PARAMILITARY POLITICS
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Here's some further information on state and para-state terror in Colombia.  For a more general context see Colombia background.

Links between the state forces and paramilitaries

The widespread, institutionalised links between the Colombian armed forces and right-wing paramilitary death squads have been well-documented by national and international human rights bodies.

• Human Rights Watch (2001),The "Sixth Division": Military-paramilitary ties and US Policy in Colombia
• Human Rights Watch (2000), The Ties That Bind: Colombia and Military-Paramilitary Links
• Human Rights Watch (1996), Colombia's Killer Networks: The Military-Paramilitary Partnership and the United States

Paramilitary-military strategy

Paramilitary groups - working in colaboration with state forces - have cleared the way for development projects based on the interests of national and multinational corporations across the country through violence against and forced displacement of rural communities occupying territories that are strategic for these projects and repression of human rights and social activists.

• An online version of Irish investigative journalist Gearoid O'Loingsigh's book on Paramilitary Strategy in the Magdalena Medio Region
• The original Spanish text La estrategia integral de los paramilitares en la Magdalena Medio

The "peace process" with the paramilitaries

[Introductory text coming soon].

• An amusing little animation from Amnesty International, "Colombia Clean"
• Human Rights Watch (2005), "Smoke and Mirrors: Colombia's demobilisation of paramilitary groups"
• Amnesty Internationa (2005),The Paramilitaries in Medellin: Demobilization or Legalization?

The "parapolitica" scandal

[Coming soon].

Impunity

Most human rights violations, especially those carried out by the state and para-state forces, are never brought to justice, making it easier to continue with the repression. 

• Human Rights Watch (2002), A Wrong Turn: The Record of the Colombian Attorney General's Office

[More resources on their way].

"Democratic Security", illegal detentions and extra-judicial executions

In his first term in office, far-right President Alvaro Uribe implemented a policy of "Democratic Security", which has involved the strengthening of the police and armed forces, the recruitment of ‘peasant soldiers’ in the countryside and extensive surveillance of the population, including networks of ‘citizen informers’. ‘Democratic Security’ is now notorious for leading to an increase in violence against civilians by state forces, particularly mass detention and extra-judicial executions of civilians at the hands of the military.

• Amnesty International refute goverment spin in their report for the Second International Conference on Human Rights in Colombia, Brussels, 17-18 April 2007
• Amnesty's 2004 report on repression and violence in the oil-rich region of Arauca, Laboratory of War
• Killings of civilians at the hands of the army are also rife in the neighbouring region of Casanare, where BP are involved oil-exploration.  See our page on BP