Rights group: Colombia government falling short in protecting social leaders

The Colombian government is falling short in its obligation to protect social leaders being targeted by illegal armed groups in the aftermath of the country’s historic peace accord, Human Rights Watch said Wednesday.

A new report based on more than 130 interviews conducted throughout Colombia finds that protection mechanisms put in place by the government are still leaving some of the country’s most vulnerable citizens at risk of attack.

Deployment of soldiers hasn’t led to a reduction in homicides of human rights leaders in areas where illegal armed groups still control territory. Leaders given cell phones or panic buttons can’t always use them because they are often in areas without a signal or police presence. Though prosecutors have made arrests in such killings, dismantling the power structures behind the deaths is proving more challenging.

Data from the United Nations indicates more than 400 human rights defenders have been killed in the South American nation since 2016, the year the accord with the former Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia was signed.

“Colombia has had the highest number of human rights defenders killed of any Latin American country in recent years,” said José Miguel Vivanco, Americas director of Human Rights Watch. “But the government’s response has been mostly talk.”

President Iván Duque has said reducing crimes against social leaders is a top priority; his government recently announced a plan with the U.N. to invest several million dollars toward the security of human rights leaders.

Tim Rieser, foreign policy aide to Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-VT, said the issue strikes at a core component of the peace deal’s implementation and its success going forward.

“The peace agreement cannot survive if this continues because these people risked their lives to support it and they are essential to its success,” Rieser said. “Ultimately it’s going to require what Sen. Leahy has been saying for years - establishing some semblance of security, economic opportunity and social services in part of the country where that has never existed. It is a daunting challenge, but they need to show it can be done.”

Several armed groups have remained active following the peace deal, including dissident rebels who opted not to sign onto the accord. When FARC rebels began demobilizing, various criminal groups linked to drug trafficking stepped in to fill the void, the report notes, with several now fighting each other for territorial control.

Iván Rosero, a community leader in Tumaco, a municipality in southwestern Colombia which has had some of the country’s highest levels of coca production, likened the current situation to “a Colombian version of the Wild West.”

Rosero said he himself created a small security manual for local leaders because there was nothing similar available from the government. He became president of a community board after the previous leader was killed in a crime that has still not been solved. Rosero said he has also received threats.

“The government does not have a true prevention strategy to protect leaders,” he said.

According to the Human Rights Watch report, leaders have been murdered for failing to follow the rules imposed by armed groups. Opposing illegal mining, forced recruitment, or embarking on coca crops substitution plans, an initiative started under the peace accord to give peasants a viable economic alternative, can be deadly.

“We want to support substitution, but they do not let us,” a local leader told investigators. “In addition the government has failed us [...] we do not have any other option than to sow.”

Deploying soldiers has not improved the situation, the report states. Duque’s administration has sent thousands of soldiers to the most affected areas. In Catatumbo, the number of military officers grew by 5,600. Nevertheless, the total number of homicides increased from 190 in 2017 to 228 in 2019. The same pattern follows in other regions: despite increasing the number of military officers, crimes including homicides increased, Human Rights Watch found.

Due to budgetary problems, protection schemes provided to human rights defenders tend to be insufficient, the study concludes.

Rodrigo Salazar Quiñones, an Indigenous leader, was granted three bodyguards and an armored car in 2014 due to multiple threats. In 2020, the National Protection Unit decreased his security scheme to one bodyguard and a cellphone. He was killed that July.

Francisco Barbosa Delgado, Colombia’s attorney general, said recently that despite the pandemic, prosecutors have made inroads in solving crimes, having determined who is responsible for over 50% of the murders.

Human Rights Watch noted the progress made in prosecuting those responsible for the killings of human rights leaders but pointed out that it is often hitmen, rather than the so-called intellectual authors of a crime, who are arrested. Shortages of prosecutors, judges and investigators in affected areas also complicate holding those responsible accountable.

“A hitman can easily be replaced with another,” Vivanco said.

Rosero said human rights leaders feel stigmatized and isolated.

“The investigation process for the murders of leaders is very incipient and slow,” he said. “There is a government apathy regarding this situation, a law of silence imposed on communities by illegal groups.”