Human Rights Developments

Defending Human Rights

The Role of the International Community

The Work of Human Rights Watch

The burgeoning of the human rights movement, even in countries with environments hostile to activism, remained a regional highlight. In addition to groups focusing on the traditional array of civil and political rights, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) emerged over the last decade in the defense of women's rights, children's rights, the rights of indigenous populations, refugee rights, and in some countries gayand lesbian rights. With increasingly sophisticated methods of documentation and advocacy, these groups played an indispensable role in monitoring and reporting on human rights developments in the region.

Yet, even in countries where human rights defenders could work with no apparent personal risk, they frequently faced an unsympathetic public, suspicious of their defense of criminal suspects and other despised groups. Worse, in a number of countries they were the subject of threats, harassment and physical violence.

Colombia remained the most dangerous country in which to monitor human rights, with four defenders killed and three "dissappeared" during the first ten months of 2000. Elizabeth Cañas, a member of the Association of Family Members of the Detained and Disappeared (Asociación de Familiares de Detenidos Desaparecidos-Colombia, ASFADDES), was shot and killed in July. Cañas lived in Barrancabermeja, where paramilitaries systematically intimidated human rights defenders, sending dozens of death threats over the course of the year. Also slain were Demetrio Playonero, an internally displaced person (IDP) and human rights leader; Jesús Ramiro Zapata, the only remaining member of the Segovia Human Rights Committee; and Margarita María Pulgarín Trujillo, a government prosecutor who was developing cases that linked paramilitaries to the army and drug traffickers.

Civilian groups, including human rights organizations, also faced attack from the FARC, which in October 2000 characterized them as "paid killers [for the Colombian military]." In a statement on why they failed to honor an invitation to an October 2000 peace meeting in San José, Costa Rica, sponsored by a broad coalition of human rights, peace, and community groups, the FARC dismissed the effort as organized by "the enemies of Colombia and its people." In this way, the guerrillas contributed to a general atmosphere of fear and intolerance that endangered human rights defenders.

The Colombian government's efforts to protect threatened defenders were slow and inadequate. Moreover, recklessly endangering defenders' lives, members of the Colombian military continued to make public statements accusing government investigators and human rights groups of guerrilla sympathies.

Failed assassination attempts were reported in Brazil. In September, a jeep carrying members of a commission that monitored rural violence and land reform issues was fired upon in the northeastern state of Paraíba, but its occupants survived. That same month, São Paulo representatives of Amnesty International and of a gay pride organization received bombs in the mail, but the police safely deactivated the devices.

In an alarming development, particularly when viewed in historical perspective, Guatemala witnessed a notable increase in threats, harassment, and targeted violence against human rights organizations and activists. In one disturbing incident in August, a representative of the Center for Legal Action in Human Rights (Centro para la acción legal en Derechos Humanos, CALDH) was detained, beaten and robbed by individuals posing as journalists but thought to have links with active and retired military officers.

Death threats, frequent in Colombia, were also reported in Guatemala, Chile, Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, and Peru. In Cuba, human rights monitors, whose legitimacy the government stubbornly refused to recognize, faced harassment and criminal prosecution for their activities.

In Venezuela, the Supreme Court determined in separate decisions in June and August that human rights organizations that received funding from abroad were not members of "civil society," thereby depriving them of the right to participate in the nomination of candidates for the Supreme Court, to be ombudsman, and for other important government posts.

Authorities continued to apply pressure to human rights monitors in Mexico, too, where they were sometimes blamed for some of the crime problems suffered in the country. Losing presidential candidate Francisco Labastida of the PRI, for example, noted during the campaign, "Let it be known that the law was made to protect the human rights of citizens, not criminals." This anti-human rights rhetoric contributed to a hostile environment for human rights defenders. According to the nongovernmental All Rights for All Network of Human Rights Organization (Red de Derechos Humanos Todos los Derechos para Todo, known as the Red), its offices in Mexico City were under surveillance by agents of the federal National Security System (Sistema Nacional de Seguridad, SISEN) in June.