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COLOMBIA: NGOs Question OAS Role in Paramilitary Demobilisation

Constanza Vieira

BOGOTA, Dec 21 2004 (IPS) - Non-governmental organisations in Colombia want the OAS to re-assess the role it is playing in its monitoring of the disbanding of right-wing paramilitary militias, which has been agreed in talks with the government of Alvaro Uribe.

Colombian activists and civil society groups have been making contacts with “governments in the region” to urge them to ask the OAS (Organisation of American States) Permanent Council to explain exactly what the regional body’s Mission is doing in Colombia, Jorge Rojas, director of the Consultancy on Human Rights and Displacement (CODHES), a local NGO, told IPS.

At the behest of Washington and Bogota, the OAS, headed at the time by former Colombian president César Gaviria, created the Mission to Support the Peace Process in Colombia a year ago, led by Argentine delegate Sergio Caramagna.

In the 1980s, Caramagna was at the head of the OAS mission in Nicaragua that oversaw the demobilisation of 22,000 “contra” fighters, who were financed by the U.S. government to combat the leftist Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) government.

The task of the OAS Colombia mission is to monitor the demobilisation and ceasefire, the “ceremonies” in which paramilitary fighters hand over their weapons, and compliance with the agreements reached between the right-wing Uribe administration and the United Self-Defence Forces of Colombia (AUC) paramilitary umbrella.

The aim is to generate confidence in the process and draw international support, both political and financial.

But the OAS has failed to respond to a report by the Colombian Commission of Jurists (CCJ), which blamed 1,899 forced disappearances and murders on the paramilitaries since a ceasefire was declared on Dec. 1, 2002.

With respect to the OAS mission, Rojas said that “we believe that a more vigorous approach is needed, as well as more clarity, and greater political determination.”

“Caramagna is playing a role that absolutely falls short, in our view. More than a problem of resources, this is a problem of political will,” said the activist.

This year, only the United States and Sweden have helped finance the OAS mission in Colombia, and Caramagna complained that the funding was insufficient to enable it to carry out its monitoring task.

“The OAS could end up endorsing an operation that involves impunity and money laundering, rather than a peace operation,” warned Rojas.

He was referring to the fact that at least eight of the paramilitary chiefs negotiating the disbanding of their irregular forces are wanted in the United States for drug trafficking, and are facing extradition requests from that country.

This month, Washington approved 3.5 million dollars in aid for the Colombian peace process in 2005, although the Department of Justice must decide whether it will approve the transfer of funds, because AUC is on the U.S. State Department’s list of international terrorist organisations.

In explaining the role of its Colombia mission, the OAS Permanent Council should first outline “the minimum human rights standards, in the framework of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, that apply to the demobilisation process,” said Rojas.

“Second, it should define how the violation of the ceasefire is interpreted, and the role that the mission should play with regards to protecting victims in the context of the demobilisation process.

“And third, to what extent can we talk about a ‘peace process’ here,” since the paramilitaries are not involved in a military confrontation with the Uribe administration, he added.

A ceasefire was a condition set by the government for beginning talks with the paramilitaries, which since the early 1980s have backed up the armed forces in Colombia’s four-decade counterinsurgency war.

Human rights organisations like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have documented abundant evidence of the close ties and continuous coordination between the paramilitaries and government security forces.

The government hopes to have demobilised 3,000 paramilitary fighters by the end of December, and to have completely dismantled the AUC (which consists of between 12,000 and 16,000 combatants) by late 2005.

There seems to be a move to accelerate the handing in of weapons, under two government decrees that combine to guarantee that those who lay down their arms will not be held accountable for the human rights crimes they have committed, said the director of the CCJ, Gustavo Gallón.

According to the two decrees, the paramilitaries who turn themselves in along with their weapons must simply make a statement testifying that they belong to an illegal army, and are then set free.

In the following weeks, the attorney-general’s office conducts a background check to verify their legal history. But there are no guarantees that those responsible for war crimes will be tracked down again in the future and arrested.

Fighters who are already facing prosecution for crimes against humanity or war crimes, at the time they turn in their weapons, are to remain in a certain area until a law on “truth, justice and reparations” is passed.

But such a law, which will begin to be debated in special sessions in parliament in February, would not go into effect until September at the earliest.

A draft law announced earlier this month 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 their testimony in the ad hoc tribunal. But if their confession was found to be false, they would not be amnestied, and their case would be referred to the courts.

United Nations agencies blame the paramilitaries for 80 percent of the human rights violations committed in Colombia’s armed conflict.

Another bill, based on consultations with indigenous people, black communities and other victims of the armed conflict, proposes the creation of a “historical clarification commission” to determine who was responsible for the crimes against humanity committed over the past four decades.

“The justice system does not even know what crimes (those who are laying down their weapons) are responsible for, nor what assets they must answer for,” Pedro Santana, director of the non-governmental Viva la Ciudadanía (Long Live Citizenship), which advocates respect for the reforms contained in the 1991 constitution, told reporters last week.

The demobilisation process “is a complete mess, and the absence of a juridical framework poses a major risk that it will be a failure,” said Santana.

“The debate is whether we’re going to have a process that will be based on the principle of ‘forgive and forget’, or one based on truth, justice and reparations,” said historian Daniel García-Peña, the head of Planeta Paz (Planet Peace), another local NGO.

“The United States has warned that the process should be clear on basic aspects, such as who are the people involved in the negotiations,” said Rojas, who pointed out that not all of the paramilitary commanders participating in the talks have been clearly identified yet.

Meanwhile, the European Union council of foreign ministers clarified its conditions for backing the talks: that they take place in a legal framework in keeping with international standards, and that they form part of a comprehensive peace process, which must involve the leftist insurgent forces as well.

In order for Uribe to receive multilateral funding, Colombia must live up to the human rights recommendations outlined by the United Nations, said the EU.

Michael Frühling, the head of the U.N. human rights office in Colombia, told the local newspaper El Espectador on Sunday that a legal framework that “duly honours the right to truth, justice and reparations for the victims” would involve “not only the illegal groups, but must also apply to agents of the state.”

What should the millions of dollars in additional aid from Washington be invested in, in case it is approved by the Department of Justice? asked IPS.

“In setting up a ‘historical clarification commission’. In providing visibility to the victims of this war. In a truth commission that would enable us to find out who financed, and why they financed, the operations that played the biggest role in degrading the armed conflict, and how they were carried out,” said Rojas.