Humanity: victim of paramilitary abuses

CARTAGENA (Colombia): Former paramilitary fighter Wilson Salazar, alias “El Loro”, was impatient over and annoyed by the prosecutor’s questions and the charges put forth by the victims’ defence attorneys. He claimed he was being blamed for more crimes than he had committed.

He also said he regretted having submitted himself to the Justice and Peace Law, which stipulates that he must make a full confession to obtain legal benefits, such as a sentence of just eight years for the human rights crimes he committed. The law, which went into effect in 2006, governs the far-right paramilitary umbrella group’s negotiated demobilisation.

Among the crimes he committed, “El Loro” shot a 13-year-old girl and beat her to death with a shovel as she tried to defend her mother, Cecilia Lazo.

Lazo, a candidate for mayor in the town of San Alberto in the north-eastern province of Cesar, was shot and killed by “El Loro”.

None of the survivors of paramilitary atrocities or the families of victims attended his confession this week in Barranquilla, Colombia’s main Caribbean coastal city.

On Thursday, the government adopted regulations for the participation by victims of human rights abuses in the legal proceedings that began in December against paramilitaries like “El Loro” (The Parrot) for crimes against humanity, which are not subject to any statute of limitations and cannot be amnestied.

The decree issued by the Ministry of the Interior and Justice states that in order to attend the trials, the victims must prove that they have suffered “direct damages,” must have already filed a formal complaint against the accused, and must register in a special database.

And to participate in the legal investigations, they must renounce, in writing, their right to keep their identity in reserve. However, the decree says nothing about providing security for the victims.

Despite the fact that the paramilitary United Self-Defence Forces of Colombia (AUC) was officially dismantled in 2006 after closed-door negotiations with the government of right-wing President Álvaro Uribe, the killings have continued.

On Jan 20, the headquarters of the League of Displaced Women near the Caribbean resort city of Cartagena, where the group had built their new settlement “City of Women”, was set on fire.

Freddy Espitia, head of a local committee of displaced persons in the Caribbean province of Córdoba, in north-western Colombia, was shot and killed on Jan 28.

On Jan 31, in Montería, the capital of Córdoba, gunmen on a motorcycle killed Yolanda Izquierdo, a 43-year-old community leader who had gathered evidence to help 863 rural families regain their land, which had been seized by the paramilitaries. She was presenting the evidence under the reparations system set up by the Justice and Peace Law.

The murder of Óscar Cuadrado, the leader of a regional association of displaced persons, was reported on Feb 1 in Maicao, in the north-eastern province of La Guajira.

And on Feb 7, Carmen Santana was shot to death in Apartadó, a banana-producing region in the north-eastern province of Antioquia. After great hesitation, Santana had decided to pursue the truth about the 1995 murder of her first husband, a banana worker. Santana had rebuilt her life with her second husband, Hernán Correa, vice-president of the Central Unitaria de Trabajadores central trade union.

Izquierdo, two days before she was killed, had pleaded with the authorities, for the fourth time in five days — this time in tears — for protection. But they told her that the paperwork would take a week.

Loyar Pineda, one of Izquierdo’s schoolmates from Las Claras, the Córdoba town where both were born, said that “There is always someone who has to speak out. You see the injustice and you just can’t stop and you can’t keep silent in the face of all of these things that will hurt the interests of the most dispossessed and vulnerable.” Pineda, who has lost a brother in Colombia’s civil war, is himself an activist.

The CCJ, an internationally renowned human rights group, is defending dozens of victims of paramilitary abuses. “The reality is that in nearly 80 per cent of the cases of human rights violations, formal complaints have not been filed,” explained the CCJ activist.

In the legal proceedings against the paramilitaries, victims who have been certified as having suffered direct damages can turn in evidence, suggest questions to the prosecutor taking the confessions, and report assets that were seized by paramilitary groups and that could be returned to victims of abuses.

They cannot be present in the courtroom where the confession is being given, but must sit in a different room, where they can watch the trial proceedings via closed-circuit television.

“These are crimes against humanity in which the victim is humanity. Anyone should have the right to listen to the confessions and to be there, and shouldn’t have to demonstrate that they were direct victims,” said the CCJ source.—Dawn/The IPS News Service