While there continues to be conflict-related violence throughout Colombia, much of the recent violence seems to be concentrated in the country's urban centers, most notably in Bogotá and Medellín. In both of these urban centers murder rates and gun violence attributed to emerging criminal groups, the apparent successors to the disbanded AUC paramilitary structure, have continued to surge.

According to a report released Thursday, August 18th by the Bogotá mayor's office, there were 938 recorded murders in the Colombian capital between January and July -- 33 more than in the same seven-month span last year. The Ciudad Bolívar district in southern Bogotá had the highest murder rate out of the city's 20 districts, citing 157 murders so far this year, 141 men and 16 women.

On August 13th, less than a week after the inauguration of Colombia's new president Juan Manuel Santos, Bogotá suffered a car bombing on a principal street, near the Caracol Radio network. The attack took place at 5:30 a.m. and injured 36, while damaging 424 homes and offices. Juan Manuel Santos has offered 500 million Colombian pesos (about $250,000) for information leading to the arrest of those responsible for the bombing and the government in Cundinamarca, the department around Bogotá, has offered another 30 million pesos. Authorities have arrested three people implicated in the attack, however police are still unsure who is responsible; both right-wing paramilitary groups and the left-wing guerrilla group the FARC are being considered. The Colombian newsweekly Semana has a short overview of the case's conflicting evidence.

Medellín, Colombia's second-largest city, has also experienced an increase in violence. This year there have been 1,322 murders, 12 percent more than the same period in 2009. Comuna 13, located in the central western part of the city with a population of 134,000, continues to be the city's most violent area, registering 12.4 percent of the city’s total death toll. According to Colombian newspaper El Tiempo, there are more than 140 gangs currently operating in the city- about a dozen or so in Comuna 13 alone- fighting for territorial control and command of drug, gambling, and prostitution rings. There has also been an increase in illegal arms sales throughout the city, which authorities believe indicates the sponsorship of smaller groups by organizations like the "Office of Envigado" headed by Erick Vargas, alias "Sebastian" and Maximiliano Bonilla, alias "Valenciano", and "Los Urabenos" and "Los Rastrojos."

In an effort to thwart the escalating violence, Medellín Mayor Alonso Salazar, police commander General Oscar Naranjo and Defense Minister Rodrigo Rivera held a Security Council meeting last weekend after Salazar asked the National Government for additional help in combating the violence. After the meeting, Naranjo announced several new security measures that local authorities would be taking, including the installation of video cameras in particularly violent areas and security checkpoints at the entry points to Comuna 13. He also announced the creation of an "Integrated Intervention Center," the purpose of which will be to study the violence and devise new "preventative" plans to control it, as well as the deployment of 800 extra police to Comuna 13.

On Wednesday August 18th, 14 members of the leftist National Liberation Army (ELN) guerrilla group were killed in an aerial attack on an encampment in Tarazá in the Bajo Cauca region of the Antioquia department, about 100 miles northeast of Medellín. In the attack, known as "Operation Alliance," the military leader of the group's "Darío de Jesús Ramírez" front, alias "Éver," was killed. "Ever" had been with the group for 18 years and was allegedly responsible for laying more than 43 landmine fields in the past year. The ELN units affected had also allegedly been coordinating narcoproduction and trafficking operations with FARC fronts in the region.

Over the weekend in Tame, a rural region in Arauca department, FARC leader Jhon Javier Gil, alias "Milton Díaz," was killed along with two other members of the guerrilla group in a clash with the armed forces. "Milton Díaz" was allegedly second in command of the "Alfonso Castellanos" unit of the FARC and responsible for the oversight of several attacks in the region within the past three years. Soldier Abigail Tariffa Cardenas also died in the operation. Also in Arauca over the weekend, in Saravena, soldiers found an escaped Eln member, a four-month-pregnant fourteen year old.

In response to escalating levels of gang-related violence, the Ministry of Defense held a Security Council meeting this past weekend in Montelíbano, in Córdoba department. Since January of this year there have been more than 400 murders in the region, the majority related to the narcotrafficking operations of emerging criminal groups, which have continued to grow, four years after the AUC's official demobilization. According to the People's Defense Council, Cordoba's San Jorge municipality is among the most high-risk zones in the region, as the Troncal roadway, which runs through the area, has become the territorial dividing line between three criminal groups: "Los Urabenos," "Los Paisas" and "Las Aguilas." The situation in Monteria, Córdoba's capital, is equally precarious, as at least 60 people have been killed in the past eight months due to narcotrafficking and gang-related violence.

The council announced several measures to be implemented in the coming months as a "total offensive" against the criminal groups, including an antinarcotics post in Necoclí in Antioquia department, 14 squadrons of border police, and six intelligence bases that will be established in various municipalities throughout Córdoba, as well as in Urabá and Bajo Cauca in Antioquia department.

On Sunday August 15th in Puerto Asís, Putumayo department, two teenage boys were killed, followed by another this past Friday, August 20th. The names of the three boys had appeared on a "death threat" list of 69 names posted on Facebook three weeks earlier and circulated on fliers throughout the town. The flier asked residents to evacuate the town in three days and threatened to continue committing acts like "those on August 15th" should they not comply.

Initially authorities believed the incidents to be a joke, however following a town Security Council meeting on Friday, the town's Defense Council attributed the murders and threats to "Los Rastrojos," a criminal group with a strong presence in several neighborhoods in Puerto Asis. The gang has been linked to various other violent threats, attacks, and intimidation tactics.

On Monday August 23, the Anncol website, which frequently posts FARC communications, posted a letter from the guerrilla group requesting that UNASUR mediate peace talks with the government. In the open statement the FARC Secretariat indicated, "When you deem it opportune, we are ready to explain during a UNASUR assembly our vision of the Colombian conflict." This is following an announcement by President Santos last Tuesday that "military results every day, on different fronts" was how the country is "going to finally achieve peace." He continued, "until we see clear irrefutable proof that the conditions we have given are adhered to, there is no possibility for dialogue." This is the group's second statement mentioning peace talks since President Santos was elected; the first came from leader Alfonso Cano in a video released on July 30th.

This blog post was written by CIP intern Sarah Kinosian

A "narco-blockade" in Monterrey (image source).

• “Save Monterrey” reads the lead editorial in Wednesday’s edition of the Mexican daily El Universal. Mexico’s wealthiest city, less than 100 miles from the U.S. border, has rapidly plunged from relative tranquility to narco-related violence. In the past week, cartels shut down the city by blockading main roads, exploded a device outside the Televisa TV affiliate, and murdered the mayor of the nearby town of Santiago.

• Mexican authorities say they have seized 180,000 weapons in the past 3 ½ years, and that 191 members of the military (not police) were killed by narcotraffickers in the same period. In all, AFP reports, 694 members of Mexico’s armed forces have been killed on anti-drug operations since 1976, when they first took on the counternarcotics role.

• According to The Economist, Venezuela’s Interior Ministry reported 12,257 homicides during the first 11 months of 2009. A study carried out by the country’s National Statistics Institute at the request of the Vice President’s Office found 19,133 murders in 2009. This is an extremely high figure for a country of 28 million people; Colombia, with 45 million people, reported 15,817 or 17,717 homicides in 2009, depending on the source.

• In Bogotá, meanwhile, the coroner’s office recorded 938 murders during the first seven months of 2010, up from 905 during the same period in 2009. Due to population growth, however, the city’s overall murder rate declined by 0.9 percent.

• A few weeks ago, polls for Brazil’s October 3 presidential elections were showing a dead heat between Dilma Rousseff of the ruling Workers’ Party and José Serra of the opposition Social Democracy Party. Now, with a month and a half to go, Rousseff has opened up a 43% to 32% lead.

• Brazil was the destination of a visit from Ecuador’s foreign minister this week, seeking to patch things up after Ecuador’s 2008 expulsion of a Brazilian construction company. Brazil, at the beginning of September, will also be the locale of Juan Manuel Santos’s first foreign trip as president of Colombia.

• Colombia’s new foreign minister, María Ángela Holguín, hinted that the U.S.-Colombia defense cooperation agreement might be revised to take neighboring countries’ concerns into account. (Colombia’s Constitutional Court struck down the October 2009 agreement on Tuesday, ruling that Colombia’s Congress must first ratify it.) “Not only Venezuela, but UNASUR in general, has asked that some paragraphs be introduced to assure them that absolutely nothing would happen with the Colombia bases,” Holguín said. “We’re certainly going to look at that in our study of the agreement.”

• “The United States should now consider the benefits of supporting a peace process to try to end a conflict that has raged for more than four decades,” writes Milburn Line of the University of San Diego’s Joan Kroc Institute, in a strong piece about Colombia published in the International Herald Tribune.

• Claudia López, the Colombian researcher who played a key role in breaking the “para-politics” scandal, has released a new book about “how mafiosi and politicians reconfigured the Colombian state. “There is no proof so far linking him [former president Álvaro Uribe] directly with illegal structures. But it is clear that all illegal actors on the right wing inserted themselves into his political program and he did nothing to avoid it. Eight of every ten para-politicians were from his coalition,” López tells “La Silla Vacía” in a wide-ranging interview.

• In a piece published Thursday to the OpenDemocracy.net website, I point out that Juan Manuel Santos – if he continues to follow some of the policies that have marked his few days in office – may find himself on a nasty but necessary collision course with the mafiosi and para-politicians in the coalition he inherited from Uribe.

• The WOLA/TNI “Drug Law Reform in Latin America” project unearths a 1998 letter to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan signed by, among others, Juan Manuel Santos. It calls for “a frank and honest evaluation of global drug control efforts” because “we believe that the global war on drugs is now causing more harm than drug abuse itself.”

• El Tiempo interviews a former FARC guerrilla, a recent deserter, who was present at the site where hostages were being kept when the Colombian military rescued them in July 2008. He says that he and many others were at first accused of being traitors to the guerrilla group: “They chained my hands and feet, they took me someplace over there [where FARC leader alias “Mono Jojoy” was headquartered] and I spent a month and thirteen days detained with security all around.”

• Chile’s defense minister traveled to Lima to meet with his Peruvian counterpart, where they agreed to do more to coordinate their defense expenditures. Meanwhile the head of Bolivia’s army traveled to Santiago to meet with his Chilean counterpart.

• 85 percent of Latin Americans oppose going the Costa Rica/Panama/Haiti route and abolishing their armed forces. However, at least 1 in 5 Guatemalans, Paraguayans and Uruguayans would be in favor of it. This is one of many interesting findings in a new FLACSO region-wide poll about governance and democracy, whose entire contents are viewable here.

• The Obama administration appears to be close to restoring Clinton-era “people-to-people” contacts with Cuba, the Washington Post revealed Wednesday. This would mean licensing several currently prohibited types of U.S. citizen travel to the island.

• Dominican Republic President Leonel Fernández named a new armed-forces chief and a new police chief this week. Both said that fighting crime and narcotrafficking would be their main priority.

Yesterday, six non-governmental organizations sent a letter to U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton asking her to ensure that, with the beginning of Juan Manuel Santos' presidency in Colombia, U.S. policy focuses strongly on the human rights issues facing the nation. "It is a moment to increase – rather than ease – pressure on the Colombian government to make substantial improvements in the protection and promotion of human rights," write the six Latin America and human rights organizations.

The organizations urge Secretary Clinton not to certify that Colombia's human rights performance is improving, as required by law to free up 30 percent of military aid in the foreign aid budget.

The letter points to five key areas on which U.S. policy should focus and press the Colombian government to achieve. They include:

• Ending and effectively prosecuting extrajudicial executions by the army;
• Ending and effectively prosecuting intelligence service abuses;
• Ensuring a safe climate for those working at risk for the rule of law, including human rights defenders, union leaders, judges, prosecutors, journalists and Afro-COlombian and indigenous community leaders;
• Dismantling paramilitary and new illegal armed networks; and
• Protecting the rights of and returning land to internally displace persons and refugees.

The six NGOs that signed the letter are: the Center for International Policy, Latin America Working Group, Washington Office on Latin America, U.S. Office on Colombia, Human Rights First and Lutheran World Relief.

The four-page letter includes a summary of concerns and recommendations in the five areas listed above. You can download the full text here.

Late Tuesday, Colombia’s Constitutional Court, part of its Supreme Court, decided by a 6-3 vote to strike down a defense cooperation agreement that Colombia’s government had signed with the United States in October 2009.

This accord, which gave U.S. military personnel the right to use seven Colombian bases for the next ten years, is suspended until Colombia’s Congress votes to approve it. Article 173 of Colombia’s Constitution requires that the country’s Senate be empowered to “permit the transit of foreign troops through the territory of the Republic.”

Politically, the court’s decision is a blow to both governments because it gives the impression – deserved or no – that the Obama and Uribe administrations sought to do something that violated Colombia’s Constitution. Operationally, however, the defense accord’s suspension will not affect the U.S. presence in Colombia. Not a single U.S. soldier or contractor will have to leave Colombia or alter what he is doing as a result of the Constitutional Court’s decision.

Though the Defense Cooperation Agreement (or DCA) was signed last October 30, the implementing agreements needed to make it operational have yet to be signed. This means that, as of yesterday, the new DCA had still not gone into effect. U.S. military and contractor personnel were still acting under the authorities laid out in a series of old accords (1952, 1962, 1974, 2004, 2007), whose validity the Colombian court did not challenge.

Under these old accords, U.S. personnel have already been frequently present at the seven bases listed in the DCA, as well as several others. The difference is that today, there is no “free entry”: each U.S. deployment is subject to a series of Colombian government approvals that would be unnecessary under the DCA. It also means that construction of new facilities at the Palanquero airbase in Puerto Salgar, Cundinamarca – for which Congress appropriated $46 million in 2010 – cannot yet begin.

Note as of 16:00 PM: We've confirmed that U.S. military aircraft may still land at Palanquero as before, but such landings still require case-by-case Colombian government approval. For a list of planned construction to be funded by the $46 million, see the section beginning with page 217 of this PDF file from the U.S. Air Force.

The court’s decision means that implementation of the DCA may be delayed, and U.S. personnel in Colombia will continue to operate under the “old” agreements, for as much as a year. Even though Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos strongly favors the DCA, and even though roughly 80 percent of Colombia’s Congress is pro-Santos and likely to approve the DCA, the legislative process could take months. Opposition legislators will have a chance, for the first time in an official forum, to air their arguments against the agreement.

Once the Congress approves the agreement, it must then go back to the Constitutional Court for final approval. A leading opposition senator, Jorge Enrique Robledo of the leftist Polo Democrático, told the Colombian daily El Espectador that the court’s final approval is far from assured: “There is no article in the Constitution allowing foreign troops to be stationed in [as opposed to transiting through] national territory.”

In the United States, meanwhile, nothing changes. As a defense cooperation agreement and not a treaty, signing the Colombia accord is viewed as within the President’s powers as commander-in-chief of the armed forces. Congressional committees were notified about the accord, but were not required to approve it.

Update as of 16:00 PM: Gen. Freddy Padilla, the chief of Colombia's armed forces until August 7, made headlines in Colombia today by claiming that the Colombian court decision would force the U.S. Congress to consider the defense cooperation agreement as well. We have consulted with a responsible Defense Department official and confirmed that this is not accurate.

• A car bomb went off in central Bogotá at 5:30 Thursday morning, injuring 9 people. It is believed that the target was the nearby headquarters of the Caracol radio network. President Juan Manuel Santos did not immediately blame it on the FARC guerrillas. A pro-FARC website claims the attack was carried out not by guerrillas but by “mafias,” though the methods resemble those used in the 2003 bombing of the El Nogal social club a few blocks away, a crime the FARC also denied but was later revealed to have committed. The “La Silla Vacía” website lays out the cases for why the bombing might be, or might not be, the work of the FARC: “Some believe that it was evidently the FARC, since the attack fit within its modus operandi and its motives. Others, on the contrary, believe that it is a message from the extreme right that Juan Manuel Santos must not move away from the uribista hard line, and that Santos must not open a space for negotiations with the guerrillas.”

• Venezuela and Colombia re-established diplomatic relations this week after a meeting between Presidents Chávez and Santos. It remains unclear how the two countries will deal with the issue that has detonated several past crises between the two countries: the presence of FARC guerrillas in Venezuelan territory. Asked by El Tiempo whether there will be “verification of the guerrilla presence in Venezuela,” Colombian Foreign Minister María Ángela Holguín replied, “No. Verification, no. We are looking forward.”

• Asked a series of “questions for the record” by Sen. Richard Lugar, U.S. Ambassador-Designate to Venezuela Larry Palmer answered very frankly, using language stronger than the State Department has in the past. (“The Venezuelan government has been unwilling to prevent Colombian guerillas [sic.] from entering and establishing camps in Venezuelan territory. … [Military] morale is reported to be considerably low, particularly due to politically-oriented appointments. … As Cuba and Venezuela increase their military-to-military ties, I am concerned that Cuba’s influence within the Venezuelan military will grow.”) As a result, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez has announced that Palmer is not welcome in Caracas. The Washington Post editorial page contends that it would be better for the United States not to have an ambassador at all.

• On Tuesday, Colombia’s Constitutional Court will decide whether the country’s new defense agreement with the United States, signed last October, is truly constitutional. The court may require Colombia’s Congress to vote to approve it. Sources tell “La Silla Vacía” that a majority of justices are likely to rule against the agreement.

• Starting next month, former Colombian President Álvaro Uribe will be a Distinguished Scholar in the Practice of Global Leadership at Georgetown University.

• The new head of Colombia’s armed forces is a Navy admiral for only the second time ever. “La Silla Vacía” (linked for a third time in today’s post) has profiles of President Santos’ new high command. “These men,” reporter Dora Montero writes, “don’t follow the same line as the former high command – led by Gen. Freddy Padilla – that accompanied President Álvaro Uribe for years, and was seen by the rest of the military as more ‘political’ than ‘military.’ … The troops perceive this group of generals as closer to them.” Part of this “closeness,” Montero explains, is a likely willingness to defend the force more fiercely against accusations of human rights abuse.

• The U.S. Defense Security Cooperation Agency notified Congress [PDF] of a possible $162 million sale of nine Blackhawk helicopters to Colombia’s Army, Police and Air Force. Already, “Colombia operates the world’s third-largest BLACK HAWK helicopter fleet,” according to the aircraft’s manufacturer, Connecticut-based Sikorsky Aircraft Corporation.

• Three and a half years after adopting a hard-line approach to drug-related violence, Mexican President Felipe Calderón “finally accepted that the strategy had failed to rein in the cartels,” as The Guardian put it. “I know that the strategy has been questioned, and my administration is more than willing to revise, strengthen or change it if needed,” he said in a meeting with opposition leaders this week. Security Secretary Genaro García Luna blamed Mexico’s severe public security setbacks on “at least 30 years of structural abandonment of the country’s police forces.” The Associated Press obtained data indicating a badly broken judicial system: “only about 15 percent of drug suspects detained between December 2006 and September 2009 have been convicted or acquitted.” The Washington Post covered one strategic change currently underway: a $270 million program of new social spending in Ciudad Juárez, the most violent city in the hemisphere. On his blog, meanwhile, former President Vicente Fox called for the legalization of drugs.

• Ecuador’s El Universo writes about the cocaine trade along the country’s Pacific border with Colombia: “Here, an arroba [about 25 pounds] of coca seeds is sold for US$100, according to the campesinos. 40 arrobas can plant a hectare. The crops begin to produce within three months, and every arroba of coca leaf sells for US$15; a hectare produces 70 arrobas. After processing, the growers make basic cocaine paste. 40 arrobas of leaves make a kilo of paste, which in this zone sells for US$1,100.” Elsewhere on the border, in Ecuador’s north-central province of Carchi, El Universo contends that greater government presence has reduced the threat posed by guerrillas and other Colombian armed groups.

• Suriname’s former dictator Desi Bouterse, wanted in the Netherlands for narcotrafficking and on trial at home for a 1982 mass murder, was inaugurated as the country’s President on Thursday. A week earlier, reports the U.S. Southern Command, “Six U.S. Army medical personnel traveled to Paramaribo, Suriname, to exchange medical procedures with 45-medical personnel from the Suriname Armed Forces.”

• Sixteen U.S. military officers, including seven generals, paid a visit to Managua “to strengthen relations with the Nicaraguan army,” reports La Prensa. Meanwhile, McClatchy reports, “entities controlled by Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega have received at least $1 billion in no-strings-attached donations through an oil deal brokered by President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela.”

• The costs of earthquake rebuilding will force Chile to cut its defense budget next year, President Sebastián Piñera explained to the high command.

• Argentina’s foreign minister, Héctor Timerman, visited Washington and met with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Arturo Valenzuela will be in China next week for “the fourth round of U.S - China sub-dialogues on Latin America.”

• As Brazil’s October 3 elections draw nearer, The Economist reports that Dilma Rouseff, the candidate of President Lula da Silva’s Workers’ Party, is polling at 41 percent, nearly 10 points ahead of opponent José Serra. Earlier in the week, Serra angered Bolivia’s government by claiming that President Evo Morales’s administration has been “lazy with regard to controlling cocaine.” Serra said in May that 80 or 90 percent of cocaine that arrives in Brazil comes from Bolivia; Brazil’s police offer a figure of 59 percent.

• A recent poll places Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa’s approval rating at 37 percent. Though Ecuador and Colombia still have not re-established diplomatic relations after a 2008 crisis, Correa attended the August 7 inauguration of Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos, and urged Santos to visit Quito “quickly.”

• A corruption scandal forced the resignation of the chief of Uruguay’s navy, Adm. Oscar Debali.

As head of Colombia's military justice system, Luz Marina Gil passed human rights cases to the civilian court system. Then she was forced out.

At some point between now and the end of September, the Obama administration’s Department of State is likely to issue a document "certifying" that Colombia’s armed forces’ respect for human rights is improving. Upon that document’s submission to Congress, according to foreign aid law, 30% of aid to Colombia’s military aid, which has been “on hold” since the beginning of the year, will be released.

Among the conditions that the State Department has to certify is the following:

The Government of Colombia is suspending, and investigating and prosecuting in the civilian justice system, those members of the Colombian Armed Forces, of whatever rank, who have been credibly alleged to have committed violations of internationally recognized human rights, including extra-judicial killings, or to have aided, abetted or benefitted from paramilitary organizations or successor armed groups, and the Colombian Armed Forces are cooperating fully with civilian prosecutors and judicial authorities in such cases.

This condition exists because human rights abuses committed by Colombia’s armed forces are notoriously difficult to investigate and punish. “Estimates of the current rate of impunity for alleged killings by the security forces are as high as 98.5 per cent,” noted a recent report on Colombia from the UN Special Rapporteur for Extrajudicial Executions. “Soldiers simply knew that they could get away with murder.”

Since the late 1990s, Colombia’s justice system has endeavored to ensure that cases of human rights abuses get tried in the country’s civilian court system, as the human rights condition in U.S. law specifically requires. The Colombian military has its own separate justice system, designed for trying crimes committed as acts of service -- a definition that does not include abuses of civilian non-combatants. Elements of the military have long resisted human rights trials in the civilian system, and fought to keep cases under military justice. If these elements successfully challenge civilian jurisdiction, the military gets to try itself for human rights crimes, and the likelihood of punishment falls nearly to zero.

For a brief period, perhaps 2006 to 2008, Colombia did see a notable improvement on this measure. Military challenges to civilian jurisdiction fell sharply, and more abuse cases began to go before civilian judges and prosecutors. Newly inaugurated President Juan Manuel Santos, who was minister of defense at the time, gets some credit for this improvement. 

After Santos left his post in May 2009, hardliners took over. The military-civilian jurisdictional battle once again heated up, and prosecutions of many serious abuses ground to a halt. This major step backward happened at a terrible time: just as the justice system began to confront a wave of very serious allegations that the armed forces may have murdered more than 2,000 civilians since 2002, in many cases to reap rewards for falsified combat killings, known in Colombia as “false positives.”

A May 2010 report from Colombian investigative journalist Juanita León, editor-in-chief of the La Silla Vacía website, tells this disturbing story. It points to a major reversal in Colombia’s fight against impunity: a reversal that directly contradicts any State Department declaration that the country’s human rights situation has recently improved. 

A translated excerpt:

[Juan Manuel Santos] adopted important measures to bring an end to these crimes [extrajudicial executions] within the Army. ...

[These included] naming Luz Marina Gil as director of the military criminal justice system. Gil, daughter of a general, had coordinated the state’s defense before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. After 18 years in the Defense Ministry, she became the first woman and the first civilian to take the reins of the military criminal justice system. ...

People who worked with Santos in the Ministry, and at least two human rights defenders with whom I spoke, said that Santos ordered Gil not to provoke a clash of competencies [between civilian and military justice], and to transfer the greatest number of cases against soldiers for “false positives” to the civilian justice system.

This order wasn’t fully complied with, as between 2008 and 2009, the Prosecutor-General’s [civilian] Human Rights Unit noted 291 cases of conflict of competencies in which the military justice system did not voluntarily hand over cases.

But even so, during his tenure, more cases were passed to civilian justice before Santos left office, in May 2009, than after he left his post.

For example, during the first four months of 2009, 57 cases were voluntarily transferred [from military to civilian justice]. But one week before Santos left his post to run for the presidency [in May 2009], Gil was forced to resign because she failed to respond to a “freedom of information” request. This punishment was interpreted by many as a sophism intended to get her removed from her post.

Her replacement, under the command of Gabriel Silva, the [defense] minister who succeeded Santos and who arrived in the Ministry with an express order from President Uribe to defend the military against “false charges,” immediately began to invoke the collision of competencies to keep cases from exiting the military justice system. In the last four months of 2009, only 17 cases were passed to the civilian justice system. And between June 2009 and January 2010, 317 conflicts of competencies were registered.

In a recent report strongly recommending that the State Department refuse to “certify,” the Colombia-Europe-U.S. Coordination, a network of prominent human rights groups, adds more grim data:

The voluntary transfer of cases from military to civilian jurisdiction has fallen to practically insignificant levels under the management of the current defense minister [Silva], and especially since the former director of military criminal justice [Gil] was forced to resign in May 2009. From an average of 34.5 cases per month [transferred to civilian justice] during 2008, there have been less than three cases per month during the last four months of 2009.

Gabriel Silva, the defense minister associated with this greatly increased resistance to civilian human rights trials, will soon be in Washington as the Santos government’s ambassador to the United States.

The effect of this big step backward is evident even in the most outrageous recent cases of human rights abuse, including the 2008 Soacha killings, in which dozens of army personnel are facing trial for luring young men from a poor Bogotá slum with promises of employment, then killing them and presenting them as armed-group members killed in combat.

The Coordination report discusses the difficulty of trying the Soacha case.

In the case of the 16 young men from Soacha, the government committed itself to a severe, prompt and exhaustive investigation. More than 2 1/2 years after these crimes, sentences have not resulted. The judicial processes are advancing very slowly, and have been blocked by a coordinated strategy of actions to impede their advance. Most of this strategy originates from the military, and with the Military Defender’s Office’s efforts to achieve impunity in this case.

Of the 62 military personnel implicated, 54 have been set free pending trial because preventive detention deadlines have passed. ... In other cases, which don’t have as much visibility, impunity is much greater.

The report goes on to describe a situation that plainly violates the condition in U.S. foreign aid law regarding military cooperation with human rights cases.

During the past year there has been an enormous backward movement in the conditions that had been reached with regard to military subjection to civilian authority. Military commanders, from the defense minister to the commanders of different forces, carried out a series of activities that implied a refusal to acknowledge the principle of civilian control of the Army. ...

[These include] the institutional and collective defense of Colonel [Alfonso] Plazas Vega, before the [June 2010] verdict condemning him to 30 years in prison for the aggravated disappearance of 30 people following the [1985] retaking of the Palace of Justice. The military high command, acting jointly, appeared in combat dress before the television cameras, together with the President of the Republic, in a speech that publicly rejected the decision of the judge who issued the sentence [who shortly afterward was forced to leave the country].

Juan Manuel Santos, as president, is empowered to restore the primacy of civilian justice in Colombia’s human rights prosecutions. Until there is clear evidence that he is doing so, though, a State Department human rights certification will clash badly with a worsening reality, and could send a damaging signal at a sensitive moment.

Adam talks about Colombia's charges that Venezuela is helping the FARC guerrillas, the validity of Colombia's appeals to the OAS and UNASUR, and the reasons why Colombia may have brought its complaint now. This podcast was recorded the evening of July 29, while UNASUR foreign ministers were meeting – and ultimately failing - to resolve the crisis.

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A big white teddy bear sat on top of one of the little coffin boxes, and red roses on the other three. The remains of the four sisters were finally being returned to their mother, Blanca Nieves Meneses.

“I never thought that this is the way they would be returned to me,” said their surviving sister Nancy. “I always kept hoping that they would be returned alive.”
At this ceremony in the offices of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in Bogotá, Colombia, the Attorney General’s office returned the remains of the four young women, the youngest just thirteen, to their family. A paramilitary leader had confessed, as part of the Justice and Peace process, about where the bodies were buried in common graves. At most, those who carried out the crime can receive five to eight years in jail under this transitional justice framework.

The CTI, Colombia’s forensic team, looked on. They seemed both proud to have helped return the remains and personally shaken by the emotion in the room.

“Their crime was to be young and beautiful in a war zone,” said one of the speakers. They were brutally killed by paramilitaries who operated, according to the human rights group MINGA, “with total impunity” in the region.

Colombia’s Vice President Francisco Santos attended. He spoke of a family who had lost one son to the ELN, one to the FARC, and one to paramilitaries, and called for reconciliation. “Today, one family can begin achieving closure and today, the government is strengthening its presence so that blood will stop flowing in Colombia.” But he did not simply state that in this particular case, these unspeakable crimes had been committed by the paramilitaries.

After the young women were disappeared, their mother and sister waged a years-long struggle, at great risk, to achieve justice for Yenny Patricia, Mónica Liliana, Nelsy Milena and María Nely Galárraga Meneses. Their struggle became a catalyst for many other mothers in the region. “I am just a campesina from Putumayo who sows rice and corn,” Ms. Meneses explained. “But I tell all other mothers of the disappeared to keep searching. Justice should not be delayed,” she said, with bitterness. “Justice should arrive on time.” She spoke of the frustrations of trying to receive reparations or other help from the government.

A human rights activist I know saw me sitting in the back and grabbed my shoulder. “I just have to say, I just have to say, this happened in the context of Plan Colombia.” And indeed, this brutal killing and many others occurred as the United States heavily backed a Colombian army offensive into Putumayo in the early years of Plan Colombia, an offensive which expanded side by side with an increased paramilitary presence in the region.

She played the lyre, she liked to play mini-soccer, she liked best to eat fried eggs and french fries, she was an artist, were some of the memories as their relatives remembered them. The sisters Galárraga Meneses, Nelsy Milena, Mónica Liliana, Yenny Patricia, and María Nely.

This is cross-posted from the Latin America Working Group's blog, the LAWG Blog. It was written by Lisa Haugaard.

On July 15, Colombia’s Defense Ministry abruptly held a press conference to denounce that high-ranking leaders of the FARC guerrilla group are present in neighboring Venezuela. This announcement, coming just over three weeks before the end of Colombian President Álvaro Uribe’s term in office, immediately reversed what had been a slow warming of relations between both countries’ governments.

Colombian President-elect Juan Manuel Santos had invited Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez to attend his inauguration, and Chávez had authorized a meeting between Venezuela’s foreign minister and Santos’ minister-designate. Neither Chávez’s attendance nor the ministerial meeting are now likely.

Yesterday (July 22), Colombia took its case to the OAS, showing satellite photos and videos indicating a presence of FARC and ELN camps within Venezuelan territory. Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez responded by giving Colombian diplomats 72 hours to leave Venezuela.

If we have to go to war with Colombia, we’d do it in tears, but we’d do it. I hold responsible President Uribe, who is sick with hatred, because he is headed to the dustbin of history, he’s going directly there, as a token of Yankee imperialism. He ended up isolated in this continent, he didn’t defeat the guerrillas or narcotrafficking, and Venezuela is a victim of all that. I hold him responsible for any aggression against Venezuela.

Added Venezuela’s defense minister, Gen. Carlos Mata Figueroa:

We hold responsible the Colombian oligarchy and its current government … if these brother nations should stain their history with blood.

Tensions between the two countries are dangerously high, though they may subside once Uribe leaves office on August 7, say analysts like Colombian newspaper columnist Laura Gil.

This is above all a breaking of relations with Álvaro Uribe. The political relationship between the two countries is now very deteriorated. The problem for Colombia may come if Chávez concludes that what Uribe did was agreed upon with Santos.

Added former OAS Ambassador Álvaro Tirado Mejía:

Santos will find himself, next August 7, in a situation that paradoxically will be very difficult, but he will also find the way clear to say ‘let’s start over.’

Regarding Santos, Chávez was more conciliatory:

Let’s hope Santos inundates himself with Latin American spirit and understands that governments of the right and left can live together here. We’re obligated to do that.

For his part, the Colombian President-Elect refused to comment.

I think the best contribution we can make is to say nothing. President Uribe is the President of the Republic until August 7. Thank you very much.

Vice-President-Elect Angelino Garzón also took a softer tone, saying that the next government will seek

all diplomatic mechanisms to improve and strengthen relations with all countries in the region, including Venezuela. In the end, the message that we have to give, as governments and as peoples, is the message of unity, of friendship, of cooperation and of peace.

In its lead editorial today El Tiempo, Colombia’s most-circulated daily, warned of the risk of armed confrontation.

All along this lively border, good relations are not an alternative but an obligation. If it is otherwise, those who would pay the consequences are the hundreds of thousands of people who live on both sides of the dividing line. This is without even mentioning the risks of an armed confrontation, since under the current circumstances, a simple spark could ignite a conflagration. This, then, is the occasion to ask the Colombian armed forces to exercise maximum prudence and to avoid falling into traps and provocations.

The U.S. government, through State Department spokesman Philip Crowley, has correctly called on both sides to work together to reduce tensions.

It would be good for the region if those tensions were eased, and it’s a matter of dialogue between Colombia, Venezuela, arrive at a common understanding of how to work cooperatively on the challenges that we face, among them, security challenges. But we certainly support greater interaction, cooperation, dialogue between Colombia and Venezuela to reduce those tensions and increase mutual cooperation.

In a written communication to Agénce France Presse, however, the State Department also called on Venezuela to respond to Colombia’s allegations of FARC presence.

Colombia’s allegations need to be taken very seriously. Venezuela has an obligation to Colombia and to the international community to fully investigate this information and move to prevent the use of its sovereign territory by terrorist groups.

OAS Secretary-General José Miguel Insulza called for the two countries to renew dialogue on their own.

We succeeded in overcoming serious crises some years ago. I hope they can make it now as well, but the steps should be taken by Venezuela and Colombia, and I expect they can come to terms over the next months.

But Ecuador’s foreign minister, Ricardo Patiño, had very strong criticisms for the Secretary-General who, he said, ignored Ecuador’s calls to delay yesterday’s OAS discussion, which ended with a heated exchange that increased tensions.

I insisted, in the letter sent by the government of Ecuador to OAS Secretary General, I told him that the issue should not be discussed in such a precipitous manner, but let’s change precipitous for irresponsible. This is the result of not paying attention to what is going on in the region. Unfortunately who was called to avoid the severing of diplomatic relations and who was also warned about what could happen was not up to his duty. And that gentleman is OAS Secretary General Jose Miguel Insulza.

In the latest development, the secretary-general of the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR), former Argentine President Néstor Kirchner, announced that he will meet separately with presidents Uribe and Chávez on August 4 and 5.

The Washington Office on Latin America has posted a statement about the crisis.

While the U.S. has long been a close ally of the Colombian government, we believe that it is most in the interest of the United States - indeed, of all parties involved - to reduce tensions and resolve this crisis through even-handed diplomacy and communication. Our policy over the next several weeks must place the greatest priority on a peaceful resolution of this crisis, and must take great care not to fan the flames.