By Gustavo Gallón, Director, Colombian Commission of Jurists, Bogotá. This is a shortened version of a paper presented at the April 1 Washington conference; in it Gallón analyzes Colombia's contemporary violence in historical and comparative perspective.
As a result of political violence, 10 people are killed a day, on average, in Colombia (30% by guerrilla groups, 70% by military and paramilitary forces). Of these 10, three die as a direct result of armed combat. The other seven are killed at home, at the office or in the streets: political activists, trade-unionists, peasant activists, human rights defenders.
Twenty years ago, the average number of political killings was very high, but less than today: back then, one person was killed every four days for political reasons. That means 100 people each year.
Since the early 1980s this number has increased enormously, year after year. In 1985, the number of political killings numbered more than 1,000, 10 times more than five years earlier. In 1988, more than 4,000 people died for these reasons, 40 times more than in 1980.
That is the average today: between three and four thousand people have died and continue to die for sociopolitical reasons each year in Colombia since 1988, an average of 10 a day.
This political violence accounts for almost 15% of the total violence in the country. Approximately 30,000 persons are killed in Colombia annually, including the 4,000 murdered for political reasons, and another 25,000 due to common crime or in unclear circumstances.
Total violence has also increased over the last 20 years. In 1980, the total number of homicides in Colombia was around 10,000 people. In 1988, it totaled more than 20,000. Since 1991, it has approached 30,000 people each year.
In addition to the killings, the sociopolitical violence in Colombia is provoking an alarming phenomenon of forced displacement of people. More than one million persons have been displaced since 1985, many silently and individually. In the last three years the cases of collective or massive displacements have become increasingly common: whole towns of thousands of people have had to be abandoned by men, and especially by women and children, terrified by massacres or threats of massacres near their homes. Far from being stopped, the internal displacement of people is increasing enormously: 130,000 persons were displaced in 1995, 180,000 in 1996, and 250,000 in 1997. Each hour three more families are displaced in Colombia, on average.
Colombia has also suffered a very high rate of kidnapings: approximately 1,200 each year, for an average of three each day. Half of these kidnapings are attributed to the guerrilla groups. Most of the other half are attributed to present or former state agents.
Despite this terrible situation, Colombia is not a country of murderers, Colombia is not the kingdom of death. It is difficult to perceive this idea when the landscape I have just described is so bloody. But Colombia is really a beautiful country. The majority of the people are peaceful and honest, hard workers, and especially, have an immense will to live, reflected in their music, their hospitality and even, at times, in their ingenuousness. It is like Greece or Brazil in the 60's and 70's, or like Argentina, Uruguay, and Chile in the 70's and early 80's, or like El Salvador or Guatemala for the last 30 years.
Like those countries, Colombia is marked by major social differences, where some guerrilla groups were created in the 60's. They proclaimed to combat both social injustice and the political monopoly, at the time made up of two main parties, the Liberals and the Conservatives. Some of the guerrilla groups made peace agreements with the government in the early 90's after the decline of that political monopoly, and participated in drafting more democratic rules of power adopted in a new 1991 Constitution. Other guerrilla groups continued active, perhaps convinced that political reform alone was not enough to warrant abandoning a struggle based on the ideal of transforming the whole society through the taking of power by arms.
As in Greece, Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, El Salvador or Guatemala, the Army in Colombia has been very involved in the practice of torture and other human rights violations. Most victims have not been soldiers or guerrillas, but civilians. But, in contrast to Greece and most Latin American countries, this tragedy continues to this day. Torture is no longer the main practice; instead it is murder or forced disappearance. The Colombian military didn't stage a coup d'état, like the Greek colonels, or the officers of the Southern Cone or Guatemala; rather, their direct participation in violations has gradually decreased while the involvement of apparently civilian, paramilitary groups, has systematically increased over the last five years. These differences, unfortunately, make the Colombian situation more dramatic, difficult, and painful than the terrible situation suffered by other countries over the last three decades.
The most infamous period for the practice of torture in Colombia was in the late 70's. Many people were arrested and tortured, especially after the guerrilla group M-19 stole 5,000 weapons from the Army January 1, 1979, through a tunnel.
Torture proved to be useful for capturing some guerrilla leaders and members. But it didn't prove to be effective for winning the war. What's more, torture practiced at that time resulted in serious disaffection on the part of large sectors of society from the Armed Forces.
This disaffection occurred even if other important sectors of society supported the practice of torture. Certainly, in public, people avoided stating what some said in private about the use of torture as the only means that could destroy the internal enemy. But it was quite common to see the most powerful newspapers denying the existence of torture. The military argued that denouncing torture was merely a guerrilla tactic, while prosecutors linked to the Army investigated claims of torture in order to absolve the perpetrators and indict the victims of torture as slanderers. Along with people who were tortured, I personally suffered this kind of harassment when I assisted them as their attorney.
The violation caused by torture is not limited to physical or psychological mistreatment. It is complemented by the falsification of the truth and the persecution of people interested in this truth. Sometimes it seemed, in the late 70's and the early 80's in Colombia, that society was divided between those who believed that there was torture in the country and those who didn't believe it, who didn't want to believe it.
It was necessary to attempt to use different legal procedures in order to obtain a formal declaration of the occurrence of torture. Today nobody denies that the Army tortured extensively in the early 80's. But the strong denial of its existence during those years allowed its practice against who knows how many people, and avoided the punishment of the perpetrators. Nobody has been condemned for torture in Colombia, in contrast with Greece, Argentina, or Chile.
One person is recorded as being tortured in Colombia each day, on average. Less than 10% of these cases are denounced by the victims themselves. The rest, more than 90%, are persons found dead with signs of torture.
That means that torture continues to be practiced in Colombia today. But the level of killings and forced displacements is so high that many of the victims might think that fortunately they are lucky to be alive, so better not to denounce the crime.
Consequently, the real number of cases of torture in Colombia must be greater than what is known. However, it seems that there are fewer instances of torture than political murders and forced disappearances, which have become the preferred means of combating the internal enemy today. Nowadays, torture and arbitrary detentions alone are seen as less useful techniques.
Another cause of perplexity about the Colombian situation is the existence of links between human rights violations and drug trafficking. They certainly exist, but not to the point where one can identify the war on drugs with respect for human rights. Many paramilitary groups are supported by drug traffickers who have become powerful landowners, but not only by them; traditional landowners and members of the Armed Forces are also engaged in paramilitary activities. Some guerrilla groups benefit from extortion imposed on coca growers and traffickers, but it would be a grave simplification of reality to think that the entire guerrilla phenomenon can be reduced to a drug-business. Giving military aid to destroy coca crops, kill coca growers and combat guerrilla groups considered supporters of the cocaine trade, risks turning the Southern half of the country into a field of war zone, increasing the possibility of Colombia becoming extinct. Colombia does not need any more violence to redress the human rights situation.
