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RIGHTS-COLOMBIA: Disinterring the 'Disappeared'
By Constanza Vieira
BOGOTÁ, Feb 20 (IPS) - It took Colombia 12 years to pass a law that made
forced disappearance a crime and nearly seven more to launch a concrete
plan to search for the victims. "This is a big stride," Gustavo Gallón,
head of the Colombian Commission of Jurists (CCJ), told IPS.
The National Plan to Search for Disappeared Persons "is aimed at
identifying measures, mechanisms and instruments to help locate the
‘disappeared’," said Ombudsman Volmar Pérez.
The National Institute of Forensic Medicine and Science will now
coordinate a unified registry of victims of forced disappearance, putting
an end to "the tremendous dispersion of statistical data, in which every
state body had its own lists," Pérez told IPS.
The single registry was created in 1978, and regulations for its
implementation were adopted in 2005, but it had not begun to function
until now.
Pérez pointed out that, according to the national plan launched on Feb.
15, "the families of the victims of forced disappearance will play a key
role," because they will have access at every stage: the gathering and
analysis of information, the search itself, the recovery and
identification of the bodies, and the final reburial of the remains.
"The judicial authorities will be obliged to provide them with the
necessary information in order to guarantee the families’ rights," he
added.
The ombudsman is the chair of the National Commission for the Search for
Disappeared Persons (CBPD), which drafted the plan. The commission was
created by the July 2000 law that made forced disappearance a crime.
The CBPD is made up of representatives of the Presidential Programme for
Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law, the Attorney-General’s
Office’s human rights unit, the Procuraduría General de la Nación (office
of the inspector general), the national forensic institute, the Defence
Ministry, the Presidential Programme for the Defence of Freedom
(Fondelibertad), the CCJ, and the Association of Relatives of the
Detained-Disappeared (Asfaddes).
"It's been difficult to find ways to coordinate efforts among the
different government bodies," said Gallón. "Designing this plan was a real
odyssey. Every agency had its reservations, and argued that it couldn't do
this or that…lack of coordination is actually a strategy."
A large number of crimes against humanity have been committed over the
past decades of armed conflict in Colombia and continue to be committed
today, mainly by far-right paramilitary groups with close ties to the
security forces, and to a lesser extent by left-wing guerrillas who took
up arms in the 1960s.
Many of the paramilitary groups, which emerged in the early 1980s,
demobilised last year after closed-door negotiations with the right-wing
government of Álvaro Uribe.
Neither the state, nor human rights groups or victims’ associations, nor
religious organisations know how many people have been "disappeared" in
Colombia.
For example, the data bank on human rights and political violence, put
together by the Centre for Research and Popular Education (CINEP), has
compiled information on 2,121 forced disappearances committed by
paramilitary groups over a 16-year period (1988-2003).
Inspector-General Edgardo Maya said last week that the figure he has is
11,000 cases of forced disappearance in the past 20 years. But he added
that he was sure the figure was inaccurate.
Over the past year, as a result of the paramilitary demobilisation
process, human remains seem to be sprouting out of clandestine cemeteries
that served that purpose for decades, many on estates that were turned
into torture centres, a widespread phenomenon that public opinion was
unaware of until recently.
Many of the burial sites have been located using information provided by
"repentant" paramilitaries keen on obtaining legal benefits like lenient
sentences - a maximum of eight years - in exchange for full confessions
of their crimes against humanity. The benefits are offered by the Justice
and Peace Law, which is governing the paramilitary disarmament process.
The locations of other graves have emerged as paramilitaries who were
already in prison have sought reduced sentences by cooperating with the
courts, while yet others have been found as people living near the torture
centres and clandestine cemeteries, or the families of the "disappeared",
some of whom always knew where their loved ones were buried, have finally
dared to begin speaking out.
The extent of the killing has been revealed as individual graves are
discovered, one next to the other, as well as common graves.
The work undertaken by the teams of forensic anthropologists is extremely
complex. First, the experts must have information on whose bodies are
being searched for. And the field work not only takes extensive planning,
but is also carried out in dangerous conditions, which put the
investigators and sometimes even their families at risk.
The work is often so dangerous that the forensic teams are forced to pull
out of a given area. At other times, due to a lack of funds, only two or
three bodies are removed from common graves, and the rest are left buried.
Government officials have acknowledged the need for greater human
resources to be assigned to the task, as well as improved facilities for
the transportation and storage of remains, given the overwhelming amount
of evidence and the fact that the teams are overworked.
By August, the morgue in the northern city of Barranquilla, for example,
was completely packed.
In the meantime, the bodies keep appearing. In just one year of activity,
the forensic teams operating under the Justice and Peace Unit have found
the remains of over 2,000 people.
But exhumation is just one step towards the identification of a body. The
key questions investigated by forensic experts - who, where, what
happened - go unanswered if there is no information about the victim.
Colombia did not even have a specialised course of study for forensic
anthropologists until 10 years ago, when the public National University
began to offer a degree.
"Thousands of new Antigones are demanding the right to bury their
brothers," said Inspector-General Maya at last week’s launch of the new
national plan.
In Sophocles’ classical Greek tragedy, Antigone is condemned to starve to
death in a sealed cave after she buries her brother’s body against the
orders of the king, who said the remains of his enemy were to be left
"unburied, a corpse for birds and dogs to eat, a ghastly sight of shame."
The official acknowledgement of the gravity of the situation and of the
very existence of the crime of forced disappearance, and the adoption of
mechanisms to confront the phenomenon, "were opposed by the armed forces
up to the very end," the CCJ’s Gallón told IPS.
Six draft laws on forced disappearance had been introduced in Congress
since 1988. Four floundered in the legislature, one was objected to by the
government of César Gaviria (1990-1994), under pressure from the military,
and the sixth was vetoed by former president Andrés Pastrana (1998-2002),
even though he had promised to support it.
"Fortunately the fight was waged in Congress…and the bill was reluctantly
approved," said Gallón.
The plan will initially be tested in the area "with the greatest
concentration of graves and forced disappearances," Carlos Rodríguez, CCJ
director of operations, told IPS.
"We are going to push for this to get off the ground immediately: for the
funds to be assigned, and for the necessary coordination, political will
and effectiveness to be present," he said. "We will see if there is a
commitment to implementation. The families of the ‘disappeared’ and human
rights organisations are going to be watching closely to see if this
happens, and if it doesn't, to tell the national and international
community."
The law making forced disappearance a crime also gave rise to the creation
of an "urgent search mechanism", which waives all formalities and red tape
and gives the judge or prosecutor who receives a complaint that someone
has been forcibly disappeared 24 hours to investigate, either by
telephone, fax or email, or by going directly to the spot where the person
might be found.
Any civilian official or member of the security forces who does not
cooperate could face the risk of being dismissed. But so far, "the urgent
search mechanism has not led to the location of a single ‘disappeared’
person," said Rodríguez.
For his part, Gallón said "It's a very important mechanism. An
international innovation that exists nowhere else. But it is rarely
applied. The public and judicial officials themselves are unfamiliar with
it, and see is as strange" because it is so streamlined and agile.
(END/2007)
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