[NYTr] Colombia: Fighting Human Rights Abuses and Violence in Ciudad Bolívar

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

IPS News - Dec 19, 2007
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=40515

COLOMBIA:  

Fighting Human Rights Abuses and Violence in Ciudad Bolívar

By Helda Martínez

BOGOTA, Dec 18 (IPS) - Human rights violations are still a major
problem in Ciudad Bolívar, a poor suburb in the hills on the
southwestern edge of the Colombian capital, despite some improvements.

Many of the nearly one million inhabitants of Ciudad Bolívar are people
displaced by the civil war, who live alongside "demobilised" members of
illegal armed groups.

That means that people who have fled the violence in their home regions
and sought refuge in the sprawling suburb often come face to face with
the same dangers that they thought they had left behind.

Forty-six percent of the displaced persons who flee to the capital from
around the country end up in Ciudad Bolívar, which began to grow in the
1980s as a consequence of the armed conflict that has plagued Colombia
for nearly half a century.

According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR),
some three million people have been driven from their homes by the
fighting between government forces and ultra-right paramilitaries on
one hand and leftwing guerrillas on the other.

Colombia’s is one of the largest populations of internally displaced
people in the world.

In Ciudad Bolívar, where 70 percent of the inhabitants are under 26,
young people are frequently the targets of forced recruitment or
violence by the paramilitary or insurgent groups that hold power in
different parts of the district.

"The violence in the area came to a head in 1998 and 1999, then eased
off, until it began to climb again in 2004 before peaking in 2005, with
a total of 386 murders," Jairo Vargas, a Bogotá city government human
rights official, told IPS.

"In late 2005, 128,000 people expressed their support for the ‘Mandate
for Life’. Since then, the number of murders has gone down, with 142
fewer killings in 2007 than in 2006 -- a major achievement," said
Vargas.

The Mandate for Life, organised by civil society organisations, brought
thousands of people -- mainly youngsters -- out on the streets in
demonstrations in which they protested the widespread killings, forced
disappearances and forced recruitment.

The members of the Mesa Local de Jóvenes de Ciudad Bolívar, made up of
young people from the district, acknowledge that the levels of violence
have gone down.

"But it isn’t sufficient," a 17-year-old high school student commented
to IPS.

The student, who said he has been accepted by the National University
of Colombia, the country’s most prestigious public university, as a
result of "good luck and good grades," said "it is not sufficient
because the commitments made are not always followed up on."

"Unfortunately, many police officers abuse their power," he added.
"What we do is inform other young people of their rights, because if
they are familiar with them, they will not be so afraid of pressing for
respect for their rights."

For example, high school and college students cannot be detained in the
street; young people completing their compulsory military service are
not authorised to search or arrest people without the presence of a
member of the Metropolitan Police; and only female police officers can
search women -- "essential questions that many people are unaware of,"
said the young man, who asked to remain anonymous for security reasons.

"They used to stop us on the streets, throw us into trucks and haul us
off to the police Comando de Atención Inmediata (CAI), where they would
hit us, and if anyone so much as mentioned human rights, he was hit
with a board that read ‘human rights’," he said.

Vargas said 10 workshops were held with representatives of the police
and army, along with lectures and conferences -- a process that gave
rise to agreements aimed at improving relations between young people
and the security forces.

"The district government, along with local authorities and around 30
non-governmental organisations, follow up on these questions every two
months and we have confirmed that the situation has improved," said
Vargas.

"Whereas up to 300 young people a week used to be rounded up and thrown
into preventive detention, only around 20 are now arrested, and in a
respectful manner. The agreements reached include avoiding any act that
could be considered public humiliation, like trying the detainees to
the flagpoles in the CAI, or handcuffing them."

"We have spoken about the issue of human rights with 250 local police
officers and soldiers from the Arabia and Sierra Morena military
bases," said Vargas. "The police commanders held a meeting with CAI
officers, and the reports show that things have been calm for the last
two months."

"The process will continue with training in human rights for young
people and the police, with the aim of reducing armed and
socio-political violence as much as possible," he added.

"I believe in the commitment and efforts made by the police and the
army, like in the Inter-Institutional Early Alert Committee (CIAT) and
the Humanitarian Panel for Ciudad Bolívar and Soacha," a neighbouring
slum, he said.

The Humanitarian Panel, which was established last week, will help
create and strengthen links between national and local institutions
with a view to addressing the complaints of local residents about
threats or the presence of members of irregular armed groups, for
example.

According to the Defensoría (Office of the Ombudsman), at least "six
paramilitary-type structures" were detected in the area in May, despite
the controversial demobilisation negotiated in 2006 by the right-wing
government of Álvaro Uribe and the paramilitary United Self-Defence
Forces of Colombia (AUC).

But Vargas says there have been arrests of heads of paramilitary groups
in the area, a clampdown on forced recruitment, and efforts to work
with groups to prevent voluntary recruitment as well.

He also said, however, that relations with groups of demobilised
paramilitaries in the area have been tense, because both victims
(displaced persons) and victimisers are living in close proximity to
each other.

He added, nonetheless, that local residents can now move about freely
in the area, without danger.

In addition, he stressed that access to education, health care, jobs
and public services like piped water, electricity and paved streets
have greatly improved, and said "it is the presence of the state that
prevents the activities of armed actors and curbs violence."

"But if every year the educational system spits 5,000 youngsters out on
the streets, leaving them without possibilities of finding a job or
entering the university, the situation becomes much more complex," said
Vargas. (END/2007)