Colombia: Criminalization,
a mechanism to ensure unfair “development”
In Colombia the State resorts
to criminalizing social and grass-roots organizations as a method
of repression aimed at imposing by force the global market’s agribusiness,
large scale infrastructure works and the extraction of natural resources
involving high human, social and environmental costs.
Criminalization has been
an effective method whereby – by using discursive and symbolic strategies,
combined with the formal use of legality – social actors are delegitimized
and penalized for opposing unjust working conditions, environmental
destruction, and policies damaging the survival of the planet, subordinated
to corporate profitability and earnings.
Accusations, breaking up
relationships between society and social movements and legal questioning
of social expressions have been famous in Colombia since the thirties.
The demonstrations by banana plantation workers who were accused
of being “communists,” ended in a collective massacre promoted by
a United States banana company. In the fifties and sixties the peasant
movement demanding land was criminally attacked and bombarded and
unjustly brought up before the courts. During the seventies, an
urban and rural demonstration linked to a National Civil Strike
was drowned by indiscriminate killings of demonstrators, followed
by torture and trials of civilians in military tribunals. Or in
the eighties, when members of social grass-roots peasant and Afro-Colombian
organizations were murdered, forced off their lands, pushed into
exile or exterminated by paramilitary forces and the survivors later
brought up for trial, accused of terrorism.
Today, while interests focused
on the world market are located in those territories, the social
expressions of resistance by rural inhabitants, among them the survivors
of the State’s systematic violence, are subject to further violence
and criminalization with the use of multiple strategies to ensure
they are under control or that they consent to “development” models.
In the North of the Choco
in the Colombian Darien area, the destruction of primary and secondary
forests started with a violent military operation under the name
of “Genesis,” which resulted in the displacement of Afro-Colombian
peasants –accompanied by 80 documented crimes- and the installation
of a paramilitary base where the Maderas del Darien company (a branch
of Pizano S.A) established itself. The leaders who bravely denounced
these actions against the collective territories where they lived
were subject to death threats, to being set-up in the mass media
and sent to trial for rebellion and drug trafficking. Those responsible
for what was known as ecocide in the mid-nineties and for other
crimes were never investigated. The companies deforested the land,
which was never returned to its owners, the military officers were
promoted and the paramilitary forces, together with national politicians
developed new agribusinesses. The communities were criminalized
and stigmatized.
In that same region, in
the bio-geographical Colombian Choco, the watersheds of the Curvarado
and Jiguamiando - declared a natural reserve in 1959 - are an example
of the use of official – military and paramilitary – violence for
the implementation of oil palm agribusiness and the spread of cattle
ranching. Starting in 1996 when President Alvaro Uribe Velez was
governor of the Department of Antioquia, the 17th Brigade of the
national army and the paramilitary forces launched a persecution
against Afro-descendent and indigenous inhabitants. More than 140
peasants were murdered or went missing and 40 community leaders
had court action brought against them, including capture orders
for the crime of rebellion. These facts together with the death
threats, the economic blockade, the abuse of power, the bombing
and the ransacking of local peoples’ means of survival, led to 15
forced mass displacements of hundreds of families.
This violence has made it
possible for over 23,000 hectares of collective territory to be
appropriated illegally by oil palm growers, cattle ranchers and
loggers linked to State criminality, paramilitary forces and money
laundering. This dispossession of land has been accompanied by intensive
deforestation of primary forests in over 10,000 hectares, the drying
up of five rivers and the contamination of streams by agrochemicals,
causing serious health problems particularly affecting women and
children.
Criminalization can only
be understood as part of a repression mechanism, the violation of
human rights and an attempt to exert social control, clearly associated
today with business in these territories.
In Colombia, according to
Human Rights organizations, over the past 15 years, close on 4 million
people have been forcefully evicted from their lands by armed operations
involving State responsibility and 14,000 crimes against humanity
were committed between 1988 and 2003 . Organizations of missing
people’s families indicate that over 15,000 people have disappeared
with the use of force . Nearly 7 million hectares of lands have
been illegally appropriated by paramilitary forces or drug traffickers
in the past 15 years, very often after having forced the inhabitants
to leave .
The policy of democratic
security and construction of a community State, launched in 2002
by the Uribe government, boasts that it has moved away from the
National Security Doctrine and that it has zero tolerance of Human
Rights violations. Such statements are no more than reengineering
advertising of the old repressive military and police practices.
Between 2002 and 2006, close on 6000 illegal and arbitrary arrests
were made, together with nearly 1000 murders by the armed forces.
Many of these victims are depicted before the mass media as having
died in combat.
The Colombian State justifies
the use of violence against peasants, Afro-Colombians, indigenous
peoples and trade-union and social leaders, under the pretext that
they are persecuting guerrillas or drug trafficking. But these attacks
usually favour the economic interests of national and international
companies engaged in agribusiness, infrastructure works and extraction
of natural resources. These companies also protect themselves against
criminality or use it to support their interests.
Actual violence is accompanied
by practices such as false incriminations and accusations in the
mass media, leading to criminal prosecution. Organizational processes
affirming the right to a healthy environment, the respect of biodiversity
and to collective territories are penalized to ensure investment.
Since October 2008, demonstrations
by indigenous Nasa people in the Departments of Cauca and Putumayo
against the signing of Free Trade Agreements and in favour of respect
for biodiversity and the territories have seen two murders and over
200 people injured. High government officials have delegitimized
the indigenous movement, accusing it of being led by FARC guerrillas.
These accusations are not new and for some time now indigenous leaders
have been set up in legal proceedings.
Recently sugar cane workers
launched a strike to question the national energy policy and the
absence of labour guarantees and were the target of false accusations.
Three of them were later arrested.
Criminalization in the mass
media and in the courts is part of repressive mechanisms and of
a formality to legitimize the violation of Human Rights. This is
part of an attempt to ensure territorial privatization for businesses
focused on the global market, to destroy opposition, impose silence
and social consent to an unfair “development” model.
By Danilo Rueda, Justicia
y Paz, e-mail: daniloruedar@gmail.com
, http://justiciaypazencolombia.org
