Colombia’s government and media are contributing to the ongoing killing of social leaders in the country, according to a report by the National University.
The 280-page report by the Political Sciences and International Relations department of the National University assessed 257 homicides between November 26th, 2016 and July 31 of this year and claimed that many of the murders are apparent attempts to impede the effective implementation of a peace deal between former-President Juan Manuel Santos and demobilized FARC guerrillas.
Apart from the guerrillas’ disarmament and transition to politics, the deal sought to tackle multiple causes of the conflict like land distribution and drug trafficking, which has fueled the conflict since the 1980s.
Politicians’ and state officials’ role in the killings
But according to the report, “powerful sectors within the state and the civil society are opposed to this type of transformation,” and alleges these forces to “use of all means, both legal as illegal, to stop all kinds of changes favorable to peace and transformation” of the countryside.
An example of this is that the strong opposition of regional clans linked to clientelism, with ample representation in Congress, has contributed to the fact that the provisions focused on the construction of peace in the countryside have not been adequately implemented, or within the time frames agreed in the Peace Agreement.
National University’s Institute of Political Studies and International Relations
The consequential failures of effectively implementing the peace deal “has caused killings, forced displacements, threats and terror for a number of important communities,” according to the report.
As an example of state officials stigmatizing social leaders or falsely linking them designated terrorist organizations, the report cited House Representative Rodrigo Lara (Radical Change), who said in 2017 that “the FARC dissidents, who have their network in the Community Action Boards, will organize a little party” while he was president of the house.
Former President Alvaro Uribe (Democratic Center), who is investigated in charges related to his alleged ties to death squads, used to call human rights activists “terrorists in civilian clothing.”
The role of mass media
Additionally, defamatory speech against human-rights activists by media-savvy hard-liners and the far-right in the government and in politics alike has allegedly further aggravated the security situation of social leaders, especially when echoed by mass media.
When the mass media echo the defamatory claims of some civil or armed state officials, a lethal mixture is produced in which the victim will inevitably be the person who defends human rights.
National University’s Institute of Political Studies and International Relations
The report’s section highlighting the stigmatization of human-rights activists says that 57% of Colombian media is controlled by corporations that “are not impartial and are interested in implementing an agenda that serves the interests of their owners.”
“The irresponsible, biased handling and biased information, which defames to those who defend human rights, can lead to this information being taken by certain actors as a justification of murders and other acts of aggression,” the report said.
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State failures to document or investigate homicides
According to the report, leaders have been assassinated in 27 of 32 departments of the country.
However, the report said that there appears to exist a correlation “between the concentration of homicides of social leaders and human rights defenders, and territorial prioritization designed for the implementation of the peace agreement.”
The report documents 44 murders in the province of Cauca and 40 in Antioquia, the provinces traditionally hit hardest by the country’s armed conflict.
According to Verdad Abierta, a conflict website that took part in the investigation, some of the homicides of social leaders have disappeared from government records.
In the municipalities of Belen de Bajira, Choco, and Lopez de Micay in Cauca, two leaders were killed. The medical examiner’s office, however, has no record of any of these killings.
In total, nine homicides in seven did not appear in the medical examiner’s office’s records.
Apart from the apparent disappearance of homicide cases, the report blasted the state’s failure “to investigate and sanction the responsible officials” in the case of state involvement in death threats or stigmatization.
Despite the regulations, the state does not implement decisions that would curb the systematic defamation campaign against social organizations, human rights or against leaders and social leaders.
