A ‘Peace Community’ Tries Nonviolent Resistance in Colombia · Global Voices
The Peace Community of San José de Apartadó celebrated its 18th Anniversary in March 2015. Photo: <PERSON>
This article by <PERSON> was originally published on NACLA's website and is republished here as part of a content-sharing agreement.
We are now more than two years into the Colombian peace talks. Meeting in Havana, negotiators for the Colombian government and its principal antagonist, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), have been trying to agree upon an intricate deal to end the country’s long-running armed conflict. Meanwhile, as the talks proceed, some communities have attempted to diminish the violence by maintaining an active and credible distance from all major parties of the conflict. The Peace Community of San José de Apartadó (PC) in the northwestern department of Antioquia is one of those communities.
Created by peasant farmers in 1997, the Peace Community seeks to avoid being drawn further into the country’s armed conflict by peacefully resisting the occupation of its lands by both government-supported and oppositional armed actors. From the beginning, PC members refused to participate in a government security program being promoted known as CONVIVIR, which, among other things, used civilians as informants against guerrilla forces. Participation in this program would have undermined the group’s neutrality—one of its founding principles—and put it at even greater risk of violence.
After a massacre that took the lives of seven Peace Community members in 2005, which then president—and former governor of Antioquia—<PERSON> blamed on the FARC guerrillas, he publicly accused PC leaders of “being in the services of the FARC” and “of wanting to use the Community to protect this terrorist organization.” However, Colombia’s Attorney General later determined that the massacre was carried out by the paramilitary group United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) in coordination with the Colombian National Army’s 17th Brigade. State entities and public forces have been linked to acts of violence against Colombian communities for years. <PERSON> himself has been accused of ties to paramilitary groups throughout his political career. 289
An official investigation was opened against him in 2013, but in March of 2014 he was elected to the Colombian Senate, where he remains a powerful political force—an opponent of the <PERSON> administration and the current round of peace talks.
Almost since its inception, the Peace Community has been covered by protective measures of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR), a body of the Organization of American States (OAS). These measures require that the Colombian state respect and protect the Peace Community, as well as investigate the crimes perpetrated against its members. The OAS system, however, does not have the power of enforcement, relying on international political pressure as its tool for the implementation of rulings. The Colombian Constitutional Court (CCC) upheld the IACHR’s measures in 2003 and 2007. Additional national directives prohibit Colombian public forces and government officials from stigmatizing or defaming human rights defenders such as the PC and its accompaniment organizations. However, these court rulings and directives have often been disregarded.
In 2012, the CCC ordered the Colombian government to adhere to five points in response to requirements laid out by the Peace Community in order to reestablish a dialogue with the state. The first point required an “official public apology” from Colombia’s current administration for the defamatory statements made by former president <PERSON>. The apology came in December 2013, in which President <PERSON> retracted the “unjust accusations against the Community,” recognizing its presence as a “courageous vindication of the rights of Colombians that, despite having experienced the conflict first hand, has persisted in its efforts to achieve peace for the country.”
The second point was meant to keep the fear and persecution of the past from again becoming a reality, requiring the state to lay out a plan for the prevention of any future stigmatization of the Peace Community of San José de Apartadó. While the completion of the first mandate held promise for 2014, less than one year after the <PERSON> apology, negative and stigmatizing comments against the PC and its accompaniment organizations started circulating in national news media by commanders of the National Army’s local brigades.
In October 2014, for example, a television program called Testigo Directo (Direct Witness) described the Peace Community as a “bunker that authorities cannot enter…where it is assured or claimed that they are governed or co-governed by the FARC.” Other comments targeted international NGOs and the IACHR as being used to provide protection for local guerrilla forces. 271