Friday, August 21, 2026
News and Views from the Global South
HUMAN RIGHTS-COLOMBIA: President Blasts Activists – Again
Constanza Vieira
- Colombian President Alvaro Uribe lashed out at activists for the second time in a week, just when the international human rights community was hoping for a rectification of a speech he gave on Monday, in which he accused local human rights groups of defending terrorism.
Uribe’s latest disparaging remarks about human rights defenders came Thursday in the town of Chita, in the central Colombian department of Boyacá, where he was accompanying the armed forces commanders to assess the impact of an attack that military sources blamed on the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the main rebel group.
A ”horse-bomb” left eight dead, 15 wounded and 34 homes destroyed in the town Wednesday.
The president said that ”governing with transparency” gave him ”the right to be firm, and to demand respect for all Colombians in the world, regardless of the noise that the defenders of terrorism might make.”
Alluding to human rights groups, the far-right Uribe said ”We turn a deaf ear to the defenders of terrorism, the sponsors of terrorism, and we disregard those who are misled because all they know about Colombia is based on information that is distorted by terrorism,” he said.
The president had already labelled local human rights groups as guerrilla sympathisers and defenders of terrorism on Monday, after the publication of a human rights report ”The Authoritarian Spell”, which was highly critical of the Uribe administration’s record one year into the president’s term.
His statements Thursday came as a bucket of cold water for the local and international activists and officials taking part in a human rights conference Tuesday through Thursday in Bogota.
The participants included Inter-American Commission for Human Rights (IACHR) representative Robert Goldman, Amnesty International’s director for the Americas Susan Lee, French magistrate Philippe Texier, and José Miguel Vivanco, the executive director of the Americas Division of Human Rights Watch.
Both the IACHR and the New York-based Human Rights Watch had urged Uribe to rectify the harsh statements he made Monday about human rights groups.
The European Union, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights office in Colombia, the London-based Amnesty International, and Colombia’s Office of the People’s Defender (ombudsman) also expressed their support for the work of local human rights defenders, in response to Uribe’s speech Monday.
Vice-President Francisco Santos had confirmed that he would attend the closure of the international human rights conference, which was held in a hotel on the north side of the capital, in order to hear the conclusions of the three-day gathering first-hand.
But the organisers said that after Uribe’s fresh outburst against human rights activists, the vice-president would not be welcome at the conference.
”Far from retracting or toning down his Monday statements, (Uribe) has declared war” on human rights groups, Gustavo Gallón, director of the Colombian Commission of Jurists, which has consultative status with the United Nations, told IPS.
”Uribe used new adjectives to discredit human rights organisations” Thursday, said the activist. ”Under these circumstances, the climate is not appropriate for the vice-president to be here” at the gathering, he added.
Vivanco, of Human Rights Watch, said Uribe’s remarks ”were most unfortunate.”
”I hope the president…realises that our organisations condemned the attack in Chita as an act of terrorism just hours after it occurred, and before the government had even made any statement of its own,” he added.
Gallón said ”Uribe’s words were not a slip of the tongue, but an accurate expression of his thinking and of the government’s security policy.
”The government is determined to wage war on human rights groups, civil society organisations and the local residents of areas under guerrilla influence, rather than taking direct action against those who have taken up arms,” he maintained.
”The government is waging a war against unarmed civilians, and especially against non-governmental organisations (NGOs). It is doing so with these remarks, as well as with arbitrary arrests,” said Gallón.
”With his words, what the president is announcing is a new phase in which that is only going to intensify,” he warned.
Uribe’s remarks ”put our lives at risk, and we want to state for the record that any attack, any threat against human rights defenders in Colombia is a result of the president’s statements,” said Gloria Flores, with Minga, a local human rights group.
”We urge the president to show good sense, and to treat human rights defenders and social and labour leaders as they should be treated,” she added.
”Our work is legitimate, and is carried out to guarantee democracy and to secure respect for human rights and international humanitarian law in this country,” said Flores.
Gallón said Uribe’s statements this week amounted to ”a flagrant failure to live up to the government’s commitment to countries that have aid agencies and humanitarian organisations working in Colombia.
”One of the recommendations that the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights has repeatedly set forth is that there must be guarantees for the legitimate work of human rights advocates,” he pointed out.
”We NGOs remain willing to dialogue with the government, which is a right that we demanded and gained over years of effort,” he said.
”It is the government that has cut off the channels of communication and has created conditions which make continued dialogue unlikely in the future,” Gallón added.
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