Pubdate: Sat, 22 Jul 2000
Source: Washington Post (DC)
Copyright: 2000 The Washington Post Company
Contact:  1150 15th Street Northwest, Washington, DC 20071
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Website: http://www.washingtonpost.com/
Author: Steven Dudley, Special to The Washington Post

COLOMBIA VOWS END TO ABUSES

BOGOTA, Colombia - The Colombian military, whose human rights abuses have 
barred it from receiving U.S. aid for the last few years, says it has 
changed and is ready to meet the conditions of a $1.3 billion aid package 
prepared by the Clinton administration. But critics inside and outside the 
government wonder whether the new armed forces are not just a makeover of 
the old.

Military leaders say human rights violations attributed to the armed forces 
are down and the top brass is preparing a purge of corrupt and abusive 
officers to comply with stipulations in the aid package. "The armed forces 
takes human rights seriously," Defense Minister Luis Fernando Ramirez said 
in an interview. "And they understand that a military that violates human 
rights doesn't have the backing of the people."

Brandishing human rights reports compiled by the government, Ramirez has 
made several trips in the past 12 months to Washington to convince 
lawmakers of this conversion and says the military is now cited in less 
than 2 percent of all cases of human rights violations. He has also brought 
journalists and diplomats to Colombian military bases to witness human 
rights role-playing by some of the 70,000 soldiers who have been trained in 
international humanitarian law.

However, even within the Colombian government, skeptics remain. They 
question the military's claim that it has severed ties with the right-wing 
paramilitary groups that rights monitors say are responsible for more than 
70 percent of the more than 3,000 politically motivated murders of 
civilians per year in Colombia.

"The army's abuses have fallen because the paramilitaries now do the dirty 
work for them," a top government official said.

To sever ties with the right-wing groups, the Colombian military has agreed 
to purge its ranks. In September, President Andres Pastrana will sign a 
decree handing over special powers to a committee within the armed forces 
to dismiss personnel suspected of committing human rights violations or 
having connections to paramilitaries.

Pastrana dismissed three generals last year, one of whom reportedly was 
involved in a series of massacres in the state of Norte de Santander in 
which more than 200 people were killed during a three-month span. One army 
captain, one lieutenant and two majors also are being investigated in these 
cases. More dismissals are expected once the armed forces' special 
commission begins its work.

The military is drawing from the Colombian police's experience. Former 
police chief Gen. Rosso Jose Serrano used special powers to release more 
than 11,000 officers during his seven-year stint as director. Serrano 
gained support from Colombians and Washington politicians for his actions. 
But the military is unlikely to take such harsh reprisals against its own 
men, said Colombian political scientist Andres Davila, who published a book 
on the armed forces last year.

"The military is not ready for a purge," Davila said. "They don't feel they 
need to get rid of anyone."

Ramirez said probably about 100 members of the armed forces will be forced 
to leave, and that none will face prosecution. No Colombian general has 
been sentenced to jail for human rights violations. One colonel is serving 
time, for organizing a massacre of civilians in 1989.

To date, most investigations of armed forces personnel have landed in 
military courts, where prosecutions of officers are rare. But Ramirez said 
the military justice system is more efficient than its civilian counterpart 
and has undergone reform so that human rights cases involving torture, 
forced disappearances and massacres will be tried in the civilian courts.

The United States has also pushed this process along by organizing seminars 
for legal experts on judicial reform, training Colombian officers in human 
rights and pressuring the government to take action against abusive 
officers. In 1998, the Colombian government dismantled the 20th 
Intelligence Brigade, which prosecutors had implicated in several killings 
of civilians and which Washington had accused of promoting death squad 
activity.

The 20th Brigade was accused of routinely organizing the assassinations of 
Colombians who were critical of the government. Five members of the 
brigade, including its former head, are also facing charges of 
masterminding the assassination of Colombian Senator Alvaro Gomez in 1995.

Critics, however, say the 20th Brigade's personnel was reassigned to other 
parts of the military. Many landed in the 13th Brigade, where the main 
intelligence unit now operates, and at least one spy is being investigated 
by the attorney general's office for a smear campaign against a peace 
activist, a labor union leader and the Communist Party chief.

The recently approved U.S. aid package includes conditions that may push 
the Colombian military to further reform. It calls for the State Department 
to "certify" the Colombian government for its fight against right-wing 
paramilitaries and abusive military officers and it maintained the Leahy 
amendment, which prohibits U.S. money for Colombian military units involved 
in human rights abuses.

But human rights groups say it is unclear whether the U.S. conditions 
placed on the aid will be enforced. President Clinton can bypass the 
certification process if it involves a "national security interest."

One unit that has passed through the evaluation process required by the 
Leahy amendment to weed out abusers of human rights is the 24th Brigade, 
based in the southern state of Putumayo. Local and international officials 
have condemned both the police and the military in Putumayo for maintaining 
close ties to right-wing militia groups that can be seen patrolling the 
streets in the area with high-powered weapons.

The Pentagon has also hired a private consulting firm, Military 
Professionals Resources Inc., to conduct a top-to-bottom review of the 
Colombian Defense Ministry. MPRI is made up of former U.S. military 
personnel and has between 10 and 12 people working in Colombia. A company 
spokesman in Virginia said its role includes applying human rights 
practices, but this does not involve training military personnel.
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