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.

A recent article in the Boston Globe argues that Mexico is a case of creeping military rule, abetted by the United States. Adam explores that concern, as well as recent efforts to limit the Mexican armed forces' power.

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Twenty-seven members of the U.S. House of Representatives signed and sent to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton a letter (PDF) expressing their concern regarding the human rights violations and violations to the democratic order in Honduras that continue one year after the June 28, 2009 coup ousted President Manuel Zelaya.

The letter asks Secretary Clinton to send Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor Michael Posner to Honduras "to make a prompt assessment of what is occurring there with regard to human and political rights" in order to justify continuing U.S. support for Honduras without "significant restrictions."

Below is the full-text of the letter. You can download the PDF here.

Dear Secretary Clinton:

Next Monday, June 28th , marks the first anniversary of the coup in Honduras. We write to express our continuing concern regarding the grievous violations of human rights and the democratic order which commenced with the coup and continue to this day. We recognize the challenges facing President Lobo and welcome efforts to reconcile the country and strengthen the rule of law that are consistent with international human rights and humanitarian law.

It is our belief that the State Department should rise to this occasion and assign Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor Michael Posner to visit Honduras and make a prompt assessment of what is occurring there with regards to human and political rights. Without an early and accurate report, we would be reluctant to see U.S. support for Honduras continue without significant restrictions.

During your recent visit to Latin America, you asserted that Honduras has made progress since President Lobo took office in January 2010. However, it is our view that political violence continues to wrack Honduras, and insecurity grips much of the population. Reports indicate that many Hondurans fear for their safety, lack confidence in the rule of law, and remain subject to the whims of those in power, including architects and holdovers from last year's coup that are protected by a climate of impunity.

In this year alone, nine journalists in Honduras have been murdered, and several more have been tortured, kidnapped and suffered death threats, including threats against their families. Also, there are cases of reporters who have been forced to leave the country due to these threats, some of them looking for asylum here in the U.S. and Canada. Members of social movements who oppose or criticize the government have been victims of violence and subject to ongoing intimidation. Several judges have been summarily dismissed for raising principled questions about the legality of the coup. Against this backdrop, a number of Army officials suspected of being involved in the coup have been appointed to executive positions in the Lobo government. Most notably, General Romeo Vásquez Velásquez, Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces at the time of the coup, is now the head of Hondutel, the national telecommunications company. The appointment of Velásquez, a primary actor in the coup, is troubling because in his new position he controls the country's telephone, Internet and fax lines at a time when human rights advocates and political opposition leaders fear they are being persecuted for their activism.

President Lobo is eager, in his words, to bury the past. But these violations of human rights and democratic order persist in Honduras on his watch. At the same time, Honduras has failed to live up to its commitments regarding the Truth Commission and establishing a government of national unity, which the U.S. last year deemed as prerequisites for Honduras being treated again with the legitimacy of a democratic government.

We strongly believe U.S. policymakers need an accurate assessment of the current human rights situation in Honduras in order to formulate policies that can support the Lobo administration's efforts to strengthen the rule of law and return the democratic order to the country. We strongly and respectfully recommend that you direct Assistant Secretary Posner to visit Honduras for the purpose of collecting the facts on the current human and political rights situation and reporting back to you and to us as promptly as possible, including but not limited to, the following issues:

1. The murders, assaults, threats and exiling of journalists.
2. The murders, assaults, threats and exiling of members of the Resistance Movement, labor unions and the Afro, Indigenous and LGBT communities.
3. The dismissal by the Supreme Court of judges who opposed the coup.
4. The resources and mandate available to Ana Pineda, special advisor to President Lobo on human rights, to carry out her work.
5. The potential for the Truth Commission to lead to justice and reconciliation.

The Congress needs a clear and candid assessment by the U.S. Department of State concerning conditions on the ground in Honduras as they are - not as we might wish or imagine them to be. Our country cannot claim to uphold the democratic values at stake in Honduras or the region more broadly, and we in Congress cannot countenance additional support for the government of Honduras, without a reliable report about the status of political and human rights as they prevail under President Lobo and a plan for addressing these conditions effectively.

• On Sunday, a Colombian Army jungle raid freed four policemen who had been held hostage by the FARC guerrillas since the 1990s. Colombian Defense Minister Gabriel Silva said that although there was combat, the rescue took place without a single death. It happened less than 20 miles from the site where the 2008 “Operación Jaque” hostage rescue occurred. Details of the operation – in particular, how it happened without the guerrillas carrying out their threat to kill hostages at the first sign of a rescue attempt – are still emerging. We’re posting links to coverage here.

• The rescue happened on the same weekend that Colombia’s principal newsmagazine, Semana, reported that the country’s military, angered and “discouraged” by verdicts in high-profile human rights cases, had become almost inoperable. “The situation is so delicate that some analysts have dared to propose it as the reason [the Army] has not repeated its strong blows against the FARC high command, such as the bombing of Raúl Reyes and Operación Jaque in 2008.”

• Meanwhile, a week before Sunday’s presidential election runoff in Colombia, former Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos leads opponent Antanas Mockus by a broad margin. 66.5 to 27.4 percent, according to the last Gallup poll.

• Mexico is angry about a June 7 incident in which a Border Patrol agent fired across the border at a group of people throwing rocks, killing a 15-year-old boy in Ciudad Juárez. Mexico’s Interior Secretary issued a diplomatic note expressing concern, and legislators of all major parties have called for the agent’s extradition to Mexico. The State Department’s response was terse.

• “[M]ost of Chile didn’t notice the dictatorship of Pinochet. On the contrary, they felt relieved,” Chile’s ambassador to Argentina, Miguel Otero, told an Argentine newspaper. Otero downplayed the 1973-1990 dictatorship’s human rights abuses (“everywhere in the world, there are people who abuse their authority”), adding that had it not been for Pinochet’s coup, “Chile would be Cuba today.” The resulting political firestorm not only forced Otero’s resignation; it shone a light on the pro-Pinochet elements in the right-of-center coalition backing recently inaugurated President Sebastián Piñera.

• Peru’s defense minister, Rafael Rey, accused the country’s human rights groups of going on a “witch hunt” against the armed forces.

• Honduran President Porfirio Lobo claimed that a conspiracy, possibly involving the right wing of his own National Party, is plotting a coup to overthrow him. “I know who you are,” Lobo cryptically warned the alleged plotters, whoever they are.

• Though it wasn’t on the official agenda, the question of whether to re-admit post-coup Honduras to the Organization of American States was a dominant point of discussion at the annual OAS General Assembly meeting in Lima, Peru. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton made a pitch for Honduras’s reinstatement, but a significant number of countries demand that the Tegucigalpa government take further steps to demonstrate that democracy has truly been restored. Meanwhile, U.S. aid to the Honduran military re-started with the delivery of twenty-five trucks.

• Secretary Clinton’s trip to the region was also notable for a surprisingly friendly visit to Ecuador, where leftist President Rafael Correa declared, “The new left that I represent is not anti-anything. We’re not anti-American; we love America.” Correa’s new tone has been marked by kind words from Colombia on border-security cooperation, postponed and less-frequent meetings with Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez, and increasing opposition to the President on Ecuador’s left.

On Wednesday a Colombian court did something that only a few Latin American justice systems have managed to do: send a high-ranking former military officer to prison for an abuse of human rights. A judge sentenced Colonel Alfonso Plazas Vega to 30 years.

The case goes back to 1985, when Colombia’s now-defunct M-19 guerrilla group staged a takeover of Colombia’s Palace of Justice (supreme court building) in downtown Bogotá. The military assaulted the building, and the resulting violence and fire killed over 100 people. Twenty-five years later, the Palace of Justice episode remains an open wound in Colombian politics. The right blames the M-19 for what Colombians call the “holocaust”; the left blames the armed forces.

Col. Plazas was on trial for a specific abuse committed in the aftermath of the Palace assault. Eleven employees of the court who survived the attack, mostly cafeteria workers, were taken to the Army’s Cavalry School in northern Bogotá. They never left. Witnesses said that they were tortured and killed. The case against Col. Plazas, who is now 65 years old, was reopened in 2006 after new video footage of the attack showed that the eleven left the Palace of Justice alive.

Relatives of the victims called the ruling against Col. Plazas “a milestone in the history of the fight against impunity” and evidence that “the country can meet international standards of justice.”

Colombian President Álvaro Uribe, who in 2002 had named Col. Plazas to be his government’s first “drug czar,” didn’t share that view. Appearing on Wednesday in a joint press conference with visiting U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, an angry Uribe said:

This is something that took place in 1985. This was a criminal alliance between drug traffickers and guerrillas that murdered a supreme court of justice. The — none of the criminals are in jail. And now I see that a member of the armed forces of Colombia has been convicted, someone who was simply trying to fulfill their duty. That hurts. That makes me sad.

A day later, appearing with the high command, Uribe was even more forceful:

The way to support the victims of the Palace of Justice is not by making victims out of members of the armed forces. … All we demand of the justice system is impartial and opportune justice for the selfless members of the armed forces, they can’t be the object of mistreatment for diverting the crimes of terrorism throughout our history.

Uribe proposed the passage of a law to protect the military from human rights charges. While his proposal was light on specifics, the President called for a requirement that higher standards of evidence be used in cases against officers.

The president’s words come a week after an episode in which he reacted aggressively after a prosecutor — apparently in error — issued a citation to open a human rights investigation against Gen. Freddy Padilla de León, the chief of the country’s armed forces. On that occasion, Uribe called the prosecutors “useful idiots of terrorism who do nothing more than make false accusations.”

The atmosphere in Bogotá is tense. Colombia’s Supreme Court, in a clear response to Uribe, issued a statement “rejecting expressions, intrusions and undue interference” in judicial decisions. Gustavo Petro, a senator and recently defeated presidential candidate who is a former M-19 member, used Twitter to warn fellow ex-guerrillas to “heighten their security measures” in the wake of the court’s ruling.

• Colombia’s first round of presidential voting is over, and results have been tallied. Former Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos came close to avoiding a second-round runoff vote with 46.6%, about ten points higher than polls had been predicting. Former Bogotá mayor Antanas Mockus will face him on June 20; he won 21.5%, more than 10 points lower than polls had foreseen. Santos won 31 of Colombia’s 32 departments; Mockus only won in Putumayo.

• Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton will attend the OAS General Assembly in Peru on June 6-8. She will spend the rest of June 8 in Ecuador and Colombia, and go on to Barbados on June 9.

• The Washington Post caused a stir last Monday with an article presenting evidence from a new witness claiming that President Álvaro Uribe’s brother, Santiago, led a paramilitary group in Yarumal, Antioquia, in the 1990s. President Uribe responded by citing the “capacity” of “criminals” to “penetrate a serious newspaper like the Washington Post.”

• In the wake of a wave of threats, two human rights defenders were killed in Colombia: victims’ leader Rogelio Martínez, in San Onofre, Sucre; and Alexánder Quintero, in Santander de Quilichao, Cauca.

• After an urban offensive in Kingston slums that killed more than 70 people, Jamaican authorities have yet to capture drug lord Christopher “Dudus” Coke, wanted in extradition by the United States.

• Two important human rights documents released last week: the Americas section of Amnesty International’s annual report, and the report on Colombia by Philip Alston, the UN Special Rapporteur for Extrajudicial Executions.

• 12 Republican senators sent a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton calling for Venezuela to be added to the U.S. government’s list of terrorist-sponsoring states.

• Though it’s only available to subscribers, William Finnegan’s New Yorker article about the La Familia drug cartel in Mexico is worth a read - or just listen to the podcast interview with the author.

• Paraguay ended a 30-day state of emergency imposed in five northern provinces to combat a small guerrilla group called the Paraguayan People’s Army (EPP). Not a single EPP member was captured as a result of the military deployment. No serious human rights abuses were reported, but critics voiced concerns about giving the army an increased internal security role.

• Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega said that he would dissolve the country’s congress if the business community supported his decision.

• El Salvador’s president, Mauricio Funes, is completing his first year in office with very high approval ratings but significant disagreements with his own party, the former FMLN guerrilla movement.

• The head of Colombia’s armed forces, Gen. Freddy Padilla, announced his resignation, effective on August 7, the day Colombia would inaugurate its next president.

An NPR analysis of Mexican government news releases finds surprisingly little mention of actions against Mexico's largest narcotrafficking organization, the Sinaloa cartel.

• Mexican President Felipe Calderón paid a two-day official state visit to Washington, which included an address to a joint session of the U.S. Congress (video / transcript). Calderón called on Congress to reinstate a lapsed ban on U.S. sales of assault weapons, thousands of which cross the border into Mexico and end up in the hands of violent drug cartels. He was also strongly critical of Arizona’s new illegal immigration statute, calling it “racial profiling.”

  While Republican legislators’ attendance at the speech was sparse, border-state Republicans criticized it harshly. “The Mexican government has made it very clear for many years that it holds American sovereignty in contempt and President Calderon’s behavior as a guest of the Congress confirms and underscores this attitude,” said one California congressman.

• Of all the media coverage of Calderón’s trip, the story that probably caused the biggest stir was an investigative piece by National Public Radio contending that Mexico’s largest drug-trafficking organization, the Sinaloa cartel, is getting favorable treatment. It found “strong evidence of collusion between elements of the Mexican army and the Sinaloa cartel in the violent border city of Juarez.”

• The Mexican military’s troubled record of impunity for human rights abuses was the subject of statements from Human Rights Watch and from WOLA, LAWG and three Mexican human rights groups.

• Two relevant hearings occurred in the U.S. Senate last week. The Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Human Rights and the Rule of Law discussed “Drug Enforcement and the Rule of Law: Mexico and Colombia.” The Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Subcommittee on Contracting Oversight covered “Counternarcotics Contracts in Latin America.”

  The committee chair of the latter hearing, Sen. Clare McCaskill, was so disappointed with how little she learned about private contractors’ role in counter-drug aid that she issued a statement threatening to subpoena the State and Defense departments.

• Polling for Colombia’s May 30 first-round presidential elections seems to show the challenger, former Bogotá mayor Antanas Mockus, no longer surging — though not exactly losing ground. President Álvaro Uribe’s former defense minister, Juan Manuel Santos, now holds a slim lead. However, as El Nuevo Herald notes, Mockus may have a second-round advantage, as polling seems to point to him getting most of the votes from people who support candidates likely to lose in the first round.

• The OAS Inter-American Human Rights Commission carried out follow-up work on an earlier report about the human rights situation in post-coup Honduras. Its press release voiced “deep concern” about waves of killings and threats against journalists, judges and human rights defenders critical of the June 28, 2009 coup. The release notes near-total government inaction when it comes to investigating or prosecuting these crimes:

The Commission was informed that only one person is being held in custody for human rights violations, only 12 have been charged, and the cases are not moving forward, among other reasons due to the lack of investigation by the various State bodies, particularly the security forces handling the investigations.

• Rogelio Martínez, a victims’ rights activist in the municipality of San Onofre, Sucre, Colombia, was killed by a gunman on a motorcycle on May 18. San Onofre is known throughout Colombia for the discovery of a large number of mass graves dug by paramilitaries who carried out a string of massacres a decade ago. The graves’ discovery was made possible by the mid-2000s work of victims’ activists, who at the time had the support of the local military leadership. Threats against the victims' movement in San Onofre have since worsened.

• Last weekend, Brazilian President Luis Inacio Lula da Silva brokered an apparent nuclear deal with Iran. Links to media coverage of the deal are here.

• A Washington Post piece cites documents and testimony from former Colombian guerrilla leaders indicating that members of Spain’s Basque separatist terror group, ETA, may have trained at camps maintained by Colombia’s FARC guerrillas in Zulia and Apure, Venezuela.

• The Just the Facts project obtained a copy of the Defense Department’s “Section 2011” report (PDF) documenting Special Operations Forces’ training with foreign militaries during 2008.

A Senate hearing on aid to Mexico and Colombia coincides with Mexican President Felipe Calderón's state visit to Washington. The hearing's discussion of the human rights impact of military programs was disappointing at best. The Republican Foreign Relations Committee report mentioned in the podcast is here.

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Four Washington, DC-based NGOs sent an open letter to Colombia's presidential and vice-presidential candidates earlier today. They ask, "How will you pledge to build a nation where rights are respected and peace is possible?" The four organizations are the Center for International Policy, Latin America Working Group Education Fund, Washington Office on Latin America, and U.S. Office on Colombia ("Just the Facts" is a joint project of three of them).

In the letter, the groups ask the candidates to address seven questions:

1. What will you do to promote progress towards a just and lasting peace?
2. What will you do to strengthen the rule of law so that those who commit grave human rights violations are brought to justice?
3. What will you do to ensure a climate in which human rights defenders can carry out their important work?
4. What will you do to support the rights of all victims of violence to truth, justice and meaningful reparations?
5. How will you address the needs of Colombia's 4 million internally displaced persons?
6. What actions will you take to protect Afro-Colombian and indigenous communities' human rights and territorial rights?
7. What steps will you take to dismantle paramilitaries and their successor organizations?

The letter ends with this: "True security can only be built on a foundation of rule of law and respect for human rights. Ultimately, it can only be permanently achieved through the construction of a just and lasting peace. These goals have been postponed for too long, at great cost in human life. Now is the time to embrace them."

The full text of the letter is available as a PDF download in English and Spanish.

Here is the press release:

Washington, May 12, 2010- In an open letter released to Colombia's presidential and vice-presidential candidates earlier today, the Washington Office on Latin America, US Office on Colombia, Latin America Working Group Education Fund and the Center for International Policy urged the candidates to outline their strategy for building a new Colombia that respects human rights and works towards a politically negotiated solution to the country's internal armed conflict.

"Colombia's next president has a historic opportunity to say, never again: Never again will its armed forces commit systematic abuses like the 'false positive' scandal," remarked Lisa Haugaard, executive director of the Latin America Working Group. "Those involved in ordering and carrying out these abuses must be brought to justice for once and for all."

The four US-based groups asked Colombia's candidates to outline what steps they will take to end the internal armed conflict. "Colombia's conflict has killed more than 30,000 people--both combatants and non-combatants--over the past eight years. Before the conflict claims another 30,000, Colombia's next president must seize the initiative and take steps toward a negotiated solution," said CIP Associate Abigail Poe.

According to the four signatory organizations, which have years of experience working on Colombia issues, the future President can lead the nation in building a more just and inclusive society that promotes and respects the rights of all of its citizens. They can do this by combating impunity, supporting human rights defenders, guaranteeing the rights of victims, addressing internal displacement, dismantling existent paramilitary structures, and protecting the territorial rights of Afro-Colombian and Indigenous communities.

"The next President can no longer ignore the over 4 million Colombians who suffer daily due to internal displacement," said WOLA Senior Associate Gimena Sanchez. In 2009, 280,000 new persons were internally displaced. Currently, thirty four indigenous groups are at risk of physically disappearing and becoming culturally extinct due in large part to violence and internal displacement. "The next administration cannot allow 34 indigenous groups to become extinct or massacres and brazen abuses of Afro-Colombians to continue to take place."

"The new Colombian administration must make the protection of Colombia's human rights defenders a top priority and should embrace opposition voices," underscored Kelly Nicholls, executive director from the US Office on Colombia. "The systematic threats, attacks, and harassments against human rights defenders must become no more than a shameful memory from the past."

Please find the full letters in English and Spanish.

For further information please contact:

Gimena Sanchez, WOLA, (202) 797-2171 ext. 205
Lisa Haugaard, LAWG, (202) 546-7010
Kelly Nicholls, USOC, (202) 232-8090
Abigail Poe, CIP, (202) 232-3317