Thank you. You are very kind.
Good afternoon, everyone. I am very grateful to have this opportunity to address you all.
In Colombia, the human rights crisis is ongoing and improvements are a long way off. Fundamental rights and freedoms are increasingly restricted in the context of a deinstitutionalization of the democratic state, as shown in different areas. Attacks against the civilian population and threats against trade unionists and against defenders of human rights and social organizations reveal the lie that demobilization of paramilitary groups has occurred.
Different human rights reports have shown that paramilitary structures are still in place in 293 Colombian municipalities. Apparently they just changed names.
In large cities in the country, the homicide rate has grown at an alarming pace. The city of Medellín offers the best example that the paramilitary has not been dismantled. And in this regard, with all due respect, I can tell you that you may consult a report written by Human Rights Watch that was published in February of this year.
Extrajudicial executions by the national army have grown a lot, achieved through what is called “false positives”. Last year, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial Executions paid a visit to our country and at that time he said,
The sheer number of cases, their geographic spread, and the diversity of military units implicated, indicate that these killings were carried out in a more or less systematic fashion by significant elements within the military.
The office of the public prosecutor reported that as at September 2009, they had been investigating 2,077 such executions. People were killed by the national army, by people who were supposed to protect them.
While the government has announced an effort to protect trade unionists and human rights people, there is a contradiction in reality. There is a hostile environment to defend human rights in Colombia. The government is still declaring itself in a very harsh way against members of the Supreme Court of Justice, members of the unions, and against our work as human rights defenders.
Labour conflicts are considered a public matter and different organizations act illegally against trade unionists, as we have proven. One of the most incredible criminal actions against people in Colombia is by what they call the Administrative Department of Security, DAS, the state intelligence army that reports directly to the president of the republic.
DAS carried out, with the full participation and knowledge of its directors, a criminal hunt against all those who opposed current government policies. The DAS illegally created a special group within the entity. They prosecuted local targets, intercepted phone calls, and detected routes that people took to go to different places. They even took keys belonging to one of the human rights defenders, and they took film and photographic records of places and people, including children. They threatened all those people, like journalist Claudia Julieta Duque, who got a phone call saying they were going to slaughter her little daughter. The inter-American human rights commission, the special rapporteur of the United Nations--they were all victims of these attacks and persecution.
The program meant to protect trade unionists and human rights observers was used by DAS to achieve its goals. Through the program that they conceived to protect us, they got all kinds of information and intelligence from us.
All these people have been the object of intelligence activities, to get in their databases. What they do is they use this information to prepare lists. Mr. Jorge Noguera Cotes gave this information to the paramilitary so they would threaten, displace, and kill all those people.
Jorge Noguera is today on trial because of this before the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court has also been the victim of persecution and accusations by the government. It has been made very clear by all the declarants that the final recipient of that strategic intelligence was the president himself, Alvaro Uribe Velez.
In spite of all the efforts made to deny this violence against trade unionists, this remains the same: there were 707 violations of the rights to life, freedom, and integrity of union workers.
I would like to quote a portion of the annual report by the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, dated March 4, 2010. She states:
Of particular concern are the threats against and killings of trade union members, journalists, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) persons and those who promote their rights. Similar concern is held for those advocating for the ethno-territorial rights of Afro-Colombian communities and indigenous peoples.
Crimes against trade unionists have given no results. They haven't had any positive results in the investigation of all these crimes. The state has implemented a series of standards that are not abided by. Sentences that they show as any progress in justice can be questioned. For example, when we did the investigation into my father's killing, the sentence they gave is a sentence against a police officer who, two years before, had been killed in a non-related matter.
Those investigations are not bringing out the truth. They proceed with investigations, but they're only looking for reasons like crimes of passion. They are not looking for intellectual perpetrators, which is the only way to solve this.
I have to reiterate that the Colombian government has not been transparent in dealing with these issues. They are trying to create their own international image instead of trying to really protect the trade unionists. All this, among other things, has made Colombia have one of the lowest rates of trade union participation on the continent. We have been losing members. For example, between 2002 and 2009, 230 of these organizations were denied the right to become unions. There are 53,000 fewer people who are members of the unions as opposed to the number in 2002. We went from 863,000 members to 810,000 in 2010, and this goes against what the government says.
I know that some of the members of professional organizations in Colombia have said that Colombia wants the treaty adopted. What I can tell you is that the Afro-Colombian organizations, the three union organizations in my country, human rights people, are asking you not to approve that treaty with a government that's still violating human rights.
We ask you to please conduct a transparent and impartial analysis so that you will see what impact this treaty will have on my country. We do not believe in any study that is conducted by any government. We ask that a study be conducted by an independent entity.
You are the ones who decide who to listen to. I trust that you will listen to the victims, social organizations, defenders of human rights, and that you will defend and protect life.
Thank you very much.