Adam Isacson's Latin America Blog

On the right, legal and institutional victories won by the residents of Curvaradó and Jiguamiandó, Colombia, two Afro-Colombian communities struggling to reclaim land violently taken from them by paramilitary-tied landowners in 1997.

On the left, the names of community leaders murdered for trying to get their land back.

From an excellent new report by Anthony Dest, a former intern and WOLA staffer who spent 6 weeks last year in the two communities in Chocó department, near Panama.

At “Just the Facts”: For Colombia’s military, a new era of reduced civilian human rights prosecutions

A very contentious debate is nearly over. Last Wednesday, Colombia’s Senate approved [legislation][1] that will allow the country’s military to try its own personnel in many more cases of human rights abuse. On Monday, Colombia’s House of Representatives is expected to do the same.

This is a triumph for Colombia’s 280,000-strong armed forces, which have been ever more vocally demanding that the civilian justice system have less jurisdiction over them. But it is a setback for human rights.

Since about 1997, Colombia’s civilian courts had steadily been gaining authority to investigate and judge military personnel believed to have committed crimes against the population. While Colombia’s civilian prosecutors and judges are no models of speed and efficiency, they proved far more likely to hold abusive soldiers accountable than the military’s own justice system, which proved exceedingly lenient in such cases. By the 2000s, civilian courts were handing down historic verdicts, especially in cases of paramilitary killings that benefited from military acquiescence or support. In the past few years, as soldiers stood accused of killing [as many as 4,716][2] citizens — many of them so-called “false positives,” innocent people falsely presented as armed-group members killed in combat — civilian courts convicted a few hundred more, mostly low ranking, military personnel.

That momentum has now stalled. Military demands for “judicial security,” championed by a government that needed military support for its peace talks with guerrillas, have led to legislation that is likely to send many more abuse cases to military courts.

The new law “runs counter to the standards of international human rights law, and many of its provisions run openly contrary to that body of law that regulates, among other issues, the use of force and the administration of justice in any state,” notes a stern seven-page statement [[PDF][3]] issued last week by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights’ field office in Colombia.

“This bill’s provisions seriously disagree with the state’s other international commitments, especially those regarding the duty to respect international humanitarian law,” contends the Colombian Commission of Jurists [[PDF][4]]. “So many such obligations will be transgressed if this bill is approved, that it is no exaggeration to say that since the 1991 Constitution went into effect, this is one of the legislative initiatives that has most threatened the applicability of fundamental rights in Colombia.”

The bill about to receive final passage is “implementing” legislation. It follows a constitutional amendment that Colombia’s Congress [passed][5] late last year. The earlier provision gave the military justice system “exclusive jurisdiction” over all military abuses “related to the conflict,” with the exception of a list of seven crimes: crimes against humanity, genocide, forced disappearances, extrajudicial executions, sexual violence, torture, and forced displacement. These crimes will continue to go directly to the civilian court system. Others, like assault, illegal surveillance, or homicide that does not meet the definition of “extrajudicial execution,” will go to military justice.

The current bill adds further guidelines explaining how the military courts will deal with violations of international humanitarian law (rules of war); defining the crime of “extrajudicial execution,” which doesn’t exist in Colombia’s penal code; and explaining how disputes between civilian and military jurisdiction will be resolved.

In response to outcry from Colombian and international human rights advocates, Colombia’s Congress has made important improvements to the bill’s language. But serious problems remain.

Why does Colombia need to create the charge of “extrajudicial execution”? Why shouldn’t “homicides” go to the civilian court system?

The hundreds of military personnel accused of committing “false positive” murders are currently facing charges of “homicide,” “aggravated homicide,” or “homicide of a protected person.” All of these crimes, the UN High Commissioner’s Office notes [[PDF][3]], “are under the exclusive competence of the [civilian] judicial branch. These must be investigated by the [civilian] Prosecutor-General’s Office [Fiscalía] and judged by autonomous and independent judges.”

But Article 43 of the legislation codifies a new type of crime, “extrajudicial execution,” in line with the constitutional amendment. It’s not clear why this is needed.

More at “Just the Facts*

At “Just the Facts”: U.S. military exercises in April and May

Belize

• On May 15th, 24 members of the Belize National Coast Guard and 5 members of the Belizean Anti-Drug Unit (ADU) graduated from a Special Warfare Operations Course. This 5-week training course, supervised and conducted in Belize by Special Warfare Combatant Crewmen of the U.S. Navy, “covered Navigation, Small-Boat Handing, Communications, Board Search and Seizure, Vectoring, Radar and GPS Operation, Weapon-Handling Skills, and Waterborne Techniques.”

• “Approximately 90 airmen deployed from Hurlburt Field, Florida, are building school structures from the ground up throughout Belize as part of an exercise known as New Horizons,” reports the U.S. 12th Air Force. “The first of the airmen assigned to the 823rd Rapid Engineer Deployable Heavy Operational Repair Squadron Engineers, commonly known as RED HORSE, began to arrive in Belize in February to begin pre-construction activities and set up logistics for the three-month training exercise that started April 1 and is scheduled to run through the end of June.”

Belize, El Salvador, Panama

• “From April through June 2013, U.S. military personnel will be in Belize, El Salvador, and Panama to conduct comprehensive humanitarian civic assistance exercises,” reports U.S. Southern Command. “As part of the Beyond the Horizon and New Horizons exercise programs, troops specializing in engineering, construction and health care are providing needed services to communities while receiving valuable deployment training and building important relationships with partner nations.”

Brazil

• On May 20-22 Brazil and the United States held their 29th annual army-to-army staff talks. These meetings “help strengthen professional partnerships and increase interaction between armies” and often result in “various events, training, exercises and exchanges together.” reports U.S. Army South, a component of U.S. Southern Command. This year, “the two delegations drafted a list of 29 Agreed to Actions (ATAs) that covered a wide range of professional exchanges designed to improve the working relationship between the two armies.”

Continued at “Just the Facts”

In this photo posted by the FARC guerrillas’ negotiating team in Havana, one of those posing for the picture is Venezuela’s envoy to the talks, Roy Chaderton. Another is a cardboard cutout of guerrilla leader Simón Trinidad, who is in a U.S. prison.

“Some of the Guatemalan troops carrying out the massacres may have heard that the American president was supporting their leader. As for Ríos Montt, Reagan’s dismissal of the reports of the human rights organizations that monitored the conflict may have encouraged him not to take them seriously.”

— From a masterful 5,000-word essay about Guatemala and the trial of former dictator Efraín Ríos Montt, by Aryeh Neier in the current New York Review of Books.

A member of the carro, the group of inmates who control the Vista Hermosa prison in Ciudad Bolivar, Venezuela, during a routine patrol.

From a remarkable and troubling set of photos by Sebastián Liste, and reported by Jorge Benezra, at the website of Time magazine. “Outside its walls, the Venezuelan national guard patrols; inside, the inmates live and die in a world of their own making.”