Background to the Geneva Meeting
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Colombia
Haiti Documents
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Colombia Oral Intervention 
Last year, Colombia's Public Advocate recorded over 400 massacres. Most massacres were perpetrated by paramilitaries working with the tacit acquiescence or open support of the Colombian Army. Guerrillas also committed massacres. As a result, over 1.5 million Colombians are forcibly displaced, nearly double the number of Kosovars who fled at the height of Serbian terror.
For 17 hours last March 25 and 26th, guerrillas from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia detained and terrorized the 1,200 residents of Vigía del Fuerte and Bellavista. Guerrillas killed eight civilians, among them two small children. The Army of National Liberation, known as the ELN, also violates international humanitarian law by killing civilians and taking hostages. In May 1999, ELN guerrillas seized over 140 churchgoers in Cali. Months later, guerrillas apologized—not for the kidnaping, but for failing to wait until the Catholic Mass was concluded to carry it out.
While abuses directly attributed to members of the Colombian military have decreased in recent years, the number and scale of abuses attributed to paramilitary groups operating with the military's acquiescence or open support have skyrocketed. Human Rights Watch has detailed evidence of continuing close ties between the Colombian Army and paramilitary groups. Government investigators have described direct collaboration between the Medellín-based Fourth Brigade and paramilitaries. Repeatedly, paramilitaries killed those suspected of supporting guerrillas, then delivered the corpses to the army. In a process known as "legalization," the army then claimed the dead as guerrillas killed in combat while paramilitaries received their pay in army weapons. Together, evidence collected so far by Human Rights Watch links half of Colombia's eighteen brigade-level army units to paramilitary activity.
The National Police have been directly implicated in joint army-paramilitary actions and have sometimes organized paramilitaries and supplied information to them to assemble death lists. Yet it is important to note that human rights violations committed by police—in contrast to those committed by the military—do not, for the most part, go unnoticed or unpunished. Using Decree 573, passed in 1995, General Rosso José Serrano can summarily fire police officers accused of abuses if there is convincing evidence against them. Since 1994, 11,400 police officers implicated in human rights abuses, criminal activity, and other crimes have been discharged from the force and put at the disposition of Colombian courts for trial and punishment.
It is crucial for the Commission to demand accountability from the Colombian military. They must sever links, at all levels, to paramilitary groups. Under the president's authority, they must implement a comprehensive and public plan to investigate, pursue, capture, and bring to justice paramilitary leaders and the military officers who support them.
Equally important, the Colombian government must uphold the August 1997 ruling of the Constitutional Court, which requires that crimes against humanity allegedly committed by military personnel be investigated and tried in civilian courts.
Finally, it is urgent that the Commission support the work of the government officials and members of non-governmental organizations who defend human rights. When Human Rights Watch published its last report in February, the Colombian military lashed out with personal attacks accusing our employees of working for drug traffickers and guerrillas. Yet they did not dispute the facts. If this is their attitude toward international groups, the Commission must ask, how much more difficult and dangerous is the work of national and local groups in Colombia? We urge you to press the Colombian government for immediate improvements on their behalf.
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