Today members of ASF and other NGOs met in Toronto with Liliana Uribe, a lawyer with the Corporación Jurídica Libertad of Colombia. The CJL is a group of lawyers working with vicitms of extra-judicial executions, and their families and communities. Ms. Uribe is on a delegation presenting the preliminary report of the International Observation Mission on Extra-Judicial Executions which recently completed the consultation phase of its proceedings in Colombia.
The International Mission was comprised of human rights experts from North America and Europe, whose mandate was to investigate and report on the continuing extra-judicial executions in Colombia. CJL and other organizations had previously brought these executions to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in 2006 and 2007. Notwithstanding Colombian government assurances that it is taking steps to investigate and stop extra-judicial killing, there has been an increase in such killings this year.
Ms. Uribe summarized for the group some of the preliminary findings. There have been about 8,000 such killings documented, and there has been no effective investigation of prosecution of these killings. These executions are conducted by military actors. Contrary to many reports, the killings do not suggest random violence associated with civil conflict or security enforcment in Colombia, but instead, suggest targetting of indigenous persons, poor rural landowners, and community leaders and organizers. She stated that her organization and others like it believe that these executions are evidence of a deliberate pattern of execution and displacement of certain populations in Colombia, and evidence that the paramilitary demobilization process is not functioning, and that these killings represent a deliberate program to intimidate victims of the paramilitary violence and consolidate the power of both the military and paramilitary groups in communities around Colombia.
Colombian military is not subject to civilian court jurisdiction, and it has been difficult or impossible to initiate proceedings within the military justice system (equivalent to courts martial in Canada). The investigation and evidence of the executions is handled by military police and judges, and is compromised. The summary executions are contrary Colombian and international human rights laws.
The evidence provided by Ms. Uribe stands in stark contrast to recent Canadian government commentary on the Colombian human rights situation. ASF continues to monitor and cooperate with Colombian lawyers and human rights workers in Colombia.