Headlines, Human Rights, Latin America & the Caribbean

COLOMBIA: Constitutional Reforms Would Sap Human Rights Safeguards

Constanza Vieira

BOGOTA, Aug 20 2003 (IPS) - A draft reform of the Colombian constitution that would severely undermine human rights mechanisms and safeguards is slowly but surely making its way through Congress, which is expected to pass it in December.

A governor, a former government minister, and eight soldiers being held hostage in Urrao in northwestern Colombia by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the main insurgent group, were shot and killed by their captors on May 5 during a failed rescue attempt by the military.

Two days later, the proposed amendments, which had been introduced by the Defence Ministry in late April, were approved by Congress in the first vote on the question.

The aim of the government of right-wing President Alvaro Uribe is to provide a permanent legal basis for surveillance of private correspondence and other communication, and for arrests and searches without a legal warrant.

The reforms would also restrict freedom of movement, and would grant the armed forces judicial police powers – a move that is staunchly opposed by the Colombian Commission of Jurists (CCJ).

CCJ director Gustavo Gallón pointed out to Congress that the proposed reforms run counter to the Statement on Colombia that was adopted by the Geneva-based United Nations Human Rights Commission in April, in agreement with the Uribe administration.

In the Statement, the Commission ”urges the government of Colombia not to take any measures that might weaken the constitutional mechanisms for the protection of human rights, justice and ombudspersons, or that might undermine the independence of the judiciary.”

U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Sergio Vieira de Mello – who was killed Tuesday in Iraq – also urged the Colombian government and Congress not to adopt reforms that would grant the military judicial police powers, or would be incompatible with an independent justice system.

But in a meeting with human rights groups in the seat of government last June, Uribe complained that several of the international human rights treaties to which Colombia is a signatory stood in the way of his government’s determination to crack down on the ”terrorist” groups involved in the country’s four-decade armed conflict.

Uribe also stated at the meeting that the Foreign Ministry official who agreed to the U.N. Statement on Colombia ”was not acting in the name of the Colombian government.”

Local and international human rights organisations have accused Colombian military units of committing human rights abuses against civilians, either acting alone or in complicity with right-wing paramilitary groups.

According to the annual report released by the London-based rights watchdog Amnesty International last May, ”There were reports of direct involvement by the security forces in serious human rights violations, including arbitrary arrests, torture, ‘disappearances’ and killings.”

It added that ”Paramilitaries operating in collusion with the security forces were responsible for the vast majority of ‘disappearances’ and killings of civilians.”

The U.N. Commission’s Statement on Colombia also ”strongly deplores the persistence of links between paramilitary groups and members of state forces who collaborate with and consent to or acquiesce in criminal acts carried out by the former.”

Analysts in Colombia say the fundamental rights and guarantees enshrined in the 1991 constitution, which was the product of a peace agreement with the former leftist guerrilla group M-19 and three other rebel organisations, hinder the government’s defence strategy.

Uribe ”does not feel comfortable with the balance of powers established by the constitution,” said opposition Senator Antonio Navarro Wolff, a former M-19 rebel leader and one of the signers of the constitutional pact that sealed the peace talks in 1991.

”In 1991, we modified several mechanisms that gave the president disproportionate power, and which had failed for 100 years to bring peace and democracy to Colombian society,” Navarro told IPS.

A government anti-terrorism bill would expand the definition of terrorism to include tactics often used as a means of social protest, such as roadblocks or the occupation of public buildings.

Activists also see the bill as a potential threat to journalists, because it provides for prison sentences for those who leak ”reserved documents” or reveal information about private companies or public enterprises.

The government argues that such measures are necessary because ”terrorism must be recognised as a crime that is constantly rearing its head, and not just as a circumstantial phenomenon.”

The constitutional reforms would stiffen prison sentences and make it easier to prosecute individuals accused of belonging to, or supporting in any way, illegal armed organisations. It also refers to those who profit from the drug trade.

”Judging by the way the authorities do things, there is no way to be sure that enforcement of the new laws would only affect people who are really terrorists,” Guillermo Asprilla, a law professor at the National University, said in an interview with IPS.

Political science Professor Marco Romero, who is also part of the faculty at the National University, told IPS that ”In the government’s view, the guerrillas are those who are armed, and the subversives include every member of civil society who conspires against the government and the state.”

For over 40 years, Colombia was under a state of siege, which gave the president broad powers. During that time, the armed conflict grew in intensity, and drug traffickers increasingly targeted civilians with terrorist acts.

In 1991, the state of siege was replaced with the ”state of internal upheaval”, which according to the constitution cannot be declared without the approval of the Constitutional Court, and can only remain in effect for nine months at the most.

Uribe declared a state of internal upheaval after taking office in August 2002, and it remained in effect until April 2003.

But the Amnesty International report stated that the ”cycle of political violence was exacerbated by the security policies of the new government of Alvaro Uribe…”

The reforms proposed by the government would also weaken the powers of the Constitutional Court.

In particular, ”they eliminate the Constitutional Court’s control over the declaration of the state of siege,” said a Constitutional Court magistrate who preferred not to be named.

The reforms also undermine social and labour rights. In the future, said the judge, ”only civil and political rights will exist, but not all of them: the right of journalists to keep the identity of their sources in reserve” will no longer enjoy legal protection.

Asprilla said ”the underlying logic is that the military cannot win the war because the people’s rights and safeguards stand in their way.”

Senator Navarro said ”the repressive zeal” fails to understand that ”conflict must be resolved through political measures” like peace talks, ”because the underlying problem is that the country’s institutions lack legitimacy.”

The opposition to Uribe’s draconian security policies ”is timid but significant,” due to ”a climate in which voices that dare to express dissent are stigmatised,” Daniel García-Peña, high commissioner for peace under president Ernesto Samper (1994-1998), told IPS.

The ”coalition for democracy and against war”, an umbrella group created in May, which includes 13 lawmakers from the leftist Democratic Pole, trade unions, and women’s, indigenous, human rights and peace groups, is the leading civil society opposition group, said García-Peña.

”But unfortunately, most of the support for Uribe’s opponents comes from the international community and the United Nations. Uribe enjoys support at home because, although he has not been able to show progress on the military front, he has won the propaganda war in his first year in office,” said the analyst.

There is ”a perception that security has grown, which has been strengthened by the insurgent groups’ current tactic of laying low militarily. People think the war is being won,” said García-Peña.