Guillermo Reyes: Good afternoon everyone, in the meeting held with the Mr. President of the Republic, the Director of Civil Aviation, the superintendents of Industry and Commerce of Transportation, the vice-minister of Infrastructure, the presidential adviser, and the delegated superintendent for the consumer protection, we can say that we arrived to the following conclusions that we share with all of the Colombian people.

In the first place, we made a revision aimed, as arranged by the Mr. President of the Republic, at how the state, the national government, must guarantee as its priority the protection of the over 460.000 passengers in tickets and reservations that have been acquired in this year 2023. For the month of March alone we have over 230.000 tickets already acquired by passengers, and it’s one of the main focus points considered in this meeting.

In the second place, the “World Power Government of Life,” the Government of Change, President Gustavo Petro restates that his priority is the protection of the rights of users and workers of aerial transportation, in this case, the Viva airline.

In the third place, in this sense, the Civil Aviation, the Superintendence of Industry and Commerce, and the superintendence of Transportation, will continue to evaluate the measures that each, on the exercise of their respective powers, must take to protect the aforementioned rights.

In fourth place, the Superintendence of Industry and Commerce is at this moment in 19 airports of the national territory, where there have been difficulties with passengers that have not been able to fly because of Viva’s decision, offering an orientation to all affected passengers. And through the exercise of its jurisdictional functions, in the following hours will begin to proclaim the first verdicts about the requests of these affected passengers, as well as the precautionary measures that may consist of the rearrangement of passengers in other airlines, refund of the money spent in tickets, and the guarantee of providing food and lodging to these passengers while they are moved to a flight offered by other airlines in response of Viva’s suspension of flights.

In fifth place, today the superintendence of Transportation has initiated and communicated to the public opinion an administrative investigation against Viva, dictating an administrative order to go through with the obligations generated by the contract of transportation, as part of the protection of users’ rights, for which they have been given three days to fulfill. In the same vein, this superintendence will push forward for the rest of the proceedings to take place.

Sixth, Civil Aviation will continue its process of revision of integration as solicited by airlines Avianca and Viva within the due administrative process, and with a clear proposition for the protection of users of aerial transport, and the over 1700 workers of Viva airline. The line of our President, of our Government of Change, is the protection of users and the protection of workers.

Seventh, we will continue the task of accommodating, as was arranged yesterday when the director of Civil Aviation put together and integrated the position of unified command, comprised of the management of said entity, and the representatives of the different airlines, in all available offers, so all available seats in those airlines may be taken by passengers of Viva. Today we will concentrate on the critical focus points, where Civil Aviation is already taking immediate measures, in particular the air terminals of Santa Marta, Ríohacha, and San Andrés. The position of unified command will be giving in the following hours the available measures and flights. Yesterday, out of more than 17.000 passengers, over 10.000 were moved to different flights and managed to get to their destinations.

Finally, this Minister, in virtue of the faculties of intervention as mentioned in article 32 of the law 1340 of 2009 with competition rules, warns that we are considering the option of taking measures, as many as necessary, so aviation market players are committed to continuing to operate in conditions that benefit the users of aerial transport. They are the necessary actions that may, if needed, reach intervention in the market, to protect the users and guarantee the conditions of balance and efficiency of the market of aerial transportation. Mister Director.

Roberto Bossa: Thank you very much, everyone. Once again I apologize to the passengers for a situation that was induced and surprising for Civil Aviation. As well said by the Mr. Minister, this is an act of government authority among all the authorities here present. The authority of competence and consumer protection, the superintendence of Transportation and Civil Aviation, within their jurisdictions.

In this vein, Civil Aviation has arranged a Permanent Emergency Committee, or PMU, where requests are being met and all events to move passengers are being coordinated, for all those affected in this situation we are facing today. Like yesterday, we count on the collaboration and compromise of both the airports and aerial transports to achieve this goal, as we managed to evacuate the affected parties to Argentina, Peru, and we are doing the same with a series of national airports. The size of the fleets offered may change in some instances, to ensure greater seat availability for operators in some destinations, to be able to transport the people waiting to get to their destinations at this moment.

Likewise, it is an action of authority from the government, the complete authority, as said by the Minister, from its capacity to intervene in the market, and the Constitution that protects markets and allows these state actions, and the Civil Aviation, in this case, attending each airport; with special gratitude to the SIC that has placed permanent consulting in airports so each passenger present can be advised in their respective demands, and this way offer a rapid verdict. So they can solve, individually if they wish, each of the situations and will be moved shortly.

The superintendence of transportation has helped and has been with us in airports, and has been with us in the requirements and the measures it has been exercising, both with Viva and the entire sector, so it can move forward in the solution of this crisis. Likewise, the Ombudsman Office, Home Office with its management, and everything related to the efforts of the local mayors and governors to serve the affected community. This is an immense mobilization in solidarity with the passengers, elucidating they are not alone, and that in each airport, all these authorities in cooperation are protecting their rights, finding solutions, or offering relief in whatever they may need to deal with the situation that the country and the aerial transport is facing today.

Colombia’s Ombudsman’s Office (Defensoría del Pueblo de Colombia) reported that 199 social leaders had been killed so far this year from January to early December. This tally was the highest total since the government signed a peace agreement in 2016 with the country’s most significant guerrilla group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia – FARC).

The murders were concentrated in the departments of Antioquia, Nariño, Putumayo, Cauca, and Arauca, all of which are traditional drug production and trafficking hubs.

This article by Alejandra Rodriguez generously shared by Insight Crime. The original can be read here.

Other indicators of violence in the country’s main conflict zones have also increased, including rates of mass displacement and confinement, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs Colombia reported in late November. The most affected departments include Cauca, Nariño, Putumayo, and Antioquia.

Confrontations between armed groups and attacks against the civilian population and social leaders rose despite the election of President Gustavo Petro and the beginning of his “Total Peace” plan, the government’s flagship project that seeks to negotiate peace or plea bargains with a score of criminal groups, including the National Liberation Army (Ejército de Liberación Nacional – ELN).

Dozens of social leaders and human rights activists have been killed since Petro took office on August 7, according to the non-governmental organization Institute of Peace and Development Studies (Instituto de Estudios para el Desarrollo y la Paz – Indepaz).

InSight Crime Analysis

The ongoing violence against leaders and community members in Colombia poses questions about the preparedness of the Colombian government in regard to its security policy during the period of negotiations with armed groups.

The departments most affected by Colombia’s armed conflict have faced high levels of violence since the beginning of 2022 and have seen the highest number of assassinations of social leaders. As a result of confrontations between groups, ceasefires have been difficult to broker.

These departments, like Nariño and Cauca, are well-known areas of activity for various armed groups, where illicit economies including coca cultivation and cocaine trafficking — and clashes between armed gangs over their control — are routinely reported.

With 33 killings, Nariño, a department in western Colombia on the border with Ecuador, recorded the highest number of murders of social leaders. It faces a humanitarian crisis due to massive displacements caused by clashes between armed groups fighting over territory to control drug trafficking routes.

Cauca registered 25 murders of social leaders as of November 2022. In the municipality of Cajibío, a community leader was killed during a triple murder in mid-November. Days later, six people were murdered in less than 48 hours in the municipality of Santander de Quilichao.

At least twenty social leaders were killed in Antioquia in 2022. Residents also reported fighting between former FARC dissidents, known as the ex-FARC Mafia, and the Urabeños, better known as the Gulf Clan or Autodefensas Gaitanistas de Colombia (Gaitanist Self-Defense Forces of Colombia – AGC). These reports were confirmed by the Colombian Army.

Putumayo, where threats and violence against the civilian population and indigenous communities are ongoing and deaths in combat between armed groups have been reported, 20 social leaders have been killed.

And Arauca is not far behind. This year, 12 social leaders have been murdered in the department. On November 20, four young people were massacred on a rural road.

The violence in each department is multifaceted and distinct, Ángela Olaya, a former InSight Crime investigator and co-founder of the Conflict Responses Foundation (Fundación Conflict Responses – CORE), told InSight Crime.

“What is happening in Cauca is not the same as what is happening in Antioquia because the violence that is occurring involves different conflicts and criminal actors in each region,” she said.

The election of a new government under President Petro arrived with hopes of a new public security situation in the country, alongside his Total Peace plan. Yet these killings appear to illustrate the lack of a clear policy to protect civilians and social leaders in many of the country’s historically most violent departments as the government negotiates with armed gangs. As in Colombia’s recent elections, moments of national sensitivity are often used by armed actors hoping to force their influence. Alternatively, some groups may be attempting to take advantage of negotiations in order to gain a foothold in certain criminal economies.

“Despite the fact that the new government is working to achieve ‘Total Peace,’ this is not an effective security policy, it is a negotiation. We need a defined strategy throughout the country to protect social leaders,” she said.

Progress may be coming. Recently, Colombian media outlet Semana reported on the government’s attempt to establish a non-aggression pact with the ELN, and an agreement for the military not to operate in the regions of Bajo Calima, Valle del Cauca, and Medio San Juan, Chocó.

This article by Alejandra Rodriguez generously shared by Insight Crime. The original can be read here.

Before a group of social leaders from the Montes de María region, the delegate of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), the UN Verification Mission, Social Pastoral, the Mapp/OAS, the Kroc Institute, the Capaz Institute and the Presidential Council for Human Rights, the director of the Investigation and Accusation Unit (UIA) of the JEP, Giovanni Álvarez, presented the details of the new report.

The first alert indicates that in 100 municipalities of Colombia the authority of the state is collapsing in a dangerous way. Among municipalities facing peril, Álvarez referred to Maicao, Segovia, Ituango, Tibú, Ocaña, El Tarra, Jamundí, Fortul, Puerto Leguízamo, Suárez, Buenos Aires, La Macarena, Montelíbano, Santander de Quilichao, Tumaco, Buenaventura and Argelia, as some of the municipalities where the situation is more serious.

The second alert brings attention to the fact that “Colombia is experiencing a phase of reorganization of historical nuclei of paramilitarism: the Clan del Golfo and new groups that claim the acronyms of the AUC and the BCB have taken over 1 in 4 municipalities, and show significant activity in subregions such as Urabá Antioquia, Bajo Atrato, Alto Sinú, the southern region of the  Bolívar department, Sierra Nevada, the southern region of Cesar department, Risaralda and the north of Valle del Cauca (La Virginia-Cartago), the Middle-Magdalena (river) region, Antioquia, Caldas and Santander departments.

The JEP, the Truth Commission and the UBPD are exploring ways to guarantee the non-repetition of the crimes suffered by Colombians during 60 years of conflict.

Finally, Álvarez warned that the FARC-EP dissidents are the group of recidivists or peace process deserters that have grown the most in Colombia, constituting the main risk of victimization against those excombatants  who have laid down their weapons. In that sense, he said that “the simultaneous presence of the dissidents of ‘Gentil Duarte’ and the Second Marquetalia increases more than three times the probability of murders” of members of the extinct guerrilla groups.

Through the Unified Risk Monitoring Mechanism of the Integral System for Peace, which will issue periodic reports for the country and the competent authorities, both the JEP, the Truth Commission, and the UBPD, explore ways to guarantee the non-repetition of the crimes experienced by Colombians during 60 years of armed conflict.

During the event, which took place in San Jacinto (Bolivar), the Special Jurisdiction for Peace, the Truth Commission and the Search Unit for Persons Reported Missing, presented the tool that will serve as a compass to warn about the risks, publicize the atrocities of the conflict and for the State to take the necessary measures.

Through this public platform, the three entities work to have greater tools to mitigate the risks of Colombians who actively participate in the transitional justice model. According to the report, since the signing of the Peace Agreement, 326 former FARC-EP combatants and 1,026 social leaders have been killed. The death of each of them deprives the victims of realizing their rights to justice and full truth.

“This tool does not replace the very defense mechanisms that are at the head of the State,” warned Judge Eduardo Cifuentes, president of the JEP. In his opinion, it is necessary that “the other authorities take note of the alerts so that they adopt the corresponding measures,” he said after recalling that the System asked the Ombudsman’s Office to adopt an ombudsman resolution that draws up a roadmap to put an end to the crimes.

For his part, Father Francisco de Roux, president of the Truth Commission, called “for mayors to protect their people” since “what is at stake and our only reason for existing as institutions of the Integral System for Peace is the responsibility for life.”

On that same shore stood Nadia Pérez, spokeswoman for the Search Unit for Persons Reported Missing. “This system has allowed us to identify the risks to life and freedom for relatives, companions, information contributors, such as the signatories of the Peace Agreement. This allows us to identify the risks, contrast them with you in the territory to prevent and mitigate them.”

The latest slayings occurred in February when five men were shot dead at a coffee farm located in the Tapartó settlement in the Andes municipality, in southeastern Antioquia department, El Tiempo reported.

This article generously shared by Insight Crime. The original can be read here.

Following the incident, the Minister of Defense, Diego Molano, the director of the National Police, Major General Jorge Luis Vargas, and the governor of Antioquia, Aníbal Gaviria, held a Security Council session in which they called for the arrests of several suspected members of the Urabeños group, which they said were responsible for the killings.

The Andes massacre was the second to take place on a coffee farm in southeastern Antioquia this year. Last year, seven massacres were recorded in this subregion, according to a study by Colombia’s Institute of Studies for Development and Peace (Instituto de Estudios para el Desarrollo y la Paz – Indepaz).

InSight Crime Analysis

The Urabeños are battling for control of southeastern Antioquia for two reasons: the region is key to moving drugs to the Pacific coast, and its coffee plantations present a unique market for local drug sales.

Year after year, approximately 80,000 people work seasonally on Antioquia’s coffee farms. The workers, many of them migrants, also present a large consumer market.

The massacres in Southeast Antioquia appear related to a confrontation between gangs associated with the Urabeños, which is also known as the Autodefensas Gaitanistas de Colombia (AGC), and the Medellin-based Oficina de Envigado. Both are looking to control local drug markets.

According to a warning published by the Ombudsman’s Office in August 2020, the municipalities of Ciudad Bolívar, Salgar, Betania, Hispania, Andes and Jardín are all at high risk for conflict over control of microtrafficking.

The Urabeños’ spread across southeastern Antioquia has also brought the group in conflict with the guerrillas of the National Liberation Army (Ejército de Liberación Nacional- ELN). The battle is primarily over the department of Chocó and the key drug routes there to Colombia’s Pacific Coast, according to Fernando Quijano, director of Colombia’s Corporation for Peace and Social Development (Corporación para la Paz y el Desarrollo Social – Corpades).

Carlos Zapata, the coordinator of the Human Rights and Peace Observatory within Colombia’s Popular Training Institute (Instituto Popular de Capacitación), told InSight Crime that the Urabeños are looking to maintain control of the routes to the Pacific, while also showing an interest in selling drugs locally. Meanwhile, the investigator added, other groups in the region are looking to do the same.

“They are looking to expand their local client base, but they are also disputing the routes to the Pacific that they have controlled for more than 20 years,” Zapata said.

Whatever their motive, the Urabeños’ strategy to expand their control into southeastern Antioquia has not delivered them the desired results.

Venturing to control new routes towards Chocó seems to have weakened the group’s territorial consolidation efforts, preventing it from building the necessary alliances. Meanwhile, the group continues its war with the ELN to the northwest of the department.

This article generously shared by Insight Crime. The original can be read here.

Photo courtesy Fiscalia General de Colombia

Left Undefended Killings of Rights Defenders in Colombia’s Remote Communities

• Download the full report in English

The 127-page report, “Left Undefended: Killings of Rights Defenders in Colombia’s Remote Communities,” documents killings of human rights defenders in the country in the last five years, as well as serious shortcomings in government efforts to prevent them, protect defenders, and hold those responsible to account. Over 400 human rights defenders have been killed in Colombia since 2016, according to the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR).

“Colombia has had the highest number of human rights defenders killed of any Latin American country in recent years, but the government’s response has been mostly talk, with little meaningful action,” said José Miguel Vivanco, Americas director at Human Rights Watch. “The administration of President Iván Duque frequently condemns the killings, but most of the government systems to address the problem are barely functional or have serious shortcomings.”

Human Rights Watch interviewed more than 130 people in 20 of Colombia’s 32 states, including judicial authorities, prosecutors, government officials, human rights officials, humanitarian workers, human rights defenders, and police officers. Human Rights Watch also reviewed information and statistics provided by multiple government agencies and ministries, including the Interior and Defense Ministries, the Attorney General’s Office, the Human Rights Ombudsperson’s Office, the Inspector General’s Office, the National Protection Unit, and the Superior Council of the Judiciary.

To meet its obligations under international human rights law, the Duque administration should move swiftly to implement and fully fund effective policies to prevent the killings – and protect the rights – of human rights defenders, Human Rights Watch said.

Killings of human rights defenders have increased since the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) guerrillas demobilized as part of a 2016 peace accord with the government. Other armed groups, including several that emerged from the FARC, have stepped into the breach, fighting for control of territory, engaging in illegal activities, and using violence against civilians. Human Rights Watch documented killings in six of the areas that have been most affected.

Tim Reiser, foreign policy aide to US Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) said the issue strikes at a core component of the peace deal’s implementation and its success going forward. “The peace agreement cannot survive if this continues because the people risked their lives to support it and they are essential to its success. Ultimately its going to require what Senator Leahy has been saying for years, establishing some semblance of security, economic opportunity, and social services in parts of the country where that has never existed. It is a daunting challenge but they need to show it can be done.”

OHCHR has documented an increasing number of killings each year, from 41 in 2015 to 108 in 2019. The office has so far documented 53 cases in 2020, and it is still verifying 80 others. At least 49 of those killed since 2015 were women.

Colombia’s Human Rights Ombudsperson’s Office, a government body independent of the executive, reports an increase in killings of human rights defenders between 2019 and 2020.

The authorities’ failure to exercise effective control and establish a civilian state presence in many areas reclaimed from the FARC has to a significant extent enabled this dynamic. The government has deployed the military to many parts of the country but has failed to strengthen the justice system, improve protections for the population, and to ensure adequate access to economic and educational opportunities and public services.

The killings have distinct dynamics in various regions. In North Cauca, groups that emerged from the FARC have killed many human rights defenders from the Indigenous Nasa communities who oppose armed groups and drug trafficking in their territories.

“They [the armed groups] have weapons, cars, and money, they have everything to wage war against us,” an Indigenous leader told Human Rights Watch. “We only have our Indigenous canes that symbolize our authority, our peaceful resistance, and our defense of the territory.”

Armed groups in Tumaco have killed human rights defenders whom they suspect of collaborating with the military or who fail to comply with the groups’ orders. They have threatened people who support projects to replace coca crops – the raw material of cocaine – with food crops.

Argemiro Manuel López Pertuz, 46, who led the crop substitution program for 200 families in a rural area of Tumaco, was killed on March 17, 2019 by men who went to his house and shot him 12 times. Evidence gathered by prosecutors suggests members of the Contadores armed group, who had accused López Pertuz of collaborating with the military, killed him.

Colombia has a broad range of policies, mechanisms, and laws designed to prevent abuses against human rights defenders and other people at risk. But their implementation has often been poor, Human Rights Watch found.

The National Protection Unit, under the Interior Ministry, has been charged since 2011 with protecting people at risk. To its credit, the unit has granted individual protection measures to hundreds of human rights defenders. But it only provides individual protection schemes in response to reported threats, and many of those killed had not received threats or been able to report them.

The unit also provides collective protection measures for communities or groups. But its budget is extremely limited, and the unit has rejected the vast majority of collective protection requests. The government has also failed to implement the Interior Ministry’s 2018 comprehensive protection plan. A pilot program to protect specific communities and groups has barely begun.

The Early Warnings System in the National Ombudsperson’s Office plays a crucial role in monitoring risks, including in remote regions. But national, state, and municipal authorities have repeatedly failed to respond to scores of “Early Warnings,” or have reacted in a pro-forma and ineffective way.

The government has also failed periodically to convene the National Commission of Security Guarantees, which is charged with designing policies to dismantle armed groups responsible for killing rights defenders. The commission has yielded no concrete results.

Efforts to bring killers to justice have proven more meaningful. The Attorney General’s office has passed directives and created specialized units to prosecute the killings, with 59 convictions since 2016. Yet serious progress in prosecuting people who ordered the killings, as well as in dismantling the armed groups, is still needed.

A key obstacle is the limited number of judges, prosecutors, and investigators in areas where most of the killings take place. The government has yet to create the “special team” of judges that President Duque announced in May 2019 to try these cases.

To meet its obligations under international human rights law, the Duque administration should move swiftly to implement and fully fund effective policies to prevent the killings – and protect the rights – of human rights defenders, Human Rights Watch said, with attention to ethnicity, gender, race, and other characteristics that may affect individuals’ or communities’ risk and needs. The authorities should substantially increase the capacity of judicial authorities and prosecutors to bring those responsible for such killings to account.

“Unless the government takes serious action, many more human rights defenders are likely to be killed, leaving hundreds of vulnerable communities undefended,” Vivanco said.

Photo: Colombian President Iván Duque (far left) meets with Defensoría del Pueblo head Carlos Negret and the DPC staff. (Photo credit: Defensoría del Pueblo / DPC)

The loan, which was provided by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), will be used to procure new technology tools (including a “visualization and geo-referencing platform”), create new management models, and generally advance the quality of citizen services, according to the Washington-based development bank.

“The program’s main beneficiaries will be the citizens, through a better response from public and private service providers,” said IDB in a statement. “Likewise, vulnerable populations will benefit from expanded offerings, better services, and specialized assistance from the DPC.”

The loan has 25-year term has a LIBOR-based interest rate with a grace period of 5.5 years.

New Colombian President Iván Duque called the Defensoría del Pueblo “one of the most important institutions in our country” during a meeting with DPC head Carlos Alfonso Negret and his staff late last month before taking office.

“We are going to work together to prevent the murder of social leaders, to work for indigenous communities and campesinos, and for there to not more violations of human rights in Colombia,” said Negret after the meeting.