In her April 2002 report to the United Nations Human Rights Commission regarding her visit to Colombia in October 2001, the Special Representative of the Secretary General on human rights defenders, Mrs. Hina Jilani, said that “she is deeply concerned over the climate of intimidation and insecurity in which human rights defenders carry out their work.” [1] As a result of her visit, the Special Representative noted “a pattern of serious abuses of human rights defenders, including threats, disappearances, killings and forced displacements.” At the same time, she observed “that all sectors of the civil society are affected by violence, including State officials working on human rights issues. Certain groups are still more targeted than others, among them trade unionists, ethnic minorities, internally displaced persons and women. The Special Representative is extremely concerned for the safety of trade unionists and indigenous leaders, in light of the scale of violent acts against them.” [2]

Eight years after her visit, these grave abuses or patterns not only continue but have intensified, which shows that the recommendations formulated by Mrs. Jilani not only have not been implemented but that the Government has acted against them.

Although Mrs. Jilani stated that, at that moment, the main violations of the rights of human rights defenders came from actions by the paramilitary groups, she also viewed with concern that “certain practices used by the police and the army against human rights defenders, in particular the keeping of intelligence files containing false information about human rights defenders and the tapping of telephones of NGO offices.” She also condemned “the alarming tendency of State and army officials to violate Presidential Directive 07 by using harmful and irresponsible rhetoric against human rights defenders, who are often accused of collaborating with the guerrillas.” [3]

In early 2009 it became known that since 2004, shortly after the Special Representative made public her denunciations about the situation of human rights defenders in Colombia, a special strategic intelligence group (called “G3”) whose creation has no legal basis, has operated within the DAS (Administrative Security Department), the Intelligence Office which depends directly from the President of the Republic, Álvaro Uribe Vélez. It is known that the G3 began the most gigantic operation of illegal surveillance, which included detailed and meticulous monitoring of the work of human rights defenders and their organizations, that has come to light during the history of this country. Some of the uses to which the illegally-obtained information has been put have included providing lists to paramilitary groups of trade union activists and human rights defenders who were to be murdered, and who effectively were, [4] and “offensive intelligence” operations involving carrying out diverse attacks, setups, death threats and repeated and continued violations of the rights of human rights defenders and their close family members, including children, constituting a situation of generalized and systematic attacks against human rights work.

Dialogue of human rights organizations with the National Government

Since November 10, 2008, four human rights and peace coalitions [5] and 16 social sectors in Colombia committed themselves to dialogue with the National Government to try to reach agreements on the necessary guarantees for the work of defending and promoting human rights and for the recognition of the legitimate activity of human rights and social organizations and movements at the national level. To this effect, a National Roundtable on Guarantees (Mesa Nacional de Garantías) was set up in April this year. It is composed of representatives of the National Government, of the 16 social sectors and of the four human rights and peace coalitions. This process is accompanied by the international community in Colombia (OHCHR and embassies of the G-24). The aim of this dialogue is to address and reach agreements on guarantees that would make it possible to have conditions for a human rights defense work and particularly to facilitate participation by diverse sectors of society and human rights organizations in the process to discuss a National Plan of Action on Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law, discussion of which has been stalled due to the lack of guarantees denounced by civil society organizations.

With the establishment of the National Roundtable in April, human rights coalitions and leaders of the social sectors agreed with the Government to hold a series of Regional Hearings (many of them already took place) to discuss the lack of guarantees that have been affecting human rights defenders in diverse regions of the country and agree on mechanisms to grant them.

However, despite the commitment and willingness of these coalitions and sectors to generate the dialogue on how to improve conditions for human rights defenders and members of social organizations, we have verified during this process of dialogue that, instead of effective means to overcome the situation, there has been an increase in attacks by the Government and by diverse State authorities against the work of defense of human rights and against human rights organizations and their members, demonstrating a lack of will on the part of the Government to adapt their conduct to changes required and demanded by the civil society and interested sectors of the international community. This situation is exemplified by the situation in the departments of Sucre and Risaralda, where a number of people who attended the Regional Hearings received death threats and had to flee from their regions.

We will now address the main patterns of current violations against human rights defenders and provide concrete examples of what has occurred in recent months.

1. Monitoring and illegal wiretapping of telephone lines and e-mails

Although the media have widely reported on monitoring and interceptions carried out by the DAS against journalists, judges and political leaders from opposition parties, it is known that, starting in 2004, human rights organizations and their members have been the targets of surveillance in a generalized and systematic fashion carried out by the G3. The Semana magazine reported that, in addition to judges and journalists, “Many of the country’s most well-known human rights NGOs have their own A-Z in the DAS: Redepaz (Ana Teresa Bernal), Comisión Colombiana de Juristas (Gustavo Gallón), Codhes, Cinep and the Colectivo de Abogados José Alvear Restrepo (Lawyers Collective). As part of an operation called ’Transmilenio’, the latter group was investigated from top to bottom: finances, movements, location, composition of nuclear family and means of transport, among other aspects. This operation began in 2004 and was mainly directed against Alirio Uribe, the president of the Colectivo.” [6]

In proceedings currently being carried out by the Prosecutor General’s office, the existence of those folders on the activities of human rights organizations has been corroborated, including organizations that are part of the National Roundtable on Guarantees. These files include:

1. Interceptions and records of telephone communications and e-mails of institutions such as the Board of Directors of Justapaz, the Colombian Commission of Jurists, Justicia y Paz, Cinep, Colectivo de Abogados José Alvear Restrepo, Asfaddes, Codhes, Colectivo de Abogados Luis Carlos Pérez, Comité Permanente para la Defensa de los Derechos Humanos, Corporación Siempreviva, Humanidad Vigente, Instituto Latinoamericano de Servicios Legales Alternativos (ILSA), Redepaz, Caritas Diocesana, Movimiento Cimarrón, Asamblea Permanente por la Paz, Minga e Indepaz, among others.

2. Monitoring of trade union organizations such as the CUT, CTC, Asonal Judicial, Sindess and Sintrateléfonos.

3. Telephone records and intelligence monitoring of movements along with family information specifically regarding Gustavo Gallón (CCJ), Camilo González Posso (Indepaz), Carlos Rodríguez and Gloria Flórez (Minga).

4. Monitoring of cooperation agencies such as Diakonie Colombia, Justicia por Colombia (England), Oxfam Solidarité and Broederlijk Delen. Documents found in the analysis office also show that the e-mails of José Miguel Vivanco, Director for the Americas of Human Rights Watch, were also intercepted.

5. Surveillance of members of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) during its missions to the country. In August 2009, the IACHR denounced that “the Special Strategic Intelligence Group (“G3”) within the Administrative Security Department (DAS), was created to monitor activities tied to the litigating of cases at the international level. The G3 allegedly carried out an intelligence operation against an IACHR visit to the city of Valledupar in 2005, led by then Commissioner and Rapporteur for Colombia Susana Villarán. According to the DAS file, the objective was “to identify the cases being studied by the Rapporteur and the testimony presented by NGOs, as well as the lobbying these organizations are doing to pressure for a condemnation of the State.” According to the IACHR, these activities, which “seriously affect the work of human rights defenders in Colombia,” also “violate the State’s commitment to respect the privileges and immunities of representatives of the OAS and to comply in good faith with the aim and purpose of the American Convention on Human Rights and other treaties of the Inter-American system.” [7]

As has been stated by the judges of the Supreme Court of Justice, this systematic sureillance against the work of human rights and peace NGOs and their members cannot credibly be attributed to the initiative of mid-level officials from the presidential intelligence office, divorced from the will of those who control and direct intelligence activities at this institution and who order missions and receive reports on the results.

According to the President of the Supreme Court of Justice, “what is being investigated is nothing less than the top level of the justice system and we feel that this is extremely grave … it is a very concrete criminal conspiracy that must be anchored to the upper levels.” He went on to refer to those responsible, saying that “we know that they are not mid-level officials, we know that this has to come from the upper levels.” [8]

This illegal monitoring has involved a large part of the human rights organizations and, in many cases, their members. The preliminary report by the Technical Investigation Body (CTI) of the Prosecutor General’s office on the case of the illegal DAS interceptions corroborates exhaustive monitoring by this intelligence office against 41 employees of the Corporación Colectivo de Abogados José Alvear Restrepo (CCAJAR), particularly its then President Alirio Uribe Muñoz. In one of these folders, “there is evidence of activities aimed at obtaining records of public and private databases, movements, location, composition of the nuclear family, means of transport and financial information of members of the CCAJAR.” Monitoring and interception of Alirio Uribe made it possible to find out about his “personal identification, résumé, biographical information, professional credential, passport, legal history, marital status, studies, residential address, habits, weaknesses and strengths, places he frequented, family structure, names of children and parents, friends and colleagues, bank accounts, credits and contacts abroad.” [9] This document includes color photographs, with their respective negatives, showing the facades of certain residential buildings.

The existence of a ’manual’ for monitoring and harassing people considered to be members of the opposition, revealed by El Tiempo newspaper on June 14, 2009, [10] reinforces the hypothesis that these practices of persecution are being carried out as part of the application of a state policy against political opponents and human rights defenders and their organizations.

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