Originally published in Confidencial Colombia
Between April 28 and July 31, 2021, in the framework of the protests for the National Strike, the country experienced days of extreme violence in the streets, resulting in disproportionate use of force, sexual and gender violence, acts of discrimination and racism, killings, disappearances, illegal detentions, torture, humiliation and all kinds of human rights violations by the security forces, all of which were confirmed in the most recent report published by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) in Colombia.
The OHCHR report highlights that the protest, which was sparked in response to the tax reform proposed by the Duque government, ended in 63 deaths, 60 cases of sexual violence, and 27 people who are still missing. It notes that during the three months of protests and unrestrained violence, 46 murders related to the demonstrations were recorded. In at least 28 of them, there are “reasonable grounds to assert” that the alleged perpetrators were members of the security forces. In 10 of them, members of the ESMAD could have been involved. “Of the remaining 17 cases verified, in 10 cases the alleged perpetrators would have been non-state actors, while in eight cases the Office did not obtain sufficient information to identify the alleged perpetrator.”
On the other hand, the Mayor’s Office of Bogota and its Secretariat of Government commissioned a private study to clarify the events that occurred during the protests of September 9 and 10, 2020, the final report of which was also published last week. Its main conclusion was that during those two days a massacre was perpetrated, the responsibility for which lies with the National Police. Its most representative and widespread practice was the unlawful use of force that began in the early morning of September 9 with the murder of Javier Ordóñez, and which gave rise to one of the most serious episodes of human rights violations in the history of the city of Bogotá, D.C.
This study identified and documented seven violent practices during the September 2020 protests: unlawful use of force, violence against public security forces, arbitrary detentions, gender-based violence, stigmatization of social protest, violence against public and private property, and impunity. These practices led to 14 deaths, the injury of at least 75 people by firearms, 43 by sharp weapons, 187 by other types of injuries, and the injury of at least 216 members of the Police.
Of the 14 deaths, 11 of them were alleged as a result of the unlawful use of force by members of the police. Two other murders occurred as a result of interventions by people in civilian clothes who used firearms against demonstrators and third parties. The last murder, that of Cristian Alberto Rodríguez Cano, to date has not been recognized by the authorities as part of the cases that occurred within the framework of the September 9 demonstrations.
The report added that the use of firearms was determined by the lack of an express and hierarchical order to refrain from shooting. This lack was indefensible by the civilian and police authorities, whose functions are of supervision and control, in light of the evidence of excessive use of lethal force in several points of the city and the deployment of support units of the Surveillance Police to the Immediate Attention Center where the violence had escalated, knowing that these units were carrying firearms and that the operational need was to dissuade and control disturbances.
How did the government react to these two reports?
At the National Police promotion ceremony on December 15, President Iván Duque, without making direct references, disqualified the findings of the independent report of the mayor’s office for having been led by Luis Alfonso Negret-Mosquera, former Ombudsman and now candidate to the Senate for the New Liberalism. “To build political aspirations on the account of lacerating the institutions is an act of vileness, it is an act of villainy and it is also an attitude contrary to the duty of being guided by the truth and by the procedures established by the Constitution and the law”, said the president. Not a word about the performance of the police.
In response to the report of the Office of the High Commissioner, the Vice President and Foreign Minister Marta Lucía Ramírez, said that President Iván Duque has “zero tolerance for violence” and that they cannot be allowed to disqualify “the institutionality and the rule of law, especially because here there are politicians who are making politics at the expense of destroying citizen confidence in the institutions”. Then, it was his turn to qualify the reaction through a communiqué from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, stating that the Colombian Government has recognized the existence of victims in the framework of the mobilizations known as the National Strike, while pointing out that “they deserve justice and reparation”.
These reactions go hand in hand with the government’s response to the conclusions of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, IACHR, a few months ago, on the actions of the National Police.
On May 14, the IACHR requested a visit to the country due to the massive protests in Colombia. After a month of delays, the government gave its approval and the working visit took place between June 8 and 10, 2021. The resulting report was presented on July 7, contradicting the government’s international position that the country has a democracy that guarantees the fundamental right to protest and that the human rights violations during the strike were isolated cases or “bad apples” in the National Police. On the contrary, the report evidenced a “systematization” of police repression of legitimate protests that do not require explicit or written orders from the authorities, and issued 41 recommendations to avoid a repetition of the same in the future.
Among the recommendations of the IACHR was the separation of the National Police and the ESMAD from the Ministry of Defense “in order to guarantee a structure that consolidates and preserves security with a citizen and human rights approach”, because they persist in the logic of the armed conflict “in the interpretation and response to the current social mobilization”. Another highlight was the creation of a monitoring mechanism for human rights in Colombia “to contribute to the consolidation of peace in various sectors of society”.
Vice President and Foreign Minister Marta Lucía Ramírez referred to the mechanism at the time, insisting that “Colombia has internal mechanisms to deal with complaints filed for alleged cases of human rights violations”. This is a misleading position, because the follow-up mechanism does not replace the national institutions, but will follow up and support their work. He also said that the recommendations of the IACHR are not binding for the State and that it will not comply with some of them, an argument that is not acceptable since Colombia is part of the Inter-American Human Rights System and has signed international treaties that oblige the State to comply in good faith, according to the Vienna Convention on the object and purpose of treaties.
The practical and immediate consequence of the government’s disrespect for the UN and the IACHR will be a more detailed monitoring and follow-up by these two bodies of the situation in the country. Hence the importance of insisting on the new IACHR follow-up mechanism for Colombia and the permanence of the OHCHR in the country. If the government wants to get rid of monitoring, it should stop pointing to the findings of independent reports as politicized and focus instead on making the reforms to the National Police that are so obviously needed.
