Reply #3: Executing justice: Which side are we on?

[Judi Lynn]

Executing justice: Which side are we on?
An interview with Colombian human rights activist Padre Javier Giraldo, S.J.

by Ruth Goring

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The government of Colombia has long been engaged in a war with two Marxist insurgent groups, the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) and the ELN (National Army of Liberation). The U.S. government currently bolsters the Colombian armed forces through Plan Colombia, but most Americans receive little news of the conflict and fail to realize that nearly all its casualties are civilians.

In 1988 Padre Javier Giraldo, a Jesuit priest, was instrumental in founding a human rights organization, originally Catholic and now ecumenical: the Comisión Intereclesial de Justicia y Paz (Interchurch Commission for Justice and Peace, generally shortened to Justicia y Paz). Over the years Padre Javier has helped compile Proyecto Nunca Más (the Never Again Project), a massive database of human rights violations in his country.

Last year 4,900 political homicides and 734 forced disappearances were recorded in Colombia, according to the Permanent Committee for the Defense of Human Rights of Colombia. Organizations such as Human Rights Watch and United Nations reporting agencies state that 70-80 percent of political murders in that country are the work of right-wing paramilitary forces supported by major economic interests. The government claims to oppose the paramilitaries as well as the guerrillas, yet according to many eyewitness reports the Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia (United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, AUC) works hand in hand with the army. A key theme of Padre Javier's work has been impunity--the Colombian government's failure to punish, or even properly investigate, crimes committed by paramilitaries, army personnel, and officials of the state.

PRISM: Tell us about the work you have done to bring to light human rights abuses in Colombia.

JG: I worked for some years with CINEP, the Center for Investigation and Popular Education, founded by Jesuits in the late 1960s. Its purpose is to promote education and justice among Colombia's people. However, it became increasingly evident that Colombia needed a small church-based organization that would confront issues of human rights very directly. Most of the Catholic bishops were very tied to the government; they didn't denounce any abuses except those committed by guerrillas.

Among progressive religious orders we began exploring how we might protect the human rights of victims of the Colombian state. The bishops were not interested in helping, but in early 1988 the superiors of 25 orders (which we call congregations) came together to found the Comisión de Justicia y Paz. Its goal was to provide humanitarian and legal support, especially in areas of intense conflict--Santander, Valle del Cauca, Magdalena Medio, Putumayo, and Urabá. We would gather facts about human rights abuses in a databank and would publicize situations of crisis. Some cases we would take to the courts. Our staff developed close relationships with some impoverished communities that were suffering in the midst of the armed conflict and that gained courage to declare themselves peace communities.

I served as the general secretary of Justicia y Paz until the end of 1998 and was often the spokesperson for victims in cases brought before Colombia's courts. In those eleven years I did not witness a single act of justice. Not one government or military official who committed crimes was sanctioned.

PRISM: How would you summarize your analysis of Colombia's crisis?

JG: In the late 1990s I wrote an article, "Lo que en Colombia se llama justicia" (What Is Called Justice in Colombia), published in our Justicia y Paz journal. It recounts 10 exemplary cases that reveal the mechanisms of impunity in our country--how testimony is manipulated, victims or their families are threatened and silenced, false testimony is presented, essential documents are "misplaced." Then I pose a global question. We turn to the state to sanction human rights violations, assign reparations, bring about justice--but the state itself has committed the crimes and is the criminal. How can we turn to the victimizer for justice? It's a terrible contradiction.

My conclusion was that the Colombian state is contradictory. It tries to fulfill two functions. On the one hand it's a violent, discriminatory institution that must favor a small wealthy minority. Even basic necessities are denied to the great majority of its people. By its very nature, at its core, it is not democratic. On the other hand, in public discourse it presents itself as a state based on law, one that respects and implements justice, human rights norms, democratic laws.

How do government functionaries manage this contradiction? They maintain a duality: the parastate, a structure that is illegal and clandestine, increasingly takes over the dirty work, the repression. It doesn't appear to be part of the state. For many years now Colombia's government has been creating and maintaining these structures. The legal, constitutional structure exists parallel to structures of a parastate and paramilitary.

More:
http://www.derechos.org/nizkor/colombia/doc/giraldo1.html