UN fails to condemn human rights violations FOR THE FIRST time, the United Nations Commission on Human Rights drew up a report on the "disappearances" in Colombia. In preparation for the Forty-Fifth Session of the Commission in Geneva, a Working Group visited Colombia last October and November. On February 6, it submitted a 39-page report in English containing important revelations about the responsibility of the government of Liberal Party president Virgilio Barco Vargas for human rights violations.1 RODRIGO O'FARREL
A CONCLUSION of the report
was that "legal protection of citizens against abuses by the public forces seems to have diminished. Thus, the vague provisions of anti-terrorist legislation have increased the phenomenon of disappearances." More precisely, the report recognized that units of the Colombian armed forces have been involved in the disappearances. "After carefully weighing the available material, the Working Group considers that in the majority of known cases there is circumstantial evidence pointing clearly to the participation of units of the armed forces and security services in forcible and involuntary disappearances."
The UN report, which has been largely censored in the Colombian press, notes that
VENEZUELA • COLOMBIA the government has done absolutely nothing to remove functionaries responsible for violating human rights from office and to prosecute them (Point 130 of the report), and it specifically states that the high degree of impunity prevailing in Colombia is one of the major challenges for establishing public confidence in the institutions of the state.
### Over 1,000 political murders in 1988
During the meeting of the Human Rights Commission in Geneva, some European governments sharply denounced this state of affairs. Swedish representative Maikael Dahl declared that his government backed the Working Group's recommendations on Colombia, which accept the involvement of the armed forces in the disappearances of citizens but also in extra-judicial executions, as revealed in another report by the same commission drawn up by a special relator (a term for private citizens who initiate public legal proceedings), Amos Wako.
In the latter document, which compiles complaints of illegal executions in 47 coun tries, the Colombian chapter contains one of the longest lists of recorded violations, 1. The document reference is E/CN.4/1989/18/Add. 1,6 February 1989 — United Nations, Economic and Social Council, Commission on Human Rights, Forty. 11 Fifth Session, agenda item 12.
COLOMBIA along with Israel, Iran and Iraq.2 In Point
80 of the Wako report, it is said that in 1988 more than a thousand people were murdered by members of the Colombian security forces or by paramilitary groups.
Among the security forces accused are the National Police intelligence unit (F-2), the army intelligence division (B-2), the Intelligence and Counter-Intelligence Battalion (BINCI) and regular battalions of the army and regional brigades. The report specifies, moreover, that military and police personnel, as well as civilian auxiliaries, are working in the death squads.
"Many of the victims are trade-union leaders and activists, members of political parties, peasants, human rights advocates, lawyers, judges and journalists."
Colombian delegation heads off condemnation
The non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that attended the Forty-Fifth Session documented their own lists of crimes by official and semi-official bodies in Colombia. Pax Romana spoke of the impunity prevailing in the country, indicated by 14,000 murders on which no court has yet pronounced a verdict. The spokesperson of this agency quoted the testimony of Carlos Eduardo Lozano, a former director of the Instrucción Criminal (Criminal Investigation Bureau, who publicly stated that "sections of the army sponsoring and covering up the actions of the paramilitaries who have killed thousands of opposition leaders, peasants, unionists, priests and so on."
The Andean Jurists' Commission declared that the Colombian government "has taken laudable steps to strengthen institutions that contribute to maintaining respect for human rights," but that it has "not succeeded in improving the sit-
The World University Service demanded that Virgilio Barco's government repeal Article 10 of Decree-Law 48(1968) and decree-laws 180, 181 and 182(1988) "which give aid and comfort to paramilitary actions and restrict fundamental rights, such as that of habeas corpus."
The International Confederation of Free Trade Unions complained that the Colombian government "which is so ready to combat the international drug traffic, is not showing the same determination in the fight against violations of human rights."
Similar statements were made by other NGOs, such as the International Labor Organization, Terre des Hommes, and the World Federation of Educational Professionals' Organizations. In all, 12 NGOs took stands on Colombia, demanding the appointment of a special relator to investigate personally what is happening in that In the protocol of the UN Commission on 12 Human Rights, the appointment of a special relator amounts to a condemnation. In International Viewpoint #161 • April 17, 1989 order to forestall such an eventuality, the governments concerned by complaints received during sessions take preventive action. For this reason, the chief of the
Colombian delegation, Alvaro Tirado
Mejia, advisor to the president on human rights, moved to head off an unfavorable decision for his government by issuing an invitation to Amos Wako to visit the country and make an "on-the-spot" investigation of human rights violations.
In 1988, this special relator sent many letters to the Bogot government asking for clarification about summary executions and massacres perpetrated in the country.
In response, he got six communications from the government informing him that in most cases the judicial investigations had not produced any results.
In one of these replies, dated January 9,
1989, the Colombian government declared that it "had no information about the possibility that members of the state security forces had abused their authority and committed illegal actions."
Bogotá's explanations were considered unserious. A day after this reply was sent, a local judge, Martha Lucía Hurtado, issued summonses against five officers of the Bomboná battalion and the police commandant of Segovia (in the department of
Antioquía). In this region, soldiers of this battalion and the 30 members of the police force stood by, without lifting a finger, while a paramilitary squad killed 43 people and wounded another 30.3
Tip of the iceberg of political murders
The judge's decision was communicated to the minister of defense, General Jaime Guerrero Paz, at the beginning of January by the director of the Criminal Investigation Bureau, Carlos Eduardo Lozano, who was later removed from his post. In October 1988, a police officer, sergeant and six policemen were indicted by a judge in the course of an investigation of the murder of two Indians in Guajira.
In other words, Tirado Mejia could not have been unaware of these facts, which are the tip of the iceberg of the state's responsibility in the multitude of political murders. Nonetheless, he tried to deceive the UN agency in order to avoid condemnation. And, in the last analysis, that is what the Bogot government achieved.
At the Forty-Fifth Session, the Colombian delegation joined the bloc of Latin American countries that opposed the US attempt to condemn Cuba for human rights violations, and got the bloc to head off any condemnation of Colombia. This tactic, which runs counter to the purpose of these annual sessions, was used successfully by Colombia last year. This explains why governments who violated human rights by their actions or failure to act, managed to get through the 1989 meeting in Geneva without being condemned so long as they did not allow themselves to become politically isolated.
Thus, Rumania was the only government condemned by the Forty-Fifth Session in Geneva. The Ceaucescu government certainly deserved to be condemned. However, the Colombian case is as bad or worse than that of Rumania, and so it was an outrage that the Latin American country was "absolved."
Bloodbath looks set to break new records
This "not guilty" verdict will objectively widen the margins of impunity enjoyed by the paramilitary groups and the death squads of the Colombian state security services, and discourage those who risk their lives to defend human rights. The murder on March 3 right in the middle of Bogotá's international airport, of José Antequera, the number two leader of the Unión Patriótica (the left party led by the Colombian Communists), and the serious injuries suffered by Senator Ernesto Samper Pizano, a progressive figure and candidate for the Liberal Party's nomination for the coming presidential elections, are evidence that the extermination drive against the legal left and its allies has gained momentum since the Geneva verdict.
In the month of January alone, there were 251 political murders in Colombia, and 30 persons disappeared. On February 27, the Communist leader Teófilo Forero was murdered, along with his wife and two companions. In 1989, the bloodbath in Colombia looks set to break the terrible records set in previous years. * International solidarity essential IT IS essential to keep up protests and International pressure on President Virgillo Barco's government. Letters and telegrams demanding that the paramilitary groups be dismantled and that all those responsible for human rights vlolatlons be punished should be sent to Colomblan embassies and to the following address:
President Virgillo Barco Vargas, Presidente de la República de Colombia, Palacio de Nariño, Bogotá, Colombla. * 2. This document's reference number is E/CN.4/1989/ 18/Add. 1,6 February 1989, agenda item 10 (c). 3. See TV 153, December 12, 1988.
An international program for the Irish
W HAT'S your attitude to
this proposal that you stand as a unity candidate in the EEC election against Hume?
The original proposal was mooted by Father Des Wilson, Father Joe McVeigh, and a small number of that kind of humanrights, anti-imperialist activist. It was originally mooted in terms of an agreed candidate. I think their intention was to force the
SDLP into discussion.
INTERVIEW WITH BERNADETTE McALISKEY
My own position was that the idea of an agreed candidate between Sinn Fein and
ONE OF THE first concrete initiatives resulting from Sinn the SDLP was not only not realistic but had a number of serious principled political
Fein's adoption of the perspective of building a broad problems. The republican movement took anti-imperialist front at its congress early this year was the same position. So, the possibility that was one of a broad antiemerged the republican movement accepting the idea of running a imperialist candidate for the European unity candidate in a key EEC race.! The proposal was to
Since there are ongoing discussions, it is run Bernadette McAliskey against John Hume, the leader clear that there is a willingness in Sinn Fein of the bourgeois nationalist Social Democratic and to open out, which is in complete contrast to the days when they basically made the position of "support the prisoners, support
McAliskey fought a previous EEC election as a means of the war" a condition for being allowed to march in demonstrations.
raising the issue of political prisoners and won a substantial vote, despite opposition from Sinn Fein,
• In this case, at least, they are prepared to support a candidate who is which was then opposed to collaborating with not one of their own people.
independent forces. Gerry Foley discussed this question
And quite clearly prepared to do that.
with her in Belfast in the third week of February.
There have been ongoing discussions, and l think that they have been worthwhile and