Morenita del Quindío.

Photo: Major Moreno holding a 1910´s map of Bogotá that was inside the centennial urn.

Major Samuel Moreno could not hide his expectation, as many in Colombia after caring a urn that was closed in 1910 with the order of the municipal council to be opened only on July 20, 2010.  In the ceremony was also the president of the republic, Álvaro Uribe Vélez and other personalities.

When the urn was closed on October 1911, Bogotá was practically a town of 9 barrios and 115 thousand inhabitants. Now, as a vehicle of time keeping messages from a former generation, it opens its door to a different Colombian reality in a capital of almost 10 million inhabitants.

The municipality gave the record of things that were found inside the urn: an album of photographies of the Colombian presidents between 1810 and 1910, an album of 60 drawings of national traditions of Ramón Torres that were edited in Leipzig, 63 photographies of Bogotá as monuments, ceremonies and personalities that were during the 1910 anniversary of the independence, a map of Bogotá of 1910 made by Alberto Borda Tanco, the letter of the National Anthem, a view of Bogotá from the Church of Egypt and a copy of the Act of Independence.

There was also the minutes of closure of the urn by the Council of Bogotá dated October 31, 1911 with the notice that it must be opened only on July 20, 2010. It is signed by the councilmen and Manuel María Mallarino, major of Bogotá in 1811.

The documents were well preserved, as they were new. The urn survived the events of April 9, 1948, known in the Colombian history as El Bogotazo, when presidential candidate of the Liberal Party, Jorge Eliecer Gaitán, was assassinated and the city was attacked by angry hordes, especially in its administrative buildings.

Bogotá is thinking what to put in the next urn that should keep the message of this generation for the 22th century… if there is anybody around by then…

‘We have the capacity to host the World Cup,‘ said Woodman to the media in Lima. ‘Our three nations are brothers for their common history and our passion for soccer. I think that the decisive suppport of the governments and the federations will be important to fulfill our dream of being hosts,’ he concluded.

At least in Colombia the proposal got a good score. ‘ It is a constructive proposal, very positive, imaginative, welcome, magnificent. Everything that is a positive proposal, is welcome,’ said Uribe.

The idea of the headquarters of a World Cup in two or three countries if not new. Spain and Portugal have it for 2018 and Belgium and Holland proposed it for 2022, while in 2002 the sport world competition was in Japan and South Korea.

Soccer is considered a national sport in the three Andean countries and they have the common aspiration to be headquarters of a World Cup. Although no one has been a world champion, their soccer experience is noticeable in the Latin American context, while they have important stadiums in their main cities.

Witchtrap in Rock al Parque.

The already traditional biggest rock concert of Latin America, Rock al Parque in its 2010 version, was successful according to the organizers. The event cost 2,800 million pesos (1,472,771.26 US dollars) and a participation of 266 thousand persons during the three days of the concerts.

The 2010 was the 16th version of what is said the most important rock concert in the Latin American region that is celebrated annually in Bogotá. It supports however the local rock bands and the development of the Colombian rock, the leading reason to the creation of the event. There is also a rock competition that this year gathered 24 Colombian bands.

The international presence is also important for the concerts, especially bands from the American nations. Tree days of 11 daily hours of programs with an estimate of 56 thousand persons during the first day, 90 thousand during the second day and 120 thousand during the closing down the festival, according to the reports of the administration.

The Canadian newspaper in Spanish for the Hispanic communities of the North American country, said in its edition of July 2 that some programs of radio became suddenly popular when a Colombian mentalist called to the Spanish-speaking station of Alberta.

He just said ´Alo habla Yorman! and introduced himself as a parapsychologist and mentalist.

Then a woman called and she gave him some basic information. Yorman guessed to her that a relative of her died recently and her city and date of birth. The event attracted several calls to the station, according to the newspaper, 500 calls were registered in five minutes and they continued after the program was over looking for Yorman.

Reading the reports give an impression of a game of numbers and a competition between Colombia, Peru and Bolivia for which one has more reduction. It is said, for example, that during 2008 the coca plantations in the three Andean countries fall 5.3 percent, from 167,600 hectares to 158,800 in 2009.  From this numbers, Colombia had 81 thousand of coca plantations in 2008 and 68 thousand in 2009. As for cocaine, the reductions is estimated in 9 percent that means a reduction in production from 450 metric tons to 410 in 2009.

Behind this play of numbers and positive statistics there is of course the ideological position of the War on Drugs, a term that at least is avoided by the administration of President Obama. War on Drugs, a creation of President Nixon and developed by President Reagan, has had as its main battle’s field the Western Hemisphere, from North to South America. Of course, here in our long and controversial Hemisphere, we have the first world drug consumer, US, and the main drug producers, Latin America. An aggressive war that has battled constantly for more than three decades, from the same US soil, making American citizens to pay the Plan Colombia and putting in prison every year thousands of American drug addicts, to huge amounts of military and police investment in weapons and high technology to battle the powerful mafias that are able to destabilize countries.

Forced manual eradication of coca plantations belongs to a repressive project, War on Drug, that has not produced the utopian results of its original creators.

It is needed a change of perspective. A new plan that should be developed only by one part, US, but for the whole continent and according to the cultural, historical and economical context of every nation. We should not continue with a War on Drugs, but a Economical and Social Transformation, either in US or in the Latin American countries.

A new campaign that open best opportunities to the thousands of coca leaf growers of countries like Colombia, Peru and Bolivia, to the thousands of US consumers. With all that investment in weapons, many of them used to kill the poor, it is possible to take out from the hands of mafias, the real victims of drug.

• Caracol: Acción Andina said that in Colombia there has not been a reduction in growing and production of coca (in Spanish).
• UNODC: Presentation of the census of coca growing in Colombia 2009 (in Spanish with link in English.)
• Acción Andina: The policies of US against the drugs (in Spanish.)