At least 21 people were killed in two massacres in Colombia this weekend as "private justice" groups stepped up violence against alleged guerrilla sympathisers.
The first massacre occurred in Tocaima, a small village 60 miles from Bogota, where a dozen masked men wearing army uniforms dragged 14 villagers from their homes in broad daylight and killed them on the spot. Tocaima has historic links with Colombia's Revolutionary Armed Forces (FARC), a rebel army with 10,000 troops who have fought pitched battles against government troops just 20 miles from the capital city. On Sunday another group of armed men boarded a bus, picked out seven passengers, including a local Communist Party official, took them off and killed them on the roadside. "These massacres have all the signs of paramilitary involvement," said Mr Camilo Borrero, an investigator with CINEP - a Bogota-based human rights centre. The pattern is all too familiar in Colombia, torn apart by half a dozen competing armies and a justice system which is inoperative as 98 per cent of violent crimes go unpunished. There are an estimated 20,000 paramilitaries operating throughout Colombia in numerous small armies with names like "Colombia without guerrillas" and "Death to Kidnappers". The "paras" were formed in the 1980s by anxious landowners and drug-traffickers as a wave of kidnappings occurred throughout the countryside. They quickly became the shock troops of the right, deployed against legal left-wing activists. In the past decade, 3,000 members of the Patriotic Union (UP), a left-wing political party, have been assassinated, including two presidential candidates.
The latest massacres marked a new stage in paramilitary activity as their members travelled from rural hideaways to the outskirts of the capital city. A week earlier, 32 families fled their homes in Inaia Suea, a Bogota suburb, after paramilitaries shot dead a night watchman and gave residents 24 hours to leave the area. "It's all Montenegro's fault," complained one resident packing up her belongings the next day, as armed police guarded the appartment block. Gen Montenegro is head of Colombia's Department of Security Intelligence Unit (DAS), who claimed that the Inaia Suea apartment blocks were under investigation as an alleged guerrilla front. "It was a mistake to suggest the entire apartment block was in the hands of the guerrillas," Gen Montenegro said last week, promising permanent vigilance should residents return. No one has taken up the offer.
Last week the US State Department directly accused the Colombian army's Fourth Brigade of helping form death squads in the countryside, a claim that came as no surprise to Colombians. In a thick volume entitled State Terror in Colombia, a coalition of national and international human rights groups published the curriculum vitae of 350 high-ranking army and police officers, listing the alleged massacres and assassinations attributed to them. Most of the soldiers had studied at US military schools and were awarded promotion at home despite accusations of rights abuses.
Successive Colombian governments have given a green light to private justice groups. Earlier this month Colombia's constitutional court gave legal recognition to a controversial rural security agency known as Convivir, which organises peasant farmers into security patrols. One dissenting judge described the group as Colombia's Ku Klux Klan. In Colombia's recent elections, nine million people signed up to the "peace mandate", a citizen initiative demanding an end to state and rebel violence. A month later both army and guerrillas leaders have agreed to end the recruitment of children into their ranks. Over 10,000 children under 18 years of age, 80 per cent of them within the army and paramilitary structures will be granted an amnesty, psychological help and a fresh start in life. "Peace will not be handed out by the government, we have to fight for it ourselves," commented Ms Olga Ramirez, a social worker, echoing the hopes of all Colombians, powerless in the face of so much bloodshed.