Colombia, On Thursday, the 5th of October, 2000
Violation in DD.HH. without precedents ": Amnesty
THE TIME Bogota D.C. - Colombia. Politics
FOR JUAN CARLOS IRAGORRI Madrid The violation of the human rights and of the humanitarian international law has reached in Colombia " levels without precedents ", indicated to to him(her) yesterday this periodic Esteban Beltrán, the director in Spain of the not governmental British organization International Amnesty (AI). Beltrán spoke about his(its) recent visit to Colombia between(among) the first one and on September 22, which results consist in a report of this ONG. " The situation is dramatic ", notices Beltrán, who has travelled to the South American country in four occasions from 1994. " Whenever one goes it(he,she) seems to him(her) that it(he,she) can not be bad. But when one returns it(he,she) realizes otherwise ". The director of Spanish AI moved in Susan Lee's company, person in charge of Colombia in AI. They talked with tens of civil, with military men and with(in spite of) authorities as the vice-president Gustavo Bell Lemus. According to Beltrán, the Government has done deaf ears(hearing) to the international recommendations to dismount to the paramilitary groups. " One undertook to create a block of search for it, and it(he,she) does not exist. One undertook to investigate the assassination of 25 defenders of the human rights, and they are still practically unpunished ", it(he,she) expresses. This attitude, he believes, can transport some type of responsibility of the Executive before the justice. AI indicates that the links between(among) the Army and the paramilitary ones not only are supported but they have become closer. " After the tens of interviews that we did in Colombia, which protagonists we can not reveal for safeties reasons, we realized of that(that) they are a lot of(many) the cases of peoples captured for paramilitary, delivered then to the Army and returned to the self-defenses to be executed ", affirms Beltrán. The increase of the paramilitary presence is another phenomenon stated by AI. " Not only it(he,she) keeps in the Average Magdalena ", adds Beltrán, " but it(he,she) has moved to sites(places) where before it(he,she) did not exist, as the center of the Valley of the Cauca. In our visit, we verify(verified) that the paramilitary ones act for year and a half in places as Buga, Bugalagrande, Tuluá and Fortune, generating thousands of displaced(displeased) ". The guerrilla warfare does not escape to the long pole of International Amnesty. " The Farc and the Eln they have perpetrated numerous violent and disproportionate acts against the civil population. But there is something more, that it(he,she) is worrying: the increase of children's kidnapping on the part of the Farc ", Esteban Beltrán concludes.
Correspondent of THE TIME