Paramilitarism in Colombia
Encyclopedia
Paramilitarism in Colombia refers to the origins and activities of far right-wing paramilitary
groups in Colombia
during the 20th century.
Right-wing paramilitary groups are the parties considered to be most responsible for human rights violations in Colombia during the later half of the current Colombian Armed Conflict
. According to several international human rights
and governmental organizations, right-wing paramilitary groups have been regularly held responsible for at least 70 to 80% of political murders in Colombia per year, with the remainder committed by leftist guerrillas and government forces.
The first paramilitary groups were organized by the Colombian military following recommendations made by U.S. personnel sent to Colombia during the Cold War
in order to combat leftist political activists and armed guerrilla groups. The development of later paramilitary groups has also involved elite landowners, drug traffickers, members of the security forces, politicians and multinational corporations. Paramilitary violence today is, among others, overwhelmingly targeted towards peasants, unionists, teachers and human rights workers.
Paramilitary groups control the large majority of the illegal drug trade
of cocaine
and other illegal substances, especially trafficking and processing. They experienced enormous growth in the 1980s as a result of cocaine traffickers funding private armed military groups.
sent a "Special Survey Team", composed of counterinsurgency experts, to investigate Colombia's internal security situation, due to the increased prevalence of armed communist self-defense communities in rural Colombia which formed during and after La Violencia
. Three years later, in February 1962, a Fort Bragg top-level U.S. Special Warfare team headed by Special Warfare Center commander General William P. Yarborough
, visited Colombia for a second survey.
In a secret supplement to his report to the Joint Chiefs of Staff
, Yarborough encouraged the creation and deployment of a paramilitary force to commit sabotage and terrorist acts against communists:
The new counter-insurgency policy was instituted as Plan Lazo in 1962 and called for both military operations and civic action program
s in violent areas. Following Yarborough's recommendations, the Colombian military recruited civilians into paramilitary "civil defense" groups which worked alongside the military in its counter-insurgency campaign, as well as in civilian intelligence networks to gather information on guerrilla activity. Among other policy recommendations the US team advised that "in order to shield the interests of both Colombian and US authorities against 'interventionist' charges any special aid given for internal security was to be sterile and covert in nature." Doug Stokes
argues that it was not until the early part of the 1980s that the Colombian government attempted to move away from the counterinsurgency strategy represented by Plan Lazo and Yarborough's 1962 recommendations.
A series of Colombian military manuals from the 1960s encouraged the creation of paramilitary organizations to help fight guerrillas. In 1969, the Reglamento de EJC 3-10, Reservado, de 1969 ("EJC-3 Order, Restricted, 1969") stated that the armed forces should organize "self-defence committees" which were defined as "military-type organization made up of civilian personnel in the combat zone, which are trained and equipped to undertake operations against guerrilla groups that threaten an area or to operate in coordination with combat troops". These committees were to maintain contact with local military officers, keeping a high level awareness about any suspicious communist action in their communities, in particular those of suspected "guerrilla supporters". The manual also allowed military personnel to dress in civilian clothes when necessary to infiltrate areas of suspected guerrilla influence, and also for civilian helpers to travel alongside military units. Separately, in order to help gain the trust of local citizens, the military was advised to participate in the daily activities of the community where applicable.
trade took off and became a major source of profit. By 1982, cocaine surpassed coffee as an export, making up 30% of all Colombian exports. Many members of the new class of wealthy drug barons began purchasing enormous quantities of land, in order to launder
their drug money, and to gain social status amongst the traditional Colombian elite. By the late 1980s, drug traffickers were the largest landholders in Colombia and wielded immense political power. They used much of their land for grazing cattle, or left it completely idle as a show of wealth. They also raised private armies to fight off guerrillas who were trying to either redistribute their lands to local peasants, kidnap them, or extract the gramaje tax that was commonly levied on landed elites.
At the end of 1981 and the beginning of 1982, members of the Medellín Cartel
, the Colombian military, the U.S.-based corporation Texas Petroleum, the Colombian legislature, small industrialists, and wealthy cattle ranchers came together in a series of meetings in Puerto Boyacá
, and formed a paramilitary organization known as Muerte a Secuestradores
("Death to Kidnappers", MAS) to defend their economic interests, to fight against the guerrillas, and to provide protection for local elites from kidnappings and extortion. By 1983, Colombian internal affairs had registered 240 political killings by MAS death squads, mostly community leaders, elected officials, and farmers.
The following year, the Asociación Campesina de Ganaderos y Agricultores del Magdalena Medio ("Association of Middle Magdalena Ranchers and Farmers", ACDEGAM) was created to handle both the logistics and the public relations of the organization, and to provide a legal front for various paramilitary groups. ACDEGAM worked to promote anti-labor policies, and threatened anyone involved with organizing for labor or peasants' rights. The threats were backed up by the MAS, which would come in and attack or assassinate anyone who was suspected of being a "subversive". ACDEGAM also built schools whose stated purpose was the creation of a "patriotic and anti-Communist" educational environment, and built roads, bridges, and health clinics. Paramilitary recruiting, weapons storage, communications, propaganda, and medical services were all run out of ACDEGAM headquarters.
By the mid-1980s ACDEGAM and MAS had experienced significant growth. In 1985, the powerful drug traffickers Pablo Escobar
, Jorge Luis Ochoa, and Gonzalo Rodríguez Gacha began funneling large amounts of cash into the organization to pay for weaponry, equipment and training. Money for social projects was cut off, and was put towards strengthening the MAS. Modern battle rifles such as the Galil, HK G3, FN FAL
, and AKM
were purchased from the military and INUNDIL and through drug-funded private sales. The organization had computers and ran a communications center that worked in coordination with the state telecommunications office. They had thirty pilots, and an assortment of helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft. U.S., Israeli, British and Australian military instructors were hired to teach at paramilitary training centers.
or any political groups that opposed drug trafficking. At the same time, they began to more intensively involve themselves in municipal, regional, and national politics. In August 1989, the Movimiento de Restauración Nacional ("Movement of National Restoration", MORENA) was formed by members of ACDEGAM.
Critics of the MORENA experiment saw it as an attempt at legitimizing paramilitarism and its abuses, as an extension of ACDEGAM, or as a copycat of El Salvador
's ARENA
.
Don Jesús had several sons. The oldest of these, Fidel
, had accumulated a fortune illegally smuggling emeralds, robbing people, and trafficking cocaine and marijuana. By the 1980s, Fidel had become one of the most powerful mafia capos in the world, and had purchased large tracts of lands in northern Colombia. By 1988, he and his younger brother Carlos
purchased over 1.2 million hectares of land in Antioquia, Córdoba, and Chocó.
As a teenager, Carlos Castaño had done work as an informant for the Colombian army's Bomboná battalion, which had strong links to MAS death squads. He later did work as an assassin for the MAS, and was supplied with weapons by army officers. In 1983, Carlos went to Tel Aviv, Israel where he spent a year taking courses in paramilitary and counterinsurgency tactics. When discussing how his death squads had committed massacres of civilians, Castaño stated: "I copied the concept of paramilitary forces from the Israelis."
While Carlos was in Israel, Fidel hired a group of over 100 armed men, which began to terrorize the local populace. The thugs became known as Los Tangueros by the villagers after the name of the Castaño ranch, Las Tangas, where they were based. In 1983, under orders from Fidel, a group of men went through the villages near Segovia, where his father had been held, and killed every man, woman, and child living on the river nearby. They pulled babies out of their mothers arms and shot them, nailing one baby to a plank. They impaled a man on a bamboo pole, and hacked a woman to pieces with a machete. By the time they were done, 22 people were dead.
By the late 1980s, numerous cattle ranchers in Córdoba
were now supporting Fidel Castaño. Many of them had been forced to pay increasing amounts of extortion money to the EPL and other guerrillas under the threat of kidnapping or having their ranches burned and their animals killed. Widespread local mobilizations against the central government's peace initiatives, the guerrillas and political movements thought to have their consent or approval were organized under the leadership of the Colombian military and Fidel's group. Between 1988 and 1990, Colombian press sources reported almost 200 political murders and 400 suspected political assassinations in the region and official government figures suggested that a total of 1,200 took place in Córdoba during the period. Left-wing politicians received anonymous death threats and were frequently interrogated in army bases by the 11th Brigade.
In 1990, Fidel Castaño offered to disband his paramilitary forces if the EPL agreed to demobilize. Having previously faced the combined pressure of Los Tangueros and the Colombian military, the guerrillas demobilized over 2,000 of their fighters and founded the Hope, Peace, and Liberty party. Fidel surrendered some weapons to government authorities and created the Fundación por la Paz de Córdoba (Foundation for the Peace of Córdoba), that provided money, land, cattle and other support to hundreds of former EPL combatants. Electoral alliances between the new party, the AD/M19 and local right-wing politicians were established.
After the demobilization, the FARC-EP expanded its activities in Córdoba and clashes between them, a dissident EPL faction and the demobilized guerrillas -some of whom formed armed "popular commands"- led to almost 200 murders of former fighters and continued violence. Carlos Castaño has claimed that this was the reason he decided to reactivate his family's private army.
In 1994, Carlos took control of Los Tangueros, which officially changed their name to the Autodefensas Campesinas de Córdoba y Uraba ("Peasant Self-Defense Forces of Córdoba and Urabá
", ACCU). The ACCU began working with regional military forces, such as the Bomboná battalion, to crush the guerrillas, and murder or intimidate anyone suspected of supporting them. The ACCU helped military commanders by providing intelligence regarding local guerrilla activities. The ACCU began networking with other paramilitary groups such as the MAS, and began to take over large areas of northern Colombia, which was the principal transnational shipping point for illegal drugs.
The first of the decrees, Decree 813, called for the creation of a commission to oversee the government's anti-paramilitary efforts. The commission was to be composed of the Ministers of Government, Justice, and National Defense, along with the chiefs of the Army, National Police, and DAS. The commission was supposed to plan ways to cut down on paramilitary violence and oversee the execution of these plans. However, most of the people in the commission had either openly voiced support for the paramilitaries, or headed agencies with very strong ties to paramilitary groups, and the commission rarely met over the following decade.
The second, Decree 814 established a 1,000 anti-paramilitary police force, made up of active-duty officers from the National Police, which was under the command of the Chief of National Police. The police force was mostly assigned to raiding drug laboratories and the offices of drug trafficking organization, rather than confronting the paramilitaries directly.
The third, Decree 815 suspended the privilege of the Armed Forces to distribute weapons to armed civilian groups (a power which had been granted under Law 48 in 1968), and required any new armed civilian groups to be approved by the President and Ministers of Defense and Government. However, the government did not outlaw the already existing paramilitary groups, or require that they be certified through the more stringent new standards.
In 1989, the administration issued Decree 1194, which outlawed "the armed groups, misnamed paramilitary groups, that have been formed into deathsquads, bands of hired assassins, self-defense groups, or groups that carry out their own justice" after the murder of two judges and ten government investigators at La Rochela, Santander
. The decree established criminal penalties for both civilians and members of the armed forces involved in the promotion, financing, training and membership of said groups.
, and the CIA in order to give advice on the reshaping of several of the Colombian military's local intelligence networks, ostensibly to aid the Colombian military in "counter-narcotics" efforts. Advice was also solicited from the British and Israeli military intelligence, but the U.S. proposals were ultimately selected by the Colombian military. The result of these meetings was Armed Forces Directive 200-05/91, issued by the Colombian Defense Ministry in May 1991. However, the order itself made no mention of drugs or counter-narcotics operations at all, and instead focused exclusively on creating covert intelligence networks to combat the insurgency.
Human Rights Watch concluded that these intelligence networks subsequently laid the groundwork for continuing an illegal, covert partnership between the military and paramilitaries. HRW argued that the restructuring process solidified linkages between members of the Colombian military and civilian members of paramilitary groups, by incorporating them into several of the local intelligence networks and by cooperating with their activities. In effect, HRW believed that this further consolidated a "secret network that relied on paramilitaries not only for intelligence, but to carry out murder".
Human Rights Watch argued that this situation allowed the Colombian government and military to plausibly deny
links or responsibility for paramilitary human rights abuses. HRW stated that the military intelligence networks created by the U.S. reorganization appeared to have dramatically increased violence, stating that the "recommendations were given despite the fact that some of the U.S. officials who collaborated with the team knew of the Colombian military's record of human rights abuses and its ongoing relations with paramilitaries".
HRW stated that while "not all paramilitaries are intimate partners with the military", the existing partnership between paramilitaries and the Colombian military was "a sophisticated mechanism, in part supported by years of advice, training, weaponry, and official silence by the United States, that allows the Colombian military to fight a dirty war and Colombian officialdom to deny it."
As an example of increased violence and "dirty war" tactics, HRW cited a partnership between the Colombian Navy and the MAS, in Barrancabermeja
where: In partnership with MAS, the navy intelligence network set up in Barrancabermeja adopted as its goal not only the elimination of anyone perceived as supporting the guerrillas, but also members of the political opposition, journalists, trade unionists, and human rights workers, particularly if they investigated or criticized their terror tactics.
. Shortly thereafter, U.S. government agencies (including the DEA, CIA, and State Department), the Calí drug cartel, dissidents within the Medellín cartel, the MAS, the Colombian government, and the ACCU worked together to create a new paramilitary organization known as Perseguidos por Pablo Escobar ("People Persecuted by Pablo Escobar", PEPES) with the purpose of tracking down and killing Pablo Escobar and his associates. The leader of the organization was Fidel Castaño. The Calí cartel provided $50 million to pay for weapons, informants, and assassins, with the hopes that they could wipe out their primary rival in the cocaine business. The United States and Colombian governments provided intelligence to the PEPES.
Pablo Escobar complained about how the government targeted the Medellín cartel, but didn't go after paramilitaries or members of the Calí cartel, saying:
(1994–1998) carried out ineffective operations against the insurgency and attempted to enter into peace negotiations. Colombian military commanders resisted Samper's offer of a demilitarized zone in La Uribe
, Meta Department
meant to hold these talks. The FARC-EP leadership expressed initial interest in the administration's plan but ultimately refused to accept any preconditions and, in addition, the Samper administration suffered a serious crisis after the scandal concerning the receipt of over $6 million in campaign funding from the Calí drug cartel that had undermined it in the eyes of the guerrillas.
In 1994, Decree 356 of Colombia's Ministry of Defense authorized the creation of legal paramilitary groups known as Servicios especiales de vigilancia y seguriadad privada ("Special vigilance and private security services"), also known as CONVIVIR
groups. The CONVIVIR groups were intended to maintain control over high risk areas where guerrillas did not have a strong presence after having been expelled and where there was no need for a large military force or illegal paramilitary presence anymore. Many illegal paramilitary groups transitioned into legal CONVIVIR groups. These CONVIVIR groups worked alongside both the Colombian military and illegal paramilitary groups in counterinsurgency operations.
The governor of Antioquia, Álvaro Uribe Vélez
-who would later become President of Colombia- was one of the primary proponents of the CONVIVIR program. Statistics regarding the exact number of CONVIVIR groups differ and have been considered hard to obtain. Estimates indicate that, by the late 1990s, from 414 to over 500 of these groups had been created, with their membership ranging from 10,000 to 120,000. Uribe's department of Antioquia had some 65 CONVIVIR groups, one of the highest figures in the country.
Amnesty International claims that the CONVIVIR groups committed numerous human rights abuses against civilians, working in coordination with the Colombian government and paramilitaries. In 1998, Human Rights Watch stated that "we have received credible information that indicated that the CONVIVIR groups of the Middle Magdalena and of the southern Cesar regions were directed by known paramilitaries and had threatened to assassinate Colombians that were considered as guerrilla sympathizers or which rejected joining the cooperative groups".
In November 1997, due to mounting concerns over human rights violations committed by CONVIVIR groups, and the relations between illegal paramilitaries and CONVIVIR, the Constitutional Court of Colombia stated that the issue of military weaponry to civilians and specifically to CONVIVIR groups was unconstitutional, and that CONVIVIR members could no longer be used to gather intelligence information. Many of the CONVIVIR groups simply joined up with the AUC.
By the end of the decade, there had been a tenfold increase in the number of Colombian paramilitaries.
, (United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia) or AUC was announced, formally inaugurating what has been termed by analysts as the "second generation" of paramilitarism. It is considered to be the result of Carlos Castaño's efforts to achieve a measure of unity between most of the other paramilitary forces in the country. Several paramilitary groups did not join, but the AUC itself claimed to represent about 90% of existing forces at the time. Castaño's ACCU formally became the core of the new umbrella organization, while the other heads of paramilitary groups kept their own leadership positions, becoming part of a federated High Command of the AUC. It has been considered by observers that the FARC's advances as part of a 1996 to 1998 offensive eased the process of formal paramilitary unification.
As a response, the AUC engaged in a renewed series of massacres and assassinations, often with the passive or active aid of elements of the Colombian government's security forces, according to human rights organizations.
Under the Colombian government's interpretation of Law 782 of 2002 and Decree 128 of 2003, the majority of the paramilitaries who submitted to the process were pardoned through the cessation of judicial procedures for charges related to their membership in the group. Only 3,700 of the paramilitaries applied for "Justice and Peace" benefits.
The demobilization process was heavily criticized by national and international human rights organizations as well as by international entities, such as the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights
(IACHR) of the OAS
, citing its non-compliance with international standards on the rights of victims to seek justice and reparation and granting impunity to human rights violators. Colombian Congresswoman Gina Parody
claimed that Law 975 gave "benefits to people who have committed the worst crimes"
On May 18, 2006 the Constitutional Court of Colombia
reviewed Law 975 of 2005, modifying or striking down several of its original articles and correcting some of the problems critics had identified. The revision requires full confessions, turning over illegally acquired assets, provides that reduced sentences may be revoked for lying and removes time limits on investigations. The Court also ruled against the option for paramilitaries to serve their sentences outside of prison or to deduct time spent during negotiations.
In 2007 and 2008, paramilitary commanders provided useful information to prosecutors about their activities and associates. However, of some 1,800 individuals who began confessing their crimes to prosecutors in 2005, just 5 had completed their hearings by 2009. A limited number of assets worth an estimated $5 million USD had been surrendered to the official reparations fund, procedures for the return of stolen land to its original owners remained stagnant and paramilitary leaders extradited to the United States mostly ceased collaborating with authorities.
Serious flaws during the demobilization phase, such as the Colombian government's failure to interrogate and verify the identities of those involved in the process, allowed many paramilitaries to remain active, form new successor groups and continue to engage in human rights violations.
In September 2006, Amnesty International
said:
In February 2010, Human Rights Watch
said:
A 2010 United Nations report stated that:
, these groups had 3,749 members by July 2010. The NGO Instituto de Estudios para el Desarrollo y la Paz has indicated they would have approximately 6,000 armed combatants. Others estimate their ranks may include up to 10,000 people.
The successor groups are often made up of mid-level paramilitary commanders and criminal structures that either did not demobilize in the first place or were re-activated after the demobilizations had concluded. Many demobilized paramilitaries received recruitment offers, were threatened into joining the new organizations or have simultaneously rearmed and remained in government reintegration programs. New recruits have also come from traditional areas for paramilitary recruitment.
The main emerging criminal and paramilitary organizations are known as the Black Eagles
, the Rastrojos, Urabeños, Paisas, Machos, Renacer, Nueva Generación and the Colombian Revolutionary Popular Antiterrorist Army (ERPAC).
These groups continue to be involved in the drug trade, commit widespread human rights abuses, engage in forced displacement and undermine democratic legitimacy in other ways, both in collusion with and opposition to FARC-EP guerrillas. Their targets have included human rights defenders, labor unionists and victims of the former AUC. Members of government security forces have also been accused of tolerating their growth.
In December 2010, ERPAC paramilitary leader Pedro Guerrero -also known as Cuchillo or "Knife"- died after a police raid.
has estimated that approximately 80% of all killings in Colombia's civil conflict have been committed by paramilitaries, 12% by leftist guerrillas, and the remaining 8% by government forces. In 2005, Amnesty International
stated that The vast majority of non-combat politically-motivated killings, "disappearances", and cases of torture have been carried out by army-backed paramilitaries. In its 1999 report, Human Rights Watch
cited estimates from Colombian human rights
organizations CINEP and Justice and Peace, which indicated that paramilitary groups were responsible for about 73% of identifiable political murders during the first half of 1998, with guerrillas and state security forces being blamed for 17 and 10 percent respectively. The Colombian Commission of Jurists reported that, in the year 2000, approximately 85% of political murders were committed by the paramilitaries and state forces.
Paramilitary violence is overwhelmingly targeted towards peasants, unionists, teachers, human rights workers, journalists and leftist political activists.
Paramilitary abuses in Colombia are often classifed as atrocities due to the brutality of their methods, including the torture
, rape
, incineration
, decapitation
and mutilation
with chainsaw
s or machetes of dozens of their victims at a time, affecting civilians, women and children.
Paramilitary forces in Colombia have additionally been charged with the illegal recruitment of children into the armed ranks. Though this is an offense punishable by national law, the prosecution rate for these crimes is less than 2% as of 2008.
Many of these abuses have occurred with the knowledge and support of the Colombian security forces. A 1998 Human Rights Watch report stated:
A 1999 human rights report from the U.S. State Department said:
In 2006, Amnesty International reported that:
Some of the most widely known are:
, Meta Department
, an estimated 30 people were killed between July 14 to 20 1997. At least 100 heavily armed AUC members arrived in the town searching for people who were suspected leftist guerrilla supporters.They went from house to house referring to a list of names that had been prepared by informants earlier.
Civilians were taken to the town center where they were tortured by paramilitaries before being killed. After torturing their victims, the paramilitaries decapitated people with chainsaws, hung people from meat hooks, hacked people with machetes, cut people's throats and carved their bodies, and then threw their corpses into the nearby Guaviare River.
The local judge of Mapiripan Leonardo Ivan Cortes called the police and the army eight times during the 5-day massacre, but they did not arrive until the AUC paramilitaries had left. In March 1999, Colombian prosecutors accused Colonel Lino Sánchez of planning the massacre with Carlos Castaño. Sánchez was the operations chief of the Colombian Army's 12th Brigade. He has received special training by U.S. Army Special Forces soldiers on Barrancón Island on the Guaviare River. The training was finished very close to the time of the massacre. The evidence showed that the paramilitaries landed unhampered at the San Jose del Guaviare airport which was heavily guarded by military personnel.
department on April 12, 2001, in which an estimated 40-130 civilians were killed, and thousands displaced. Approximately 100 paramilitaries from the Frente Calima ("Calima Front") participated in the killings.
The first victim was a 17 year old girl named Gladys Ipia whose head and hands were cut off with a chain saw. Next, six people were shot while eating at a local restaurant. Another man was chopped into pieces and burned. A woman had her abdomen ripped open with a chainsaw. An indigenous leader named Cayetano Cruz, was cut in half with a chainsaw. The paramilitaries lined up the villagers in the middle of the town, and asked people if they knew any guerrillas. If they answered "no", they were hacked to death with machetes. Many of the bodies were dismembered, and strewn piecemeal around the area, making it difficult to gain an accurate body count and identify victims. Between 4,000 and 6,000 people were displaced as they fled the area during and following the violence.
Despite repeated warnings over the preceding two weeks that such an attack was about to occur, the Colombian military refused to provide protection for the villagers. And although the massacre went on for more than three days, the nearby Third Brigade did not show up until after it was over. Yet when the FARC attempted to take over a town, in neighboring Nariño, the military responded within three hours. Some of the villagers traveled to the Colombian Army's Third Brigade an hour away. The Cauca People’s Defender, Victor Javier Melendez, notified the military that a massacre was occurring on the morning of April 13. He received no response. The Colombian Public Advocate's office stated: "it is inexplicable how approximately 500 paramilitaries could carry out an operation of this type without being challenged in any way, especially since the area that these men entered is only twenty minutes from the village of Timba, where a base operated by the Colombian Army is located and has been staffed since March 30 of this year."
department in early May 2003. Several people belonging to the indigenous Guahibo community were killed and over 300 people fled. Three girls, ages 11, 12, and 15, were raped. Another 16-year-old pregnant mother, Omaira Fernández was raped, and then they cut her womb open and ripped out the fetus which they hacked up with a machete. They then dumped the bodies into the river. An Amnesty International reported on June 4, 2003 that the Colombian army's 18th Brigade's "Navos Pardo Battalion" fully supported the AUC in carrying out the massacre. "... in Betoyes in January 2003, witnesses said that the AUC armband of one attacker slipped to reveal the words "Navos Pardo Battalion" printed on the uniform beneath."
. Over 1 million people have been displaced after President Álvaro Uribe took office in 2002, with over 300,000 displaced in 2005 alone.
Paramilitary groups have been held responsible for the largest portion of displacement. In the years 2000 and 2001, paramilitaries were blamed for 48 percent and 53 percent of forced displacement, respectively. The displacement is not only a side-effect of the civil conflict but also a deliberate policy to remove people from their territories, so that the land can be taken by wealthy elites, multinational corporations and criminal syndicates, as well as to attack the civilian support base for the guerrillas.
In 2001 Colombian government sources estimated that at least 40% of all cocaine exports from Colombia were controlled by far-right paramilitary groups, while only 2.5% were controlled by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia
.
gave over $1.7 million dollars to the AUC, over $825,000 of which was given after the U.S. State Department had listed the AUC as a Foreign Terrorist Organization. Families of some of the victims filed a class-action lawsuit, Doe v. Chiquita Brands International
in 2007. The indictment alleges that the payments "were reviewed and approved by senior executives of the corporation" and that by no later than September 2000, they were aware that "that the AUC was a violent, paramilitary organization". Separate charges were also filed alleging that in 2001, using a Colombian port owned and operated by Banadex (a subsidiary of Chiquita), the company transported 3,400 AK-47 rifles and 4 million rounds of ammunition, which were destined for the AUC. Mario Iguarán, Colombia's attorney general in 2007, said that he would seek extradition for several Chiquita executives as part of the weapons smuggling investigation. Lawyers from the U.S. Department of Justice learned of Chiquita's relationship with the AUC in 2003. They told Chiquita executives that the payments were illegal and ordered them to stop. After receiving the order, Chiquita made at least 19 more payments. Chiquita representatives said that they were only financing terrorist organizations "in good faith", for the protection of their employees. To date, none of the Chiquita executives have been indicted for terrorism, however the company did receive a fine of $25 million dollars. The plea deal was negotiated by Eric Holder
, who was then an attorney with the law firm Covington & Burling
, which represented Chiquita Brands.
US congress member William Delahunt stated Chiquita Brands was only the "tip of the iceberg" in the financing of the AUC, after he met with paramilitary chiefs Salvatore Mancuso, Diego Fernando Murillo, Héctor Veloza and Rodrigo Tovar Pupo. Delahunt stressed: "I am concerned by the magnitude of the participation of the US companies."
-based Drummond Coal began to expand into new markets, due to the deregulation of global capital. As part of this expansion, they purchased the Pribbenow coal mine in Colombia, as well as a Caribbean
port to ship the coal. They increased production at the mine by 20 million tons annually, turning it into one of the largest coal-mining operations in the world. It made up the largest share of Drummond's $1.7 billion in annual revenues.
Since it started operating in the early 1990s, Drummond's 215-mile railway has been repeatedly attacked by the FARC-EP. There is evidence that right-wing paramilitaries were hired by Drummond to guard the rail lines. In 2001, union activists working at Drummond's Colombian operations began receiving frequent death threats. In February of that year, AUC paramilitaries broke into the home of union organizer Cándido Méndez and killed him in front of his family. This was followed by a series of killings in March.
by the International Labor Rights Fund
(ILRF) and the United Steel Workers of America, on behalf of Sinaltrainal
(a union representing food and beverage workers in Colombia), five individuals who have been tortured or unlawfully detained for union activities, and the estate of murdered union activist Isidro Gil. The plaintiffs alleged that Coca-Cola bottlers "contracted with or otherwise directed paramilitary security forces that utilized extreme violence and murdered, tortured, unlawfully detained, or otherwise silenced trade union leaders." Coca-Cola does not deny that the murders and attacks on unionists took place at their bottling facilities, nor did they deny that the paramilitaries responsible for the killings were being paid by the bottlers, but they claimed that they could not be held liable because they are not in direct control of the bottling plants. In March 2001, a district judge in Miami decided that Coca-Cola could not be held liable, claiming they did not directly control the bottling plants, but allowed the case against the bottling companies to proceed forward.
Paramilitary
A paramilitary is a force whose function and organization are similar to those of a professional military, but which is not considered part of a state's formal armed forces....
groups in Colombia
Colombia
Colombia, officially the Republic of Colombia , is a unitary constitutional republic comprising thirty-two departments. The country is located in northwestern South America, bordered to the east by Venezuela and Brazil; to the south by Ecuador and Peru; to the north by the Caribbean Sea; to the...
during the 20th century.
Right-wing paramilitary groups are the parties considered to be most responsible for human rights violations in Colombia during the later half of the current Colombian Armed Conflict
Colombian Armed Conflict
The Colombian armed conflict or Colombian Civil War are terms that are employed to refer to the current asymmetric low-intensity armed conflict in Colombia that has existed since approximately 1964 or 1966, between the Colombian government and peasant guerrillas such as the Revolutionary Armed...
. According to several international human rights
Human rights
Human rights are "commonly understood as inalienable fundamental rights to which a person is inherently entitled simply because she or he is a human being." Human rights are thus conceived as universal and egalitarian . These rights may exist as natural rights or as legal rights, in both national...
and governmental organizations, right-wing paramilitary groups have been regularly held responsible for at least 70 to 80% of political murders in Colombia per year, with the remainder committed by leftist guerrillas and government forces.
The first paramilitary groups were organized by the Colombian military following recommendations made by U.S. personnel sent to Colombia during the Cold War
Cold War
The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...
in order to combat leftist political activists and armed guerrilla groups. The development of later paramilitary groups has also involved elite landowners, drug traffickers, members of the security forces, politicians and multinational corporations. Paramilitary violence today is, among others, overwhelmingly targeted towards peasants, unionists, teachers and human rights workers.
Paramilitary groups control the large majority of the illegal drug trade
Illegal drug trade
The illegal drug trade is a global black market, dedicated to cultivation, manufacture, distribution and sale of those substances which are subject to drug prohibition laws. Most jurisdictions prohibit trade, except under license, of many types of drugs by drug prohibition laws.A UN report said the...
of cocaine
Cocaine
Cocaine is a crystalline tropane alkaloid that is obtained from the leaves of the coca plant. The name comes from "coca" in addition to the alkaloid suffix -ine, forming cocaine. It is a stimulant of the central nervous system, an appetite suppressant, and a topical anesthetic...
and other illegal substances, especially trafficking and processing. They experienced enormous growth in the 1980s as a result of cocaine traffickers funding private armed military groups.
Plan Lazo
In October 1959, the United StatesUnited States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
sent a "Special Survey Team", composed of counterinsurgency experts, to investigate Colombia's internal security situation, due to the increased prevalence of armed communist self-defense communities in rural Colombia which formed during and after La Violencia
La Violencia
La Violencia is a period of civil conflict in the Colombian countryside between supporters of the Colombian Liberal Party and the Colombian Conservative Party, a conflict which took place roughly from 1948 to 1958 ....
. Three years later, in February 1962, a Fort Bragg top-level U.S. Special Warfare team headed by Special Warfare Center commander General William P. Yarborough
William P. Yarborough
Lieutenant General William Pelham Yarborough was a United States Army officer and a 1936 graduate of West Point. General Yarborough designed the parachutist badge, paratrooper or 'jump' boots, and the airborne jump uniform. He is known as the 'Father of the Modern Green Berets.' He is descended...
, visited Colombia for a second survey.
In a secret supplement to his report to the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Joint Chiefs of Staff
The Joint Chiefs of Staff is a body of senior uniformed leaders in the United States Department of Defense who advise the Secretary of Defense, the Homeland Security Council, the National Security Council and the President on military matters...
, Yarborough encouraged the creation and deployment of a paramilitary force to commit sabotage and terrorist acts against communists:
- "A concerted country team effort should be made now to select civilian and military personnel for clandestine training in resistance operations in case they are needed later. This should be done with a view toward development of a civil and military structure for exploitation in the event the Colombian internal security system deteriorates further. This structure should be used to pressure toward reforms known to be needed, perform counter-agent and counter-propaganda functions and as necessary execute paramilitaryParamilitaryA paramilitary is a force whose function and organization are similar to those of a professional military, but which is not considered part of a state's formal armed forces....
, sabotageSabotageSabotage is a deliberate action aimed at weakening another entity through subversion, obstruction, disruption, or destruction. In a workplace setting, sabotage is the conscious withdrawal of efficiency generally directed at causing some change in workplace conditions. One who engages in sabotage is...
and/or terroristTerrorismTerrorism is the systematic use of terror, especially as a means of coercion. In the international community, however, terrorism has no universally agreed, legally binding, criminal law definition...
activities against known communist proponents. It should be backed by the United States."
The new counter-insurgency policy was instituted as Plan Lazo in 1962 and called for both military operations and civic action program
Civic action program
A civic action program also known as civic action project is a type of operation designed to assist an area by using the capabilities and resources of a military force or civilian organization to conduct long-term programs or short-term projects...
s in violent areas. Following Yarborough's recommendations, the Colombian military recruited civilians into paramilitary "civil defense" groups which worked alongside the military in its counter-insurgency campaign, as well as in civilian intelligence networks to gather information on guerrilla activity. Among other policy recommendations the US team advised that "in order to shield the interests of both Colombian and US authorities against 'interventionist' charges any special aid given for internal security was to be sterile and covert in nature." Doug Stokes
Doug Stokes
Doug Stokes is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Kent, Canterbury.His first book, examines US intervention in Colombia and argues that it has primarily been driven by a desire to secure a stable supply of oil and to pacify threats to...
argues that it was not until the early part of the 1980s that the Colombian government attempted to move away from the counterinsurgency strategy represented by Plan Lazo and Yarborough's 1962 recommendations.
Law 48 of 1968
The first outright legal framework for the training of civilians by military or police forces for security purposes was formally established by the Colombian presidential decree 3398 of 1965, which allowed for the formation of private security forces to protect large landowners, cattle ranchers, and government officials. The decree was later succeeded by Law 48 of 1968.A series of Colombian military manuals from the 1960s encouraged the creation of paramilitary organizations to help fight guerrillas. In 1969, the Reglamento de EJC 3-10, Reservado, de 1969 ("EJC-3 Order, Restricted, 1969") stated that the armed forces should organize "self-defence committees" which were defined as "military-type organization made up of civilian personnel in the combat zone, which are trained and equipped to undertake operations against guerrilla groups that threaten an area or to operate in coordination with combat troops". These committees were to maintain contact with local military officers, keeping a high level awareness about any suspicious communist action in their communities, in particular those of suspected "guerrilla supporters". The manual also allowed military personnel to dress in civilian clothes when necessary to infiltrate areas of suspected guerrilla influence, and also for civilian helpers to travel alongside military units. Separately, in order to help gain the trust of local citizens, the military was advised to participate in the daily activities of the community where applicable.
MAS and ACDEGAM
In the late 1970s, the illegal cocaineCocaine
Cocaine is a crystalline tropane alkaloid that is obtained from the leaves of the coca plant. The name comes from "coca" in addition to the alkaloid suffix -ine, forming cocaine. It is a stimulant of the central nervous system, an appetite suppressant, and a topical anesthetic...
trade took off and became a major source of profit. By 1982, cocaine surpassed coffee as an export, making up 30% of all Colombian exports. Many members of the new class of wealthy drug barons began purchasing enormous quantities of land, in order to launder
Money laundering
Money laundering is the process of disguising illegal sources of money so that it looks like it came from legal sources. The methods by which money may be laundered are varied and can range in sophistication. Many regulatory and governmental authorities quote estimates each year for the amount...
their drug money, and to gain social status amongst the traditional Colombian elite. By the late 1980s, drug traffickers were the largest landholders in Colombia and wielded immense political power. They used much of their land for grazing cattle, or left it completely idle as a show of wealth. They also raised private armies to fight off guerrillas who were trying to either redistribute their lands to local peasants, kidnap them, or extract the gramaje tax that was commonly levied on landed elites.
At the end of 1981 and the beginning of 1982, members of the Medellín Cartel
Medellín Cartel
The Medellín Cartel was an organized network of "drug suppliers and smugglers" originating in the city of Medellín, Colombia. The drug cartel operated in Colombia, Bolivia, Peru, Central America, the United States, as well as Canada and Europe throughout the 1970s and 1980s. It was founded and...
, the Colombian military, the U.S.-based corporation Texas Petroleum, the Colombian legislature, small industrialists, and wealthy cattle ranchers came together in a series of meetings in Puerto Boyacá
Puerto Boyacá
Puerto Boyacá is a Colombian river-port town and municipality by the Magdalena River in the Boyacá Department, where is also considered a Special Handling Zone due to its port status. Its main industries are oil exploration and processing...
, and formed a paramilitary organization known as Muerte a Secuestradores
Muerte a Secuestradores
Muerte a Secuestradores or MAS, was a Colombian paramilitary group supported by drug cartels, U.S. corporations, Colombian politicians, and wealthy landowners during the 1980s, in order to protect their economic interests, assassinate political opponents and community organizers, and wage...
("Death to Kidnappers", MAS) to defend their economic interests, to fight against the guerrillas, and to provide protection for local elites from kidnappings and extortion. By 1983, Colombian internal affairs had registered 240 political killings by MAS death squads, mostly community leaders, elected officials, and farmers.
The following year, the Asociación Campesina de Ganaderos y Agricultores del Magdalena Medio ("Association of Middle Magdalena Ranchers and Farmers", ACDEGAM) was created to handle both the logistics and the public relations of the organization, and to provide a legal front for various paramilitary groups. ACDEGAM worked to promote anti-labor policies, and threatened anyone involved with organizing for labor or peasants' rights. The threats were backed up by the MAS, which would come in and attack or assassinate anyone who was suspected of being a "subversive". ACDEGAM also built schools whose stated purpose was the creation of a "patriotic and anti-Communist" educational environment, and built roads, bridges, and health clinics. Paramilitary recruiting, weapons storage, communications, propaganda, and medical services were all run out of ACDEGAM headquarters.
By the mid-1980s ACDEGAM and MAS had experienced significant growth. In 1985, the powerful drug traffickers Pablo Escobar
Pablo Escobar
Pablo Emilio Escobar Gaviria was a Colombian drug lord. He was an elusive cocaine trafficker and rich and successful criminal. He owned numerous luxury residences, automobiles, and even airplanes...
, Jorge Luis Ochoa, and Gonzalo Rodríguez Gacha began funneling large amounts of cash into the organization to pay for weaponry, equipment and training. Money for social projects was cut off, and was put towards strengthening the MAS. Modern battle rifles such as the Galil, HK G3, FN FAL
FN FAL
The Fusil Automatique Léger or FAL is a self-loading, selective fire battle rifle produced by the Belgian armaments manufacturer Fabrique Nationale de Herstal . During the Cold War it was adopted by many North Atlantic Treaty Organization countries, with the notable exception of the United States...
, and AKM
AKM
The AKM is a 7.62mm assault rifle designed by Mikhail Kalashnikov. It is an upgraded version of the AK-47 rifle and was developed in the 1950s....
were purchased from the military and INUNDIL and through drug-funded private sales. The organization had computers and ran a communications center that worked in coordination with the state telecommunications office. They had thirty pilots, and an assortment of helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft. U.S., Israeli, British and Australian military instructors were hired to teach at paramilitary training centers.
MORENA
By the end of the 1980s, the MAS had a significant presence in 8 of Colombia's 32 departments—Antioquia, Boyacá, Caquetá, Córdoba, Cundinamarca, Meta, Putumayo, and Santander. During this period, a stated goal of the groups was to kill members of the Patriotic UnionPatriotic Union (Colombia)
The Patriotic Union or UP , was a leftist Colombian political party founded by the FARC and the Colombian Communist Party in 1985, as part of the peace negotiations that the guerrillas held with the Conservative Belisario Betancur administration...
or any political groups that opposed drug trafficking. At the same time, they began to more intensively involve themselves in municipal, regional, and national politics. In August 1989, the Movimiento de Restauración Nacional ("Movement of National Restoration", MORENA) was formed by members of ACDEGAM.
Critics of the MORENA experiment saw it as an attempt at legitimizing paramilitarism and its abuses, as an extension of ACDEGAM, or as a copycat of El Salvador
El Salvador
El Salvador or simply Salvador is the smallest and the most densely populated country in Central America. The country's capital city and largest city is San Salvador; Santa Ana and San Miguel are also important cultural and commercial centers in the country and in all of Central America...
's ARENA
Nationalist Republican Alliance
The Nationalist Republican Alliance is a conservative political party in El Salvador. It was founded on September 30, 1981, by Roberto D'Aubuisson, in order to oppose the reformist military junta that was ruling El Salvador at the time...
.
The Castaño family and the ACCU
In the late 1970s, the FARC-EP began gathering intelligence on Don Jesús Castaño. A wealthy rancher in Segovia, Antioquia , far-right conservative, and influential local politician, Don Jesús was considered an ideal target for kidnapping. The Don was kidnapped in 1981, and ultimately died while in custody.Don Jesús had several sons. The oldest of these, Fidel
Fidel Castaño
Fidel Castaño Gil was a right-wing Colombian drug lord and paramilitary who was among the founders of Los Pepes and the Peasant Self-Defense Forces of Cordoba and Uraba, a paramilitary group which ultimately became a member of the larger United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia.-Los Pepes:In the...
, had accumulated a fortune illegally smuggling emeralds, robbing people, and trafficking cocaine and marijuana. By the 1980s, Fidel had become one of the most powerful mafia capos in the world, and had purchased large tracts of lands in northern Colombia. By 1988, he and his younger brother Carlos
Carlos Castaño
Carlos Castaño Gil was the founder of the Peasant Self-Defense Forces of Córdoba and Urabá , an extreme right paramilitary organization in Colombia...
purchased over 1.2 million hectares of land in Antioquia, Córdoba, and Chocó.
As a teenager, Carlos Castaño had done work as an informant for the Colombian army's Bomboná battalion, which had strong links to MAS death squads. He later did work as an assassin for the MAS, and was supplied with weapons by army officers. In 1983, Carlos went to Tel Aviv, Israel where he spent a year taking courses in paramilitary and counterinsurgency tactics. When discussing how his death squads had committed massacres of civilians, Castaño stated: "I copied the concept of paramilitary forces from the Israelis."
While Carlos was in Israel, Fidel hired a group of over 100 armed men, which began to terrorize the local populace. The thugs became known as Los Tangueros by the villagers after the name of the Castaño ranch, Las Tangas, where they were based. In 1983, under orders from Fidel, a group of men went through the villages near Segovia, where his father had been held, and killed every man, woman, and child living on the river nearby. They pulled babies out of their mothers arms and shot them, nailing one baby to a plank. They impaled a man on a bamboo pole, and hacked a woman to pieces with a machete. By the time they were done, 22 people were dead.
By the late 1980s, numerous cattle ranchers in Córdoba
Córdoba Department
Córdoba is a Department of the Republic of Colombia located to the north of this country in the Colombian Caribbean Region. Córdoba faces to the north with the Caribbean sea, to the northeast with the Sucre Department, east with the Bolívar Department and south with the Antioquia Department...
were now supporting Fidel Castaño. Many of them had been forced to pay increasing amounts of extortion money to the EPL and other guerrillas under the threat of kidnapping or having their ranches burned and their animals killed. Widespread local mobilizations against the central government's peace initiatives, the guerrillas and political movements thought to have their consent or approval were organized under the leadership of the Colombian military and Fidel's group. Between 1988 and 1990, Colombian press sources reported almost 200 political murders and 400 suspected political assassinations in the region and official government figures suggested that a total of 1,200 took place in Córdoba during the period. Left-wing politicians received anonymous death threats and were frequently interrogated in army bases by the 11th Brigade.
In 1990, Fidel Castaño offered to disband his paramilitary forces if the EPL agreed to demobilize. Having previously faced the combined pressure of Los Tangueros and the Colombian military, the guerrillas demobilized over 2,000 of their fighters and founded the Hope, Peace, and Liberty party. Fidel surrendered some weapons to government authorities and created the Fundación por la Paz de Córdoba (Foundation for the Peace of Córdoba), that provided money, land, cattle and other support to hundreds of former EPL combatants. Electoral alliances between the new party, the AD/M19 and local right-wing politicians were established.
After the demobilization, the FARC-EP expanded its activities in Córdoba and clashes between them, a dissident EPL faction and the demobilized guerrillas -some of whom formed armed "popular commands"- led to almost 200 murders of former fighters and continued violence. Carlos Castaño has claimed that this was the reason he decided to reactivate his family's private army.
In 1994, Carlos took control of Los Tangueros, which officially changed their name to the Autodefensas Campesinas de Córdoba y Uraba ("Peasant Self-Defense Forces of Córdoba and Urabá
Peasant Self-Defense Forces of Córdoba and Urabá
Autodefensas Campesinas de Córdoba y Urabá , Spanish for Peasant Self-Defense Forces of Córdoba and Urabá, was a paramilitary group formed in northwestern Colombia, operating mainly in the Antioquia Department and Córdoba Department...
", ACCU). The ACCU began working with regional military forces, such as the Bomboná battalion, to crush the guerrillas, and murder or intimidate anyone suspected of supporting them. The ACCU helped military commanders by providing intelligence regarding local guerrilla activities. The ACCU began networking with other paramilitary groups such as the MAS, and began to take over large areas of northern Colombia, which was the principal transnational shipping point for illegal drugs.
Anti-paramilitary decrees of 1989
In 1987, government statistics revealed that paramilitaries had been responsible for more civilian deaths than guerrillas. Two years later, in 1989, the Colombian government under the administration of Virgilio Barco (1986–1990) passed a series of decrees that promised to reduce paramilitary violence.The first of the decrees, Decree 813, called for the creation of a commission to oversee the government's anti-paramilitary efforts. The commission was to be composed of the Ministers of Government, Justice, and National Defense, along with the chiefs of the Army, National Police, and DAS. The commission was supposed to plan ways to cut down on paramilitary violence and oversee the execution of these plans. However, most of the people in the commission had either openly voiced support for the paramilitaries, or headed agencies with very strong ties to paramilitary groups, and the commission rarely met over the following decade.
The second, Decree 814 established a 1,000 anti-paramilitary police force, made up of active-duty officers from the National Police, which was under the command of the Chief of National Police. The police force was mostly assigned to raiding drug laboratories and the offices of drug trafficking organization, rather than confronting the paramilitaries directly.
The third, Decree 815 suspended the privilege of the Armed Forces to distribute weapons to armed civilian groups (a power which had been granted under Law 48 in 1968), and required any new armed civilian groups to be approved by the President and Ministers of Defense and Government. However, the government did not outlaw the already existing paramilitary groups, or require that they be certified through the more stringent new standards.
In 1989, the administration issued Decree 1194, which outlawed "the armed groups, misnamed paramilitary groups, that have been formed into deathsquads, bands of hired assassins, self-defense groups, or groups that carry out their own justice" after the murder of two judges and ten government investigators at La Rochela, Santander
Santander Department
Santander is a department of Colombia. Santander inherited the name of one of the nine original states of the United States of Colombia. It is located in the central northern part of the country, east of the Magdalena River, bordered to the south and southeast by Boyacá, to the northeast by Norte...
. The decree established criminal penalties for both civilians and members of the armed forces involved in the promotion, financing, training and membership of said groups.
Armed Forces Directive No. 200-05/91.
In 1990, the United States formed a team that included representatives of the U.S. Embassy's Military Group, U.S. Southern Command, the DIADefense Intelligence Agency
The Defense Intelligence Agency is a member of the Intelligence Community of the United States, and is the central producer and manager of military intelligence for the United States Department of Defense, employing over 16,500 U.S. military and civilian employees worldwide...
, and the CIA in order to give advice on the reshaping of several of the Colombian military's local intelligence networks, ostensibly to aid the Colombian military in "counter-narcotics" efforts. Advice was also solicited from the British and Israeli military intelligence, but the U.S. proposals were ultimately selected by the Colombian military. The result of these meetings was Armed Forces Directive 200-05/91, issued by the Colombian Defense Ministry in May 1991. However, the order itself made no mention of drugs or counter-narcotics operations at all, and instead focused exclusively on creating covert intelligence networks to combat the insurgency.
Human Rights Watch concluded that these intelligence networks subsequently laid the groundwork for continuing an illegal, covert partnership between the military and paramilitaries. HRW argued that the restructuring process solidified linkages between members of the Colombian military and civilian members of paramilitary groups, by incorporating them into several of the local intelligence networks and by cooperating with their activities. In effect, HRW believed that this further consolidated a "secret network that relied on paramilitaries not only for intelligence, but to carry out murder".
Human Rights Watch argued that this situation allowed the Colombian government and military to plausibly deny
Plausible Denial
Plausible Denial is the title of a book by American lawyer, Mark Lane that chronicles his legal defense of Victor Marchetti, a former-CIA agent who wrote an article for The Spotlight about the JFK assassination and was sued for defamation by E...
links or responsibility for paramilitary human rights abuses. HRW stated that the military intelligence networks created by the U.S. reorganization appeared to have dramatically increased violence, stating that the "recommendations were given despite the fact that some of the U.S. officials who collaborated with the team knew of the Colombian military's record of human rights abuses and its ongoing relations with paramilitaries".
HRW stated that while "not all paramilitaries are intimate partners with the military", the existing partnership between paramilitaries and the Colombian military was "a sophisticated mechanism, in part supported by years of advice, training, weaponry, and official silence by the United States, that allows the Colombian military to fight a dirty war and Colombian officialdom to deny it."
As an example of increased violence and "dirty war" tactics, HRW cited a partnership between the Colombian Navy and the MAS, in Barrancabermeja
Barrancabermeja
Barrancabermeja is a city and municipality in Santander Department, in northeastern Colombia. It is located on the banks of the Magdalena River in the Middle Magdalena region, 110 km west of Bucaramanga. Founded in 1536, Barrancabermeja is home of the biggest petroleum refinery in Colombia,...
where: In partnership with MAS, the navy intelligence network set up in Barrancabermeja adopted as its goal not only the elimination of anyone perceived as supporting the guerrillas, but also members of the political opposition, journalists, trade unionists, and human rights workers, particularly if they investigated or criticized their terror tactics.
PEPES
In 1992 Pablo Escobar escaped from his luxury prison, La CatedralLa Catedral
La Catedral was a prison overlooking the city of Medellín in Colombia. The prison was built to specifications ordered by Medellín Cartel leader Pablo Escobar, under agreement with the Colombian government. Escobar would surrender to authorities, serve a maximum term of five years, and the Colombian...
. Shortly thereafter, U.S. government agencies (including the DEA, CIA, and State Department), the Calí drug cartel, dissidents within the Medellín cartel, the MAS, the Colombian government, and the ACCU worked together to create a new paramilitary organization known as Perseguidos por Pablo Escobar ("People Persecuted by Pablo Escobar", PEPES) with the purpose of tracking down and killing Pablo Escobar and his associates. The leader of the organization was Fidel Castaño. The Calí cartel provided $50 million to pay for weapons, informants, and assassins, with the hopes that they could wipe out their primary rival in the cocaine business. The United States and Colombian governments provided intelligence to the PEPES.
Pablo Escobar complained about how the government targeted the Medellín cartel, but didn't go after paramilitaries or members of the Calí cartel, saying:
- "Los Pepes have their torture chambers in Fidel Castaño's house
[ in Medellín] , located ... near the country club ... There they torture trade unionists and lawyers. No one has searched their house or confiscated their assets ... The government offers rewards for the leaders of the Medellín cartel and for the leaders of the guerrillas, but doesn't offer rewards for the leaders of the paramilitaries, nor for those of the Calí cartel, authors of various car bombs in the city of Medellín.
CONVIVIR
During the 1990s, the FARC-EP and other guerrilla groups experienced significant growth and achieved a series of military successes against government forces, increasing the amount of territory under their control. The administration of President Ernesto SamperErnesto Samper
Ernesto Samper Pizano is a Colombian politician. He served as the President of Colombia from August 7, 1994 to August 7, 1998, representing the Liberal Party. He was involved in the 8000 process scandal, which takes its name from the folio number assigned to it by the chief prosecutor's office...
(1994–1998) carried out ineffective operations against the insurgency and attempted to enter into peace negotiations. Colombian military commanders resisted Samper's offer of a demilitarized zone in La Uribe
La Uribe
La Uribe is a town and municipality in the Meta Department, Colombia....
, Meta Department
Meta Department
Meta is a department of Colombia. It is close to the geographic center of the country, to the east of the Andean mountains. A large portion of the department, which is also crossed by the Meta River, is covered by a grassland plain known as the Llanos. Its capital is Villavicencio...
meant to hold these talks. The FARC-EP leadership expressed initial interest in the administration's plan but ultimately refused to accept any preconditions and, in addition, the Samper administration suffered a serious crisis after the scandal concerning the receipt of over $6 million in campaign funding from the Calí drug cartel that had undermined it in the eyes of the guerrillas.
In 1994, Decree 356 of Colombia's Ministry of Defense authorized the creation of legal paramilitary groups known as Servicios especiales de vigilancia y seguriadad privada ("Special vigilance and private security services"), also known as CONVIVIR
CONVIVIR
CONVIVIR was a national program of cooperative neighbourhood watch groups created by a February 11, 1994 decree of Colombia's Ministry of National Defense and a law passed in the Colombian Congress, in response to growing guerrilla activity...
groups. The CONVIVIR groups were intended to maintain control over high risk areas where guerrillas did not have a strong presence after having been expelled and where there was no need for a large military force or illegal paramilitary presence anymore. Many illegal paramilitary groups transitioned into legal CONVIVIR groups. These CONVIVIR groups worked alongside both the Colombian military and illegal paramilitary groups in counterinsurgency operations.
The governor of Antioquia, Álvaro Uribe Vélez
Álvaro Uribe
Alvaro Uribe Vélez was the 58th President of Colombia, from 2002 to 2010. In August 2010 he was appointed Vice-chairman of the UN panel investigating the Gaza flotilla raid....
-who would later become President of Colombia- was one of the primary proponents of the CONVIVIR program. Statistics regarding the exact number of CONVIVIR groups differ and have been considered hard to obtain. Estimates indicate that, by the late 1990s, from 414 to over 500 of these groups had been created, with their membership ranging from 10,000 to 120,000. Uribe's department of Antioquia had some 65 CONVIVIR groups, one of the highest figures in the country.
Amnesty International claims that the CONVIVIR groups committed numerous human rights abuses against civilians, working in coordination with the Colombian government and paramilitaries. In 1998, Human Rights Watch stated that "we have received credible information that indicated that the CONVIVIR groups of the Middle Magdalena and of the southern Cesar regions were directed by known paramilitaries and had threatened to assassinate Colombians that were considered as guerrilla sympathizers or which rejected joining the cooperative groups".
In November 1997, due to mounting concerns over human rights violations committed by CONVIVIR groups, and the relations between illegal paramilitaries and CONVIVIR, the Constitutional Court of Colombia stated that the issue of military weaponry to civilians and specifically to CONVIVIR groups was unconstitutional, and that CONVIVIR members could no longer be used to gather intelligence information. Many of the CONVIVIR groups simply joined up with the AUC.
By the end of the decade, there had been a tenfold increase in the number of Colombian paramilitaries.
Creation of the AUC
In April 1997, the creation of the Autodefensas Unidas de ColombiaUnited Self-Defense Forces of Colombia
The United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia was created as an umbrella organization of regional far-right...
, (United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia) or AUC was announced, formally inaugurating what has been termed by analysts as the "second generation" of paramilitarism. It is considered to be the result of Carlos Castaño's efforts to achieve a measure of unity between most of the other paramilitary forces in the country. Several paramilitary groups did not join, but the AUC itself claimed to represent about 90% of existing forces at the time. Castaño's ACCU formally became the core of the new umbrella organization, while the other heads of paramilitary groups kept their own leadership positions, becoming part of a federated High Command of the AUC. It has been considered by observers that the FARC's advances as part of a 1996 to 1998 offensive eased the process of formal paramilitary unification.
As a response, the AUC engaged in a renewed series of massacres and assassinations, often with the passive or active aid of elements of the Colombian government's security forces, according to human rights organizations.
2003-2006 demobilization process
In July 2003, the Uribe administration began formal negotiations with the AUC with the stated aim of seeking its demobilization. Law 975 of 2005, also known as the "Justice and Peace" law, was approved by the Colombian Congress and constituted the main legal framework applicable to those paramilitaries who had committed serious crimes. The legislation gave AUC combatants broad concessions, such as allowing paramilitaries to keep profits made from criminal activities during their time in the AUC, limiting sentences to a maximum of 8 years which could be served on private farms instead of in prisons, and not obliging them to dismantle their power structures.Under the Colombian government's interpretation of Law 782 of 2002 and Decree 128 of 2003, the majority of the paramilitaries who submitted to the process were pardoned through the cessation of judicial procedures for charges related to their membership in the group. Only 3,700 of the paramilitaries applied for "Justice and Peace" benefits.
The demobilization process was heavily criticized by national and international human rights organizations as well as by international entities, such as the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights
Inter-American Commission on Human Rights
The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights is an autonomous organ of the Organization of American States .Along with the...
(IACHR) of the OAS
OAS
OAS or Oas may refer to:* Organization of American States, an international organization of the Americas.* Ohio Auction School, an auction school in Ohio, USA.* Old Age Security, a social security payment available to most Canadians aged 65 or older....
, citing its non-compliance with international standards on the rights of victims to seek justice and reparation and granting impunity to human rights violators. Colombian Congresswoman Gina Parody
Gina Parody
Gina María Parody d'Echeona is a Colombian lawyer politician, having served in both the Senate and the Chamber of Representatives of Colombia.-Career:...
claimed that Law 975 gave "benefits to people who have committed the worst crimes"
On May 18, 2006 the Constitutional Court of Colombia
Constitutional Court of Colombia
The Constitutional Court of Colombia is the highest entity in the judicial branch of government in the Republic of Colombia in charge of safeguarding the integrity and supremacy of the Colombian Constitution of 1991 within the Constitutional laws.However it is not the highest court of criminal...
reviewed Law 975 of 2005, modifying or striking down several of its original articles and correcting some of the problems critics had identified. The revision requires full confessions, turning over illegally acquired assets, provides that reduced sentences may be revoked for lying and removes time limits on investigations. The Court also ruled against the option for paramilitaries to serve their sentences outside of prison or to deduct time spent during negotiations.
In 2007 and 2008, paramilitary commanders provided useful information to prosecutors about their activities and associates. However, of some 1,800 individuals who began confessing their crimes to prosecutors in 2005, just 5 had completed their hearings by 2009. A limited number of assets worth an estimated $5 million USD had been surrendered to the official reparations fund, procedures for the return of stolen land to its original owners remained stagnant and paramilitary leaders extradited to the United States mostly ceased collaborating with authorities.
Serious flaws during the demobilization phase, such as the Colombian government's failure to interrogate and verify the identities of those involved in the process, allowed many paramilitaries to remain active, form new successor groups and continue to engage in human rights violations.
In September 2006, Amnesty International
Amnesty International
Amnesty International is an international non-governmental organisation whose stated mission is "to conduct research and generate action to prevent and end grave abuses of human rights, and to demand justice for those whose rights have been violated."Following a publication of Peter Benenson's...
said:
- "Media reports suggest that over 30,000 paramilitaries have demobilized. However, paramilitaries in supposedly demobilized areas continue to operate, often under new names, and to commit violations. There is also strong evidence of continued links between paramilitaries and the security forces. There were also fears that government policies designed to reintegrate members of illegal armed groups into civilian life risked "recycling" them into the conflict."
In February 2010, Human Rights Watch
Human Rights Watch
Human Rights Watch is an international non-governmental organization that conducts research and advocacy on human rights. Its headquarters are in New York City and it has offices in Berlin, Beirut, Brussels, Chicago, Geneva, Johannesburg, London, Los Angeles, Moscow, Paris, San Francisco, Tokyo,...
said:
- "The successor groups, though different in important respects from the paramilitary United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia [...] have taken on many of the same roles, often with some of the same personnel, in some cases with the same counterinsurgency objectives of the AUC [...] It is clear that many paramilitary combatants did in fact go through the demobilization process and abandoned their groups for good. However, there is substantial evidence that many others who participated in the demobilization process were stand-ins rather than paramilitaries, and that portions of the groups remained active. There is also evidence that members of the groups who supposedly demobilized continued engaging in illegal activities.".
A 2010 United Nations report stated that:
- "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"
Post-AUC successor groups
New paramilitary groups and related drug trafficking gangs that have continued operating after the AUC demobilization process are referred to as bandas criminales or criminal gangs by the Colombian government. According to the Colombian National PoliceColombian National Police
The National Police of Colombia is the national police force of Colombia. Although the National Police is not part of the Military of Colombia , it constitutes along with them the "Public Force" and is also controlled by the Ministry of Defense. They are the largest police force in Colombia...
, these groups had 3,749 members by July 2010. The NGO Instituto de Estudios para el Desarrollo y la Paz has indicated they would have approximately 6,000 armed combatants. Others estimate their ranks may include up to 10,000 people.
The successor groups are often made up of mid-level paramilitary commanders and criminal structures that either did not demobilize in the first place or were re-activated after the demobilizations had concluded. Many demobilized paramilitaries received recruitment offers, were threatened into joining the new organizations or have simultaneously rearmed and remained in government reintegration programs. New recruits have also come from traditional areas for paramilitary recruitment.
The main emerging criminal and paramilitary organizations are known as the Black Eagles
Black Eagles
Black Eagles is a term describing a series of Colombian right wing, counter-revolutionary, paramilitary organizations made up of new and preexisting paramilitary forces, some of which were part of the demobilized Self-Defense Units of Colombia...
, the Rastrojos, Urabeños, Paisas, Machos, Renacer, Nueva Generación and the Colombian Revolutionary Popular Antiterrorist Army (ERPAC).
These groups continue to be involved in the drug trade, commit widespread human rights abuses, engage in forced displacement and undermine democratic legitimacy in other ways, both in collusion with and opposition to FARC-EP guerrillas. Their targets have included human rights defenders, labor unionists and victims of the former AUC. Members of government security forces have also been accused of tolerating their growth.
In December 2010, ERPAC paramilitary leader Pedro Guerrero -also known as Cuchillo or "Knife"- died after a police raid.
Human rights violations
Right-wing paramilitary groups have been blamed for the vast majority of human rights violations in Colombia. The United NationsUnited Nations
The United Nations is an international organization whose stated aims are facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and achievement of world peace...
has estimated that approximately 80% of all killings in Colombia's civil conflict have been committed by paramilitaries, 12% by leftist guerrillas, and the remaining 8% by government forces. In 2005, Amnesty International
Amnesty International
Amnesty International is an international non-governmental organisation whose stated mission is "to conduct research and generate action to prevent and end grave abuses of human rights, and to demand justice for those whose rights have been violated."Following a publication of Peter Benenson's...
stated that The vast majority of non-combat politically-motivated killings, "disappearances", and cases of torture have been carried out by army-backed paramilitaries. In its 1999 report, Human Rights Watch
Human Rights Watch
Human Rights Watch is an international non-governmental organization that conducts research and advocacy on human rights. Its headquarters are in New York City and it has offices in Berlin, Beirut, Brussels, Chicago, Geneva, Johannesburg, London, Los Angeles, Moscow, Paris, San Francisco, Tokyo,...
cited estimates from Colombian human rights
Human rights
Human rights are "commonly understood as inalienable fundamental rights to which a person is inherently entitled simply because she or he is a human being." Human rights are thus conceived as universal and egalitarian . These rights may exist as natural rights or as legal rights, in both national...
organizations CINEP and Justice and Peace, which indicated that paramilitary groups were responsible for about 73% of identifiable political murders during the first half of 1998, with guerrillas and state security forces being blamed for 17 and 10 percent respectively. The Colombian Commission of Jurists reported that, in the year 2000, approximately 85% of political murders were committed by the paramilitaries and state forces.
Paramilitary violence is overwhelmingly targeted towards peasants, unionists, teachers, human rights workers, journalists and leftist political activists.
Paramilitary abuses in Colombia are often classifed as atrocities due to the brutality of their methods, including the torture
Torture
Torture is the act of inflicting severe pain as a means of punishment, revenge, forcing information or a confession, or simply as an act of cruelty. Throughout history, torture has often been used as a method of political re-education, interrogation, punishment, and coercion...
, rape
Rape
Rape is a type of sexual assault usually involving sexual intercourse, which is initiated by one or more persons against another person without that person's consent. The act may be carried out by physical force, coercion, abuse of authority or with a person who is incapable of valid consent. The...
, incineration
Incineration
Incineration is a waste treatment process that involves the combustion of organic substances contained in waste materials. Incineration and other high temperature waste treatment systems are described as "thermal treatment". Incineration of waste materials converts the waste into ash, flue gas, and...
, decapitation
Decapitation
Decapitation is the separation of the head from the body. Beheading typically refers to the act of intentional decapitation, e.g., as a means of murder or execution; it may be accomplished, for example, with an axe, sword, knife, wire, or by other more sophisticated means such as a guillotine...
and mutilation
Mutilation
Mutilation or maiming is an act of physical injury that degrades the appearance or function of any living body, usually without causing death.- Usage :...
with chainsaw
Chainsaw
A chainsaw is a portable mechanical saw, powered by electricity, compressed air, hydraulic power, or most commonly a two-stroke engine...
s or machetes of dozens of their victims at a time, affecting civilians, women and children.
Paramilitary forces in Colombia have additionally been charged with the illegal recruitment of children into the armed ranks. Though this is an offense punishable by national law, the prosecution rate for these crimes is less than 2% as of 2008.
Many of these abuses have occurred with the knowledge and support of the Colombian security forces. A 1998 Human Rights Watch report stated:
- ... where paramilitaries have a pronounced presence, the army fails to move against them and tolerates their activity, including egregious violations of international humanitarian law; provides some paramilitary groups with intelligence used to carry out operations; and in other cases actively promotes and coordinates with paramilitary units, including joint maneuvers in which atrocities are the frequent result. ... In areas where paramilitaries are present, some police officers have been directly implicated in joint army-paramilitary actions or have supplied information to paramilitaries for their death lists. Police have also stood by while paramilitaries selected and killed their victims. On many occasions, police have publicly described whole communities as guerrillas or sympathetic to them and have withdrawn police protection, a violation of their responsibility under Colombian law to protect civilians from harm. Instead of reinforcing the police after guerrilla attacks, police commanders have withdrawn officers, thus encouraging or allowing paramilitaries to move in unimpeded and kill civilians.
A 1999 human rights report from the U.S. State Department said:
- "At times the security forces collaborated with paramilitary groups that committed abuses; in some instances, individual members of the security forces actively collaborated with members of paramilitary groups by passing them through roadblocks, sharing intelligence, and providing them with ammunition. Paramilitary forces find a ready support base within the military and police, as well as local civilian elites in many areas."
In 2006, Amnesty International reported that:
- "The security forces have tried to improve their human rights image by letting their paramilitary allies commit human rights violations and then denying that the paramilitaries are operating with their acquiescence, support or sometimes direct coordination."
Massacres
Hundreds of massacres have been perpetrated by paramilitary groups in Colombia.Some of the most widely known are:
The Mapiripan Massacre
In MapiripánMapiripán
Mapiripán is a town and municipality in the Meta Department, Colombia. It was the site of the 1997 Mapiripán Massacre.-See also:*Mapiripán Massacre...
, Meta Department
Meta Department
Meta is a department of Colombia. It is close to the geographic center of the country, to the east of the Andean mountains. A large portion of the department, which is also crossed by the Meta River, is covered by a grassland plain known as the Llanos. Its capital is Villavicencio...
, an estimated 30 people were killed between July 14 to 20 1997. At least 100 heavily armed AUC members arrived in the town searching for people who were suspected leftist guerrilla supporters.They went from house to house referring to a list of names that had been prepared by informants earlier.
Civilians were taken to the town center where they were tortured by paramilitaries before being killed. After torturing their victims, the paramilitaries decapitated people with chainsaws, hung people from meat hooks, hacked people with machetes, cut people's throats and carved their bodies, and then threw their corpses into the nearby Guaviare River.
The local judge of Mapiripan Leonardo Ivan Cortes called the police and the army eight times during the 5-day massacre, but they did not arrive until the AUC paramilitaries had left. In March 1999, Colombian prosecutors accused Colonel Lino Sánchez of planning the massacre with Carlos Castaño. Sánchez was the operations chief of the Colombian Army's 12th Brigade. He has received special training by U.S. Army Special Forces soldiers on Barrancón Island on the Guaviare River. The training was finished very close to the time of the massacre. The evidence showed that the paramilitaries landed unhampered at the San Jose del Guaviare airport which was heavily guarded by military personnel.
The Alto Naya massacre
Another massacre took place at Alto Naya, CaucaCauca Department
Cauca is a Department of Colombia. Located in the south-western part of the country, facing the Pacific Ocean to the west, the Valle del Cauca Department to the north, Tolima Department to the northeast, Huila Department to the east and the Nariño Department to the south, covering a total area of...
department on April 12, 2001, in which an estimated 40-130 civilians were killed, and thousands displaced. Approximately 100 paramilitaries from the Frente Calima ("Calima Front") participated in the killings.
The first victim was a 17 year old girl named Gladys Ipia whose head and hands were cut off with a chain saw. Next, six people were shot while eating at a local restaurant. Another man was chopped into pieces and burned. A woman had her abdomen ripped open with a chainsaw. An indigenous leader named Cayetano Cruz, was cut in half with a chainsaw. The paramilitaries lined up the villagers in the middle of the town, and asked people if they knew any guerrillas. If they answered "no", they were hacked to death with machetes. Many of the bodies were dismembered, and strewn piecemeal around the area, making it difficult to gain an accurate body count and identify victims. Between 4,000 and 6,000 people were displaced as they fled the area during and following the violence.
Despite repeated warnings over the preceding two weeks that such an attack was about to occur, the Colombian military refused to provide protection for the villagers. And although the massacre went on for more than three days, the nearby Third Brigade did not show up until after it was over. Yet when the FARC attempted to take over a town, in neighboring Nariño, the military responded within three hours. Some of the villagers traveled to the Colombian Army's Third Brigade an hour away. The Cauca People’s Defender, Victor Javier Melendez, notified the military that a massacre was occurring on the morning of April 13. He received no response. The Colombian Public Advocate's office stated: "it is inexplicable how approximately 500 paramilitaries could carry out an operation of this type without being challenged in any way, especially since the area that these men entered is only twenty minutes from the village of Timba, where a base operated by the Colombian Army is located and has been staffed since March 30 of this year."
The Betoyes Massacre
Another massacre took place in Betoyes, AraucaArauca Department
Arauca is a department of Colombia located in the extreme north of the Orinoco part of Colombia , bordering Venezuela. It is bordered to the south by the Casanare River and the Meta River, which separate it from the departments of Casanare and Vichada. To the west borders with the Boyacá Department...
department in early May 2003. Several people belonging to the indigenous Guahibo community were killed and over 300 people fled. Three girls, ages 11, 12, and 15, were raped. Another 16-year-old pregnant mother, Omaira Fernández was raped, and then they cut her womb open and ripped out the fetus which they hacked up with a machete. They then dumped the bodies into the river. An Amnesty International reported on June 4, 2003 that the Colombian army's 18th Brigade's "Navos Pardo Battalion" fully supported the AUC in carrying out the massacre. "... in Betoyes in January 2003, witnesses said that the AUC armband of one attacker slipped to reveal the words "Navos Pardo Battalion" printed on the uniform beneath."
Forcible displacement
More than 3 million people out of Colombia's population of approximately 40 million have been internally displaced since 1985, making it the country with the second highest internally displaced population in the world after SudanSudan
Sudan , officially the Republic of the Sudan , is a country in North Africa, sometimes considered part of the Middle East politically. It is bordered by Egypt to the north, the Red Sea to the northeast, Eritrea and Ethiopia to the east, South Sudan to the south, the Central African Republic to the...
. Over 1 million people have been displaced after President Álvaro Uribe took office in 2002, with over 300,000 displaced in 2005 alone.
Paramilitary groups have been held responsible for the largest portion of displacement. In the years 2000 and 2001, paramilitaries were blamed for 48 percent and 53 percent of forced displacement, respectively. The displacement is not only a side-effect of the civil conflict but also a deliberate policy to remove people from their territories, so that the land can be taken by wealthy elites, multinational corporations and criminal syndicates, as well as to attack the civilian support base for the guerrillas.
Social cleansing
Paramilitary groups, with the support of local merchants, the Colombian military, and local police, have engaged in extensive "social cleansing" operations against homeless people, drug addicts, orphaned children, and other people they deem socially "undesirable". In 1993 alone, at least 2190 street children were murdered, many of whom were killed by agents of the state. An estimated 5 people per day fell victim to social cleansing operations in 1995.Drug trade
The downfall of the Medellín and Calí cartels in the 1990s created an opening for paramilitary groups, which controlled northern Colombia (the key transnational smuggling route), to take over the international cocaine trade.In 2001 Colombian government sources estimated that at least 40% of all cocaine exports from Colombia were controlled by far-right paramilitary groups, while only 2.5% were controlled by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia
Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia
The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia – People's Army is a Marxist–Leninist revolutionary guerrilla organization based in Colombia which is involved in the ongoing Colombian armed conflict, currently involved in drug dealing and crimes against the civilians..FARC-EP is a peasant army which...
.
Chiquita Brands International
From 1997 to 2004, Chiquita Brands InternationalChiquita Brands International
Chiquita Brands International Inc. is an American producer and distributor of bananas and other produce, under a variety of subsidiary brand names, collectively known as Chiquita. Other brands include Fresh Express salads, which it purchased from Performance Food Group in 2005...
gave over $1.7 million dollars to the AUC, over $825,000 of which was given after the U.S. State Department had listed the AUC as a Foreign Terrorist Organization. Families of some of the victims filed a class-action lawsuit, Doe v. Chiquita Brands International
Doe v. Chiquita Brands International
Doe v. Chiquita Brands International is a class-action lawsuit brought in the United States District Court of New Jersey, filed on June 13, 2007...
in 2007. The indictment alleges that the payments "were reviewed and approved by senior executives of the corporation" and that by no later than September 2000, they were aware that "that the AUC was a violent, paramilitary organization". Separate charges were also filed alleging that in 2001, using a Colombian port owned and operated by Banadex (a subsidiary of Chiquita), the company transported 3,400 AK-47 rifles and 4 million rounds of ammunition, which were destined for the AUC. Mario Iguarán, Colombia's attorney general in 2007, said that he would seek extradition for several Chiquita executives as part of the weapons smuggling investigation. Lawyers from the U.S. Department of Justice learned of Chiquita's relationship with the AUC in 2003. They told Chiquita executives that the payments were illegal and ordered them to stop. After receiving the order, Chiquita made at least 19 more payments. Chiquita representatives said that they were only financing terrorist organizations "in good faith", for the protection of their employees. To date, none of the Chiquita executives have been indicted for terrorism, however the company did receive a fine of $25 million dollars. The plea deal was negotiated by Eric Holder
Eric Holder
Eric Himpton Holder, Jr. is the 82nd and current Attorney General of the United States and the first African American to hold the position, serving under President Barack Obama....
, who was then an attorney with the law firm Covington & Burling
Covington & Burling
Covington & Burling LLP is an international law firm with offices in Beijing, Brussels, London, New York, San Francisco, Silicon Valley, San Diego, and Washington, DC. The firm advises multinational corporations on significant transactional, litigation, regulatory, and public policy matters...
, which represented Chiquita Brands.
US congress member William Delahunt stated Chiquita Brands was only the "tip of the iceberg" in the financing of the AUC, after he met with paramilitary chiefs Salvatore Mancuso, Diego Fernando Murillo, Héctor Veloza and Rodrigo Tovar Pupo. Delahunt stressed: "I am concerned by the magnitude of the participation of the US companies."
Drummond Coal
In the late 1980s, AlabamaAlabama
Alabama is a state located in the southeastern region of the United States. It is bordered by Tennessee to the north, Georgia to the east, Florida and the Gulf of Mexico to the south, and Mississippi to the west. Alabama ranks 30th in total land area and ranks second in the size of its inland...
-based Drummond Coal began to expand into new markets, due to the deregulation of global capital. As part of this expansion, they purchased the Pribbenow coal mine in Colombia, as well as a Caribbean
Caribbean
The Caribbean is a crescent-shaped group of islands more than 2,000 miles long separating the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea, to the west and south, from the Atlantic Ocean, to the east and north...
port to ship the coal. They increased production at the mine by 20 million tons annually, turning it into one of the largest coal-mining operations in the world. It made up the largest share of Drummond's $1.7 billion in annual revenues.
Since it started operating in the early 1990s, Drummond's 215-mile railway has been repeatedly attacked by the FARC-EP. There is evidence that right-wing paramilitaries were hired by Drummond to guard the rail lines. In 2001, union activists working at Drummond's Colombian operations began receiving frequent death threats. In February of that year, AUC paramilitaries broke into the home of union organizer Cándido Méndez and killed him in front of his family. This was followed by a series of killings in March.
The Coca-Cola Company
In July 2001 four lawsuits were filed against The Coca-Cola CompanyThe Coca-Cola Company
The Coca-Cola Company is an American multinational beverage corporation and manufacturer, retailer and marketer of non-alcoholic beverage concentrates and syrups. The company is best known for its flagship product Coca-Cola, invented in 1886 by pharmacist John Stith Pemberton in Columbus, Georgia...
by the International Labor Rights Fund
International Labor Rights Fund
The International Labor Rights Forum is a nonprofit advocacy organization headquartered in Washington, DC that describes itself as "an advocate for and with the working poor around the world". ILRF, formerly the International Labor Rights Education & Research Fund, was founded in 1986...
(ILRF) and the United Steel Workers of America, on behalf of Sinaltrainal
SINALTRAINAL
The National Union of Food Industry Workers is a Colombian food industry trade union.The group has repeatedly tried to form unions in Colombia for workers of Panamco, a Colombian Coca-Cola bottling company, and have documentation of many members or leaders being murdered, kidnapped, and tortured...
(a union representing food and beverage workers in Colombia), five individuals who have been tortured or unlawfully detained for union activities, and the estate of murdered union activist Isidro Gil. The plaintiffs alleged that Coca-Cola bottlers "contracted with or otherwise directed paramilitary security forces that utilized extreme violence and murdered, tortured, unlawfully detained, or otherwise silenced trade union leaders." Coca-Cola does not deny that the murders and attacks on unionists took place at their bottling facilities, nor did they deny that the paramilitaries responsible for the killings were being paid by the bottlers, but they claimed that they could not be held liable because they are not in direct control of the bottling plants. In March 2001, a district judge in Miami decided that Coca-Cola could not be held liable, claiming they did not directly control the bottling plants, but allowed the case against the bottling companies to proceed forward.
Political activities
See also
- United Self-Defense Forces of ColombiaUnited Self-Defense Forces of ColombiaThe United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia was created as an umbrella organization of regional far-right...
- Carlos CastañoCarlos CastañoCarlos Castaño Gil was the founder of the Peasant Self-Defense Forces of Córdoba and Urabá , an extreme right paramilitary organization in Colombia...
- Colombian Armed ConflictColombian Armed ConflictThe Colombian armed conflict or Colombian Civil War are terms that are employed to refer to the current asymmetric low-intensity armed conflict in Colombia that has existed since approximately 1964 or 1966, between the Colombian government and peasant guerrillas such as the Revolutionary Armed...
Government/NGO Reports
- "Body count mentalities": Colombia’s "False Positives" Scandal, Declassified, National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 266, National Security ArchiveNational Security ArchiveThe National Security Archive is a 501 non-governmental, non-profit research and archival institution located in the George Washington University in Washington, D.C.. Founded in 1985 by Scott Armstrong, it archives and publishes declassified U.S. government files concerning selected topics of US...
, January 7, 2009 - Paramilitaries as Proxies: Declassified evidence on the Colombian army's anti-guerrilla "allies", National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 166, National Security ArchiveNational Security ArchiveThe National Security Archive is a 501 non-governmental, non-profit research and archival institution located in the George Washington University in Washington, D.C.. Founded in 1985 by Scott Armstrong, it archives and publishes declassified U.S. government files concerning selected topics of US...
, October 16, 2005 - Documents Implicate Colombian Government in Chiquita Terror Scandal: Company's Paramilitary Payoffs made through Military's 'Convivir', National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 217, National Security ArchiveNational Security ArchiveThe National Security Archive is a 501 non-governmental, non-profit research and archival institution located in the George Washington University in Washington, D.C.. Founded in 1985 by Scott Armstrong, it archives and publishes declassified U.S. government files concerning selected topics of US...
, March 29, 2007 (see also: http://www.eltiempo.com/archivo/documento/CMS-3499952http://www.thenation.com/article/para-politics-goes-bananas) - The Truth about Triple-A: U.S. Document Implicates Current, Former Colombian Army Commanders in Terror Operation, National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 223, National Security ArchiveNational Security ArchiveThe National Security Archive is a 501 non-governmental, non-profit research and archival institution located in the George Washington University in Washington, D.C.. Founded in 1985 by Scott Armstrong, it archives and publishes declassified U.S. government files concerning selected topics of US...
, July 1, 2007 - Colombian Paramilitaries and the United States: "Unraveling the Pepes Tangled Web", National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 243, National Security ArchiveNational Security ArchiveThe National Security Archive is a 501 non-governmental, non-profit research and archival institution located in the George Washington University in Washington, D.C.. Founded in 1985 by Scott Armstrong, it archives and publishes declassified U.S. government files concerning selected topics of US...
, February 17, 2008 - Conspiracy of Silence?: Colombia, the United States and the Massacre at El Salado, National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 287, National Security ArchiveNational Security ArchiveThe National Security Archive is a 501 non-governmental, non-profit research and archival institution located in the George Washington University in Washington, D.C.. Founded in 1985 by Scott Armstrong, it archives and publishes declassified U.S. government files concerning selected topics of US...
, September 24, 2009 - The United States vs. Rito Alejo del Río: Ambassador Cited Accused Colombian General's Reliance on Death Squads, "Systematic" Support of Paramilitaries "Pivotal to his Military Success", National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 327, National Security ArchiveNational Security ArchiveThe National Security Archive is a 501 non-governmental, non-profit research and archival institution located in the George Washington University in Washington, D.C.. Founded in 1985 by Scott Armstrong, it archives and publishes declassified U.S. government files concerning selected topics of US...
, September 29, 2010 - Trujillo Declassified: Documenting Colombia's 'tragedy without end', National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 259, National Security ArchiveNational Security ArchiveThe National Security Archive is a 501 non-governmental, non-profit research and archival institution located in the George Washington University in Washington, D.C.. Founded in 1985 by Scott Armstrong, it archives and publishes declassified U.S. government files concerning selected topics of US...
, October 5, 2008 - Volume III: Conditioning Security Assistance in War in Colombia: Guerrillas, Drugs and Human Rights in U.S. Colombia Policy, 1988-2002: National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 69, National Security ArchiveNational Security ArchiveThe National Security Archive is a 501 non-governmental, non-profit research and archival institution located in the George Washington University in Washington, D.C.. Founded in 1985 by Scott Armstrong, it archives and publishes declassified U.S. government files concerning selected topics of US...
, May 3, 2002 - Kim Cragan, Bruce Hoffman; "Arms Trafficking and Colombia". RAND Corporation, 2003
- The Ties That Bind: Colombia and Military-Paramilitary Links, Human Rights Watch, February 2000
- The "Sixth Division": Military-paramilitary Ties and U.S. Policy in Colombia, Human Rights Watch, September 2001
- Breaking the Grip?: Obstacles to Justice for Paramilitary Mafias in Colombia, Human Rights Watch, November 17, 2008
- Paramilitaries’ Heirs: The New Face of Violence in Colombia, Human Rights Watch, February 2010
- Colombia: Fear and Intimidation: The dangers of human rights work , Amnesty International, September 2006
- Colombia: The Paramilitaries in Medellín: Demobilization or Legalization?, Amnesty International, August 31, 2005
- Amnesty InternationalAmnesty InternationalAmnesty International is an international non-governmental organisation whose stated mission is "to conduct research and generate action to prevent and end grave abuses of human rights, and to demand justice for those whose rights have been violated."Following a publication of Peter Benenson's...
, "Colombia: Barrancabermeja: A city under siege", 1 May 1999 - "The Other Half of the Truth: Searching for Truth, Justice, and Reparations for Colombia's Victims of Paramilitary Violence", Latin American Working Group, June 2008
- "The Wrong Road", Latin American Working Group, July 2003
- UN High Commissioner for Human Rights - Colombia 2005 Report (Spanish and English)
News / Magazines
(Original in Spanish: http://dollarsandsense.org/archives/2007/1107letteroriginal.html)External links
- AUC Official Website -- (mirror from Archive.org http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.colombialibre.org, in Spanish)
- Human Rights Watch - Colombia
- Colombia Journal
- Alto Comisionado para la Paz (Spanish)
- Center for International Policy - Colombia Program
- Colombia -- Third World Traveller
- BP in Colombia, Sourcewatch
- Colombia Solidarity Campaign