By Constanza Vieira
BOGOTA, Dec 16 2004 (IPS)

Colombian legislators across the political spectrum are pushing for approval of a draft law to promote “truth, justice and reparations” in the process of demobilisation of the right-wing paramilitary militias.

But no such law will go into effect until at least six months from now, and when it does, it will not be retroactive.

In the meantime, some 6,000 paramilitary fighters – around half of the total members of these groups – will have laid down their arms.

“There are already thousands of people to whom this law will not apply,” says historian Jaime Zuluaga at the National University of Colombia’s Institute of Political Studies and International Relations.

Since Nov. 26, 2,074 paramilitary fighters have turned in their weapons. The last – and biggest – demobilisation ceremony, which took place on Dec. 10, International Human Rights Day, involved 1,425 combatants.

Another 1,500 are to disband by Dec. 31, as announced by the right-wing government of President Alvaro Uribe. The government’s plan is to totally dismantle the paramilitary militias by the end of 2005.

For now, the paramilitaries who hand in their weapons are dealt with under a lax government decree, under which the attorney-general’s office conducts a background check to verify their legal history in the weeks after their weapons have been turned in. But there are no guarantees that those responsible for war crimes will be found again in the future and arrested.

Fighters who are already facing prosecution for crimes against humanity or war crimes, when they lay down their weapons, are to remain in a certain area of the country until a law on truth, justice and reparations is passed.

The draft law announced to the press Tuesday would set up an independent ad hoc tribunal that, based on confessions from the demobilised fighters, would compile a list of all of the members of the paramilitary groups, the crimes they have committed, and their areas of action.

Each combatant who had laid down their arms would obtain a pardon only after giving testimony in the ad hoc tribunal. And if the confession was found to be false, they would not be amnestied, and their case would be referred to the courts.

The legislators hope the government will call for a special parliamentary session in February to debate the draft law, which is competing against another presented by Senator Piedad Córdoba, of the opposition Liberal Party.

Córdoba’s bill proposes the creation of a “historical clarification commission” that would determine responsibilities for the crimes against humanity committed since the civil war began around four decades ago.

Her proposal is based on consultations with indigenous people, black communities and other victims of the armed conflict.

Independent parliamentary Deputy Luis Fernando Velasco, one of the authors of the draft law unveiled Tuesday, told journalists this week that it is not only a question of getting combatants to disband, but of “ensuring that operating as a paramilitary is no longer an attractive option in Colombia.”

Velasco said the bill was the product of a consensus among the most prominent legislators who support President Uribe – former defence minister Rafael Pardo and Gina Parodi – Communist lawmaker Wilson Borja (a survivor of a paramilitary attempt on his life), and Velasco himself.

The idea is “to generate a draft law with such strength that sectors with shady political ties and support cannot block it,” he said, alluding to the fact that around one-third of all parliamentarians are widely considered to be spokespersons for the paramilitaries.

However, the government has not given its backing to either of the two bills, and announced last week that it would present its own.

Velasco said the bill he co-sponsored is seeking “a balance between truth, justice and reparations,” and is in keeping with international law on war crimes and crimes against humanity, according to which perpetrators cannot be pardoned or amnestied.

United Nations agencies hold the paramilitaries responsible for 80 percent of the human rights crimes committed in Colombia’s armed conflict.

Leading human rights watchdogs like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have also found abundant and compelling evidence of close ties and continuous coordination between the paramilitaries and government security forces.

The London-based Amnesty International’s 2003 annual country report on Colombia states that “Paramilitaries operating in collusion with the security forces were responsible for the vast majority of ‘disappearances’ and killings of civilians.”

Among the tactics used by the paramilitaries is cutting civilians up alive with chainsaws, according to survivors, witnesses and human rights groups.

Last Friday, one of the most senior paramilitary chiefs, Salvatore Mancuso, turned in his Glock 9 mm hand-gun and announced that he would enter politics.

The wealthy landowner is wanted for drug trafficking in the United States, which has requested his extradition.

In the ceremony, Mancuso’s combatants handed over 1,138 weapons, including pistols, assault rifles, machine guns, mortars and grenade-launchers, said Sergio Caramagna, the coordinator of the Organisation of American States (OAS) mission set up to observe the demobilisation process.

The disarmament process began after the Uribe administration provided the paramilitaries, in secret talks in the northern department (province) of Córdoba, with guarantees that it would not extradite leaders accused of drug trafficking, in exchange for promises by the paramilitaries that they would abide by the agreements reached with the government.

Mancuso will also escape a 40-year prison sentence handed down to him for the massacre of 15 campesinos (small farmers) in 1997, and around 20 prosecutions for other cases, including four mass killings and nine homicides.

One of the most heated public debates in this South American country of 42 million is what to do with the thousands of disbanded paramilitaries.

Critics say that accepting their demobilisation amounts to a “recognition” of the paramilitary groups, and that the bosses are left with the fortunes they have made in the drug trade, while they escape punishment for gross human rights abuses.

But some local residents in areas controlled up to now by the paramilitaries fear that they will be left without anyone to defend them from the leftist guerrillas, who kidnap and practice extortion, and who also commit human rights violations, although to a much lesser degree, according to human rights organisations.

Local communities in rural areas of Colombia are often caught in the crossfire between the insurgents and the paramilitaries or the army, and they are not allowed to remain neutral in the armed conflict.

“Man, why should I lie to you. What I like is the uniform. What I want is to be accepted in the army, to continue fighting,” a rank-and-file paramilitary fighter who turned in his weapons at Campo Dos (Camp Two), in the northeastern region of Catatumbo, told Jesús Abad Colorado, an independent photo journalist, last Friday.

The organisers of the demobilisation ceremony “did not let you get near the lines (of those who were handing in their weapons), and talk to them. They didn’t want the guys to be in contact with the press,” said Colorado.

Mid-level commanders hid behind hats and dark glasses, while the rank and file and the top bosses showed their faces.

Colorado said the residents in the nearby village commented that it will be easy for the paramilitaries to find new weapons.

The local residents “are very scared that they (the paramilitaries) are leaving, because the guerrillas will return” to the region, he added.

In June, 34 rural labourers working on a coca (the raw material for cocaine) plantation belonging to the paramilitaries were killed, allegedly by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the main rebel group.

The non-governmental Progresar foundation says the paramilitaries are responsible for the lion’s share of the 5,200 killings that have occurred in the region since 1999, when the paramilitaries first showed up and began to dispute control over that area with the insurgents. However, the guerrillas also contributed to the death toll, says the group.

The paramilitary groups’ “support structures must be dismantled,” and it is necessary to find “their sponsors…those who support them,” said Congresswoman Córdoba in a Senate debate Monday, who added that “if there is something important in this country, it is the search for truth.”

The paramilitary militias were originally created and financed by large landowners in the 1980s, to fight the guerrillas.

Experts on rural matters estimate that the paramilitaries have taken control of between 4.0 and 4.5 billion hectares of the country’s best land. “This has been the most monstrous agrarian counter-reform on the whole continent,” says historian Zuluaga.

Córdoba pointed out in Congress that “the counter-reform has been carried out at gunpoint, under fear of forced displacement, and above all, of forced disappearance and kidnapping.”

Colombia has one of the largest populations of displaced persons in the world, numbering around three million, according to human rights organisations.

On Sunday, the government announced that the paramilitaries would be returning 6,811 hectares of land, 105 farms and 58 houses and local businesses that had been plundered.

The OAS’s Caramagna welcomed that decision, and recommended that an international mechanism be set up to administer the returned assets, so that they could form part of the reparations for the relatives of victims.

Alvaro Villarraga with the National Peace Council, an advisory body to the president comprised of representatives of the business community and non-governmental organisations, described Mancuso’s view of what “reparations” mean.

The paramilitary chief gave the equivalent of 615 dollars in cash to a local campesino whose brother and father were killed in the past few months by Mancuso’s men. “Take this, and I advise you to leave the region,” the paramilitary commander told him, according to Villarraga.

Nevertheless, Villarraga told IPS that the disarmament of the paramilitary groups is being carried out in compliance with international recommendations from the United Nations with regards to human rights, and that the process is helping to pave the way towards peace.

But the process also contains “a structural flaw with respect to impunity, the ceasefire, verification and prevention,” he argued.

He warned that “3,000 paramilitaries can disband, but the state has no control whatsoever to prevent the same number, or even more, from being simultaneously recruited” elsewhere.

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