Victims submit proposals for guarantees of non-repetition to the CEV

Victims submit proposals for guarantees of non-repetition to the CEV

  • Call for recognition and guarantee of the non-repetition of the role of the state in the prolongation of the armed conflict and socio-political violence.

In order to contribute to the construction of a broad and polyphonic account of the truth, to propose routes and actions to guarantee non-repetition and impunity and to establish a difference between armed conflict and socio-political violence, the document Five minimum truths about state criminality and its configuration as a genocidal social practice committed in Colombia will be presented to the Commission for the Clarification of the Truth -CEV on Thursday 21 April.

The document produced by the Movement of Victims of State Crimes and the José Alvear Restrepo Lawyers’ Collective – Cajar – aims to ask the Truth Commission to recognise these five minimums that have been documented for decades by victims, human rights organisations, international bodies and judicial decisions, which allow us to conclude that: 1) The State was responsible for the prolongation of the armed conflict 2) There are doctrines and mechanisms from the organs of the State that have favoured the elimination of broad critical sectors and opponents 3) Paramilitarism has not been a third actor but a state strategy of perpetration of political genocide 4) State violence favoured a restricted democracy and 5) State violence has had an economic background to favour the interests of some sectors and perpetuate the current model. (See attached summary at the end of the communiqué)

As guarantees of non-repetition, the document provides a series of proposals to be included in the “recommendations of the Truth Commission’s final report”, consisting of institutional reforms that seek to correct some of the causes of the serious human rights violations experienced over decades.

These reforms have to do with full compliance with the Final Peace Agreement, repealing the national security doctrine that supports the idea of an internal enemy, abolishing illegal intelligence against defenders, opening the files of intelligence and military entities to society, revising the Free Trade Agreements (FTAs), among others.

In relation to the dissemination of the Truth Commission’s report, the organizations recommend adopting dissemination tools with a differential approach, so that it reaches all sectors of society, understanding the historical truth of the armed conflict, socio-political violence and its victims as a public good.

The delivery of this document will be accompanied by a sit-in convened in front of the CEV this Thursday, April 21, 2022 at 2 pm, where victims and social organizations will exhibit the memory galleries that show the magnitude of State crimes.

 

Annex: of proposed recommendations for the Summary Report of the Summary Truth Commission 

On the responsibility of the State in the prolongation of the armed conflict 

  • To fully comply ith the Final Peace Agreement with an adequate budget to support its implementation. 
  • Guarantee political participation, as a historical debt with social movements and opposition organizations, including the participation of women and discriminated sectors. 
  • Take effective actions to confront the systematic aggressions against signatories of the Agreement and comply with the processes of collective, economic and social sustainable reincorporation of ex-combatants. 
  • Reestablish the negotiating table with the ELN and other armed expressions. 
  • Accept the proposal for the dismantling of paramilitary structures and their support networks, presented by human rights organizations on September 11, 2020 to the technical secretariat of the National Guarantees Commission.
  • Prioritize the fight against corruption in civilian and military institutions caused by illicit drugs, as well as the fight against the strongest links in the chain such as production, commercialization, money laundering, finances and national networks that cause the most violence. 
  • Approve laws and regulations that impose criminal and disciplinary sanctions on persons and public servants who obstruct or hinder the implementation of the Final Peace Agreement, the processes of reincorporation into civilian life of the signatories of the agreement, or the rapprochement, dialogues or peace talks. 

 

Regarding the existence of doctrines and mechanisms of State repression, the report recommends the following 

  • That the CEV recognizes that in Colombia a political genocide was perpetrated, continued and extended, and its agents who defined, developed and implemented systematic plans to totally and partially eliminate the opposition, as concluded by the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal in its 2021 ruling. 
  • Purge State institutions and their security bodies of those members implicated in the commission of crimes under international law, who were part of structures such as the Brigade of Military Institutes (BIM), the XX Intelligence and CounterIntelligence Brigade of the National Army and the Administrative Department of Security (DAS).  
  • To repeal the National Security Doctrine and with it the concept of the “internal enemy” who must be exterminated.  
  • Ensure the effectiveness of the clause that prohibits illegal intelligence for political, racial, gender, ethnic, and other reasons, and thus stop the harassment and profiling of social and political leaders, social organizations, and alternative press. 
  • Guarantee that intelligence actions have real controls, not only internal but also external and with the participation of the social and human rights movement. The above in accordance with the clause of submission of military power to civilian power. 
  • Reconciling intelligence legislation with the new risks posed by the evolution of new technologies. 
  • Promote public deliberation on military doctrine in order to harmonize it with the highest standards of human rights and international humanitarian law. 
  • Verify the abolition of the counterinsurgency and anticommunist doctrine, which motivated the commission of genocidal crimes and serious human rights violations. 
  • Create a public system with civil society participation in the control of promotions in the military career, as well as the sanctioning with precautionary measures of high-ranking officials accused of human rights violations. 
  • To create a chair in the formal curricula of educational institutions on the historical existence of practices that violate human rights by the intelligence forces of the Colombian State. 
  • To create a television program or series that reflects the existence of practices that violate human rights by the security forces, in order to raise awareness and generate changes on the need to outlaw such practices in society. 

 

On human rights archives and access to information: 

  • Promote access to the archives of security agreements between companies and sectors of the security forces, in order to establish whether there was knowledge of human rights violations against union leaders, social leaders and/or organized workers. 
  • To have unrestricted access to all State intelligence files or documentation, without being subject to legal or any other type of reserve. 
  • Declare the archives of the Charry Solano Intelligence and Counterintelligence Battalion and of the XX Brigade, DAS and other State intelligence bodies as human rights archives. 
  • Guarantee the right to information through the publicity of military operations manuals and regulations; combat intelligence and counterintelligence. 
  • Promote the construction of an unofficial historical memory that enables non-hegemonic narratives about a different political future, from below, from the victims and social human rights organizations. 
  • Ensure that national, departmental and municipal authorities, as well as public and private educational establishments fully and effectively comply with Article 14 of Law 1408 of 2010 -” Whereby homage is paid to the victims of the crime of forced disappearance and measures are established for their location and identification”-, as well as establish measures to ensure the commemoration of the Week of the Detained and Disappeared, which is held the last week of May each year and each International Day of the Disappeared, on August 30 of each year.  
  • In the face of the extermination processes against social and popular movements, monuments of homage to the victims will be built in the municipalities where these crimes were committed. 
  • Restructure the board of directors of the current National Historical Memory Center, so that the victims of human rights violations, crimes against humanity, genocide and war crimes committed by the different actors of the conflict, and by the genocidal practices of the Colombian State, may participate. 
  • Adopt a law prohibiting and sanctioning denialist activities with respect to gross human rights violations. 

 

Based on the recognition of the state nature of paramilitarism, the document proposes the CEV to recommend to the State: 

  •  Publicly acknowledge its responsibility in the actions of paramilitarism, its genesis and consolidation as an instrument for the perpetration of genocide against the social and popular movement, linked to a strategy of social, political and economic control of the territories. 
  • Advance in the regulation of Legislative Act 05 of 2017 that seeks to ensure the monopoly of the use of arms by the State and prohibit the promotion, creation and other activities related to armed civilian groups for illegal purposes that include the so-called paramilitary self-defense groups. 
  • Constitutionally prohibit the formation, support and financing of paramilitary groups by the State and national or transnational companies. 
  • Follow up on the evolution of the parapolitics phenomenon, the fulfillment of the sanctions of those convicted, and inquire about the positions and/or roles currently occupied by those who were accused but not sanctioned. 
  • At the request of the high-level subcommittee on guarantees of non-repetition, a commission will be created with participation, which among other functions will supervise the transparency and control of reserved expenses, or systems for offering rewards specific to the National Army. 
  • Determine the extraterritorial responsibility of countries such as the United States and Israel in the formation, financing and operation of paramilitary groups in Colombia. 

 

Regarding the political model, restricted democracy and limited political participation: 

  • Eliminate from public discourse and any discursive association between citizen and organizational processes and insurgent groups. Since these have the purpose of stigmatizing, discrediting and delegitimizing, in addition to creating an environment conducive to the commission of heinous crimes against the social struggle.
  • Promote affirmative actions that guarantee the participation of women in the different political and social scenarios, recognizing their situation, context and particularities, valuing their contributions as political subjects in public life and the exercise of the defense of human rights. As stated in the Final Peace Agreement. Likewise with all subjects of special constitutional protection in politics, to guarantee the participation of victims and populations in areas affected by the armed conflict. 
  • Creation of free schools, colleges and universities to train new leaders of social organizations, indigenous reservations, Afro-Colombian community councils, opposition political parties and, in general, the community. 
  • Eliminate methods of violent repression, both direct and discursive and psychological, towards mobilization processes. 
  • Promote the participatory, broad and plural construction of a statutory law in accordance with international standards on the right to protest, as well as the protocols for police intervention in the framework of the same, complying with the recommendations of international bodies. These should respond to the principles of legality, necessity and proportionality. 
  • Promote the Inter-American standard, according to which public officials have the duty to refrain from making statements that stigmatize or incite violence against people participating in demonstrations, especially young people, indigenous peoples, Afro-descendants, women, LGBTIQ+ people and human rights defenders (IACHR, 2021). 
  • Create a permanent mechanism for dialogue within the structure of the State, made up of negotiators trained in conflict mediation and who have the necessary capacity to advance this process, in a transparent and voluntary manner. 
  • Separate the National Police from the Ministry of Defense. Demilitarize its doctrine and strengthen its civilian character. 
  • Create within the Attorney General’s Office and the Attorney General’s Office a special unit for the investigation, prosecution and punishment of acts of police violence in the context of social protests. 
  • Suppress the National Police radio station. 
  • Adopt a law on promotions and promotions of officers and non-commissioned officers of the National Police that will not be granted to those who violate human rights. 
  • Recognize and transform the role of the mainstream media in the production of discourses of delegitimization and promote the elimination of censorship of independent media and journalists, as well as freedom of the press. 

 

Regarding the economic model: 

  • Design and implement plans and projects aimed at repairing the environmental damage caused by the actions of extractive companies in the territories. 
  • Design and implement mechanisms to prevent the accumulation of land, through the creation of a new tax scheme that includes taxes on large estates and unproductive property. 
  • Demand that the States of origin of multinational companies involved in serious human rights violations seek reparations for the victims. 
  • Recommend to the legislature the regulation of Corporate Social Responsibility as distinct from business ethics. 
  • Promote progress in the investigation of the 15,391 copies of the 15,391 copies sent to the Prosecutor’s Office, produced in the framework of the Justice and Peace proceedings against businessmen and civilian third parties for their alliances in the actions of paramilitary structures in the dispossession of land. 
  • Promote mechanisms for the identification and prosecution of third party entrepreneurs in the illegal acquisition of land. 
  • Recommend the annulment of resource exploitation concessions in indigenous territories or Afro-Colombian peoples carried out without prior consultation. 
  • Revoke the operating license of companies that have been proven to be responsible for land dispossession. 
  • Review and adjust the cooperation agreements between companies, the Ministry of Defense and the Attorney General’s Office. 
  • Promote comprehensive rural reform and the peasantry as subjects of rights, repealing Free Trade Agreements and trade agreements that affect the national economy and guaranteeing economic justice for the agrarian sector. 

 

The organizations recommend regarding the dissemination of the final report of the CEV: 

  • Include in the Commission’s final report the plan for socialization of the legacy, and that its temporal projection be for ten years. 
  • To ensure that this can be translated into easily accessible school texts such as brochures, booklets, communicative and audiovisual pieces. Also in a ludic-pedagogic material for the approach of the topics raised. 
  • Promote the training of trainers on peace issues. 
  • Promote an educational reform that incorporates subjects and courses on the history of the conflict, memory and human rights into the curriculum. 
  • Develop a strategy for the dissemination of content with a differential, territorial, ethnic and gender focus, especially translated into the languages of indigenous peoples.

 

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