In these and other similar actions taking place all over the country, victims are killed after being tortured, mutilated, and subjected to other cruel or inhumane treatment by their paramilitary captors. Human Rights Watch [HRW] reports how, on February 18, 2001, 300 armed men form the paramilitary Peasant Self-Defense Force of Córdoba and Uraba [ACCU] entered the town of El Salado, Bolívar Department, and massacred no fewer than 36 inhabitants, including women and children. Thirty more were reported missing or disappeared. The victims were tortured, raped, suffocated, garroted, stabbed and decapitated over the course of two full days. This was possible because all the while, the Colombian navy’s First Brigade maintained roadblocks around El Salado, preventing anyone, including the International Committee of the Red Cross, from entering the town.

In addition to the massacres and the regular practice of torture, paramilitary agents are responsible for a widespread campaign of selective killings or assassinations directed at civilians, especially political candidates, labor leaders and trade unionists, human rights defenders, indigenous leaders, academics and students. Paramilitary groups were likewise responsible for the vast majority – almost 80% – of the 664 forced disappearances of civilians reported in 2000. Disappearances, massacres, the selective assassination of civilians, widespread torture; all of these are crimes against humanity giving rise to individual criminal responsibility. Anyone committing or complicit in these international crimes – from Carlos Castaño, commander of the United Self-Defense Groups of Colombia [AUC], on down – may one day be held criminally responsible under international law for their actions.

The Colombian armed forces are themselves a source of serious human rights abuses amounting to international crimes. They frequently participate in or are complicit with crimes against humanity and war crimes involving their paramilitary allies. In fact, the paramilitary groups owe much of their brutal success to the Colombian authorities: there is substantial and credible evidence of direct army and police participation in several massacres attributed to the paramilitaries. In the case of El Salado described above, the Office of the UN High Commissioner in Colombia received reports that, in addition to closing off the town with roadblocks, members of the Colombian military were directly involved in the carnage. Countless other cases reveal active participation and/or complicity by state agents, without which the paramilitaries could not move or act as freely as they do.

Whether acting in concert with paramilitary groups or acquiescing to their atrocities, government officials, both military and civilian, are committing international crimes for which they may one day be held responsible. Foreign and national observers of the Colombian conflict would do well to remember this fact. Nor should they forget that members of the national security forces continue to carry out extra-judicial killings, acts of torture and other attacks on the civilian population directly, in violation of the laws of war. Proportionately, however, these transgressions of international law run a distant third to those committed by the paramilitary and guerrilla groups.

Guerilla Groups

The two main insurgent forces, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia [FARC] and the National Liberation Army [ELN], commit war crimes, and perhaps even crimes against humanity, by targeting civilians in a number of ways. Reliable non-governmental sources affirm that 20% of the politically motivated killings taking place today in Colombia are attributable to the two main guerilla groups. The FARC, especially, massacre civilians from time to time, and both groups regularly engage in the selective killing of dissidents and opponents. In December of last year, armed men believed to be from the FARC killed Diego Turbay, a congressman who was the chairman of the House of Representative’s Committee on Peace. Guerrilla fighters from the FARC also murdered three American indigenous activists in 1999. In recent years, hundreds of other civilians, including social, political and indigenous leaders, have been executed by the FARC and the ELN for collaborating with the enemy or refusing to accede to their demands.