Human Rights Reporting

Spring 2002 Student Work

Colombians lose the memory of a time without civil war; adjust to the inevitability of murder and kidnappings

By Roxanna Sherwood

Colombia’s troubles have been on the global forefront for 38 years. Generations have been born and died under one of the most violent and corrupt political systems in the world. Colombians have grown accustomed to fear, and have adjusted to bloodshed that seems to know no bounds.

Journalists often find themselves at the center of violence. In Colombia, they have been exposed to a darkness that knows no end, spiraling deeper into uncertainty and into a conflict led by many. Colombian journalists are forced to answer to all of the country’s opposing groups: leftist guerrilla groups, paramilitaries and drug traffickers. Journalists there have had to adjust to a climate of war, just in order to survive.

The story of the Colombian journalist is similar to the stories of many journalists at work in war-torn countries. They are in constant danger. Their voices are quickly extinguished by someone with the power to kill.

According to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), it was a far more dangerous world for journalists in 2001 than it was the year before. In CPJ’s annual report, it said 37 journalists were killed worldwide as a direct result of their work in 2001, compared with 24 the year before. The report also claimed that Colombia is one of three countries that are the most dangerous in the world for a journalist. The other two were Syria and Myanmar. Afghanistan, where eight journalists were killed last year, is not too far behind on the list.

Journalists and civilians alike are also at constant risk of being kidnapped in Colombia. Colombia leads the world record for kidnappings. In the year 2000, there were 3,707 kidnappings, more than in any other country. The International Press Institute ranks Colombia “the most dangerous country in the world to practice journalism.”

According to Marylene Smeets, Americas Program Coordinator of CPJ, it is harder to protect journalists in Colombia than in many countries because of deeply divided allegiances and corruption. “Colombia faces a unique challenge in that the bullet can come from anywhere, the drug lords, paramilitaries, guerrillas,” said Smeets.

“Crimes go unpunished.”

CPJ set up a safe house in Peru for Colombian journalists who are threatened. There, journalists can decide whether to join the growing number of journalists who have fled Colombia permanently over years. “It’s imperative that more conclusive efforts be made to protect journalists there,” said Smeets. The control of local news media on the part of virtually every leader has firm roots in Colombia and continues more and more to be used as a form of manipulation and intimidation there.

There is more of hopelessness now, with the February collapse of the peace talks between the government and the leftist guerillas rebel forces, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). With drug trafficking and its violent byproducts still deeply engrained in the fabric and system of this nation, the country does not seem to be able to climb up from out of a gutter of violence and fear.

The United States was close to not granting millions in aid to Colombia because of the nation’s abysmal human rights record. Secretary of State, Colin Powell determined that progress had been made in the prosecution of human rights crimes and in the disbanding of the alliance between some military and paramilitary groups. $62 million was released on May 1st for the purpose of fighting drug production. Colombia is the third largest recipient of American aid. The US will release another $42 million in June only after further improvements in the area of human rights are deemed to have taken place.

In the past two years, the United States has given Colombia $1.7 billion in military aid to crackdown on cocaine production and trafficking. The money is meant exclusively to fight in the drug war. Human rights abuses there are as rampant as drug production, to which they are undeniably linked.

Bruce Bagley, University of Miami’s leading expert on Colombia, suggests that a small improvement in the military’s human rights record is attributable to paramilitaries doing the dirty work that once belonged to the military. “There’s clean-up on the formal side of the equation, and the informal side gets worse and worse. Colombia’s record improved and the paras got worse and worse.” He says that the paramilitaries are now responsible for 70% of the country’s massacres.

An underlying class-war in the proud nation has earned it a dark reputation for murderous “social cleansing.” The homeless children, the country’s prostitutes, its gays, the mentally ill are among some of the peoples deemed desechables (disposables) and targeted. Much of Colombian society has written them off as people less than human, and not deserving of Colombian claim. They are often killed.

Colombians have adjusted to death that is certain and self-perpetuating. Everyone knows to look over his or her shoulder for the camouflage of a soldier, who may be a para or maybe a military – they are equally as deadly. According to many familiar with the country’s conflict, fear and mistrust is woven into the fabric of the culture. “Political corruption in Colombia certainly pre-dated the advent of large-scale drug trafficking in the country,” said Bruce Bagley. “It has been spawning ill ever since.”

Statistics show that not only are journalists, academics and human rights workers at great risk in Colombia, but so are the nation’s wealthy who also live in constant fear of being kidnapped and are frequently targeted. Battles once limited to guerrilla rebels in the countryside have slowly been spreading into the cities. This trend has caused wealthier Colombians to seek lives outside of their country, settling in places like Miami, Florida, the favorite destination of fleeing Colombians, who now make up its second largest immigrant group at a total of 130,000 in May 2001. According to one American journalist who recently worked in Colombia, “Miami is becoming Bogotá’s most exclusive neighborhood.” Another 1.5 million Colombians have been displaced from their homes over the course of the preceding five years.

Because of mounting tensions, pressure on journalists is like never before. “Colombian journalists are in more danger,” said Bruce Bagley. “Fifteen of my friends are in exile and many of them have been shot.” Of the 37 journalists killed worldwide last year, three were from Colombia. In all of Latin America, a total of 11 journalists were reportedly murdered last year while reporting on drug trafficking, corruption and violence by left-wing guerrillas and right-wing paramilitaries.

“If they step out of bounds, they are targeted,” said Bagley.

Many journalists have stepped out of bounds. Some have done so with intent, and others have merely stumbled out.

Elisabeth Mora Mass found herself in trouble with Colombian king drug pin Pablo Escobar in 1987. She had just returned to her hometown Medellín after studying English for six months in the United States. She was horrified by the deterioration of her town. “I saw changes in my city,” she explained, her voice still resonating surprise. “Assassinations abounded. No one was doing anything about it. Nobody was talking about the terror.” She was alarmed that there was no news on the killings that were happening out in the open, and no candidate was talking about the problem. “Everybody was afraid of that subject.”

Mora Mass, who was a reporter for El Colombiano, a Medellín local newspaper, went to Bogotá to meet with the editor of the national daily, El Tiempo. He made a deal with her for a story on the horrors she said were taking place in Medellín. Mora Mass interviewed Pablo Escobar five times for that story. She said that most people in Medellín at the time knew that Escobar was responsible for most of the bloodshed. By 1987, Escobar was already rumored to have killed over 1,000 people in Colombia, according to Mora Mass. “Journalists were so afraid of Escobar, because he kills in the open, and nobody says anything.”

Her report, “Medellín a Metrallo” (“Medellín to Machine Gun City”), was printed in September 1987 in El Tiempo. Within hours of its publication, Mora Mass received her first threat. “You have 24 hours to leave or I will kill you myself,” she said Pablo Escobar told her. She immediately fled the country for New York City, where she lives today. But in 1993, she found herself seeking his permission to re-enter Colombia for a week to visit her hospitalized mother.

She sent Escobar a message by way of a journalist friend. “ ‘Can I go to Colombia?’ and ‘if he says no, then tell him he can kill me when I walk out of the hospital.’” The response she reportedly got back was: “He will allow you to come and guarantees protection of your life.”

“I didn’t ask too many questions, and I waited to tell my family,” Mora Mass said. She knew that her American husband would fear for her life and that her family in Colombia wouldn’t allow her to come because it was too dangerous. “I didn’t tell anybody I was going.”

When she arrived at her mother’s bedside in Medellín, her mother begged her to leave Colombia right away. Being there was gambling not only with her own life, but with the lives of each of her family members. “Your family is what he uses to be able to manipulate against you,” she said of Escobar. “He uses your family as a weapon.” Mora Mass believes that Escobar introduced a new standard of intimidation that would worm its way permanently into Colombia. “Escobar showed how easy it is to control the press,” said Mora Mass. “You feel guilty when you act according to your morals because of the pain to your family. You have no way to save them. You feel so guilty in front of your family.”

During her 1993 trip, she made one stop in Medellín outside of the hospital or her mother’s home. She said she went to visit old friends in the newsroom of El Colombiano where she had once worked for 10 years. “El Tiempo was the only public place I went,” she said. Shortly after she arrived there, she received a phone call that she assumed was the hospital with news about her mother.

“¿Qué pasó?” a man said on the other end of the phone. “What, you don’t remember old friends? How was your mother?” It was the voice of Pablo Escobar. He demanded that she come lunch with him right away, giving her the address of a popular Medellín restaurant. “I never thought I would live through that day,” said Mora Mass, who knew that she had no choice but to meet Escobar that day.

“We are going to sit down here. If anything happens, say I kidnapped you,” she said he told her before their full-course meal. Mora Mass remembers a conversation about American media, and then about money. “He told me that everybody has a price,” she said. “And for that reason he kidnaps people.” When he began complaining to her about children’s rights, that they couldn’t go to school because they were his children, and then about human rights in general, she snapped at him. “You? Mr. Escobar? You? You are talking to me about human rights? Where were my human rights when you threw me out of this country seven years ago?”

He responded by urging her to tell the U.S. government that she believed he was responsible for the horrors. “He was really proud of creating that monster,” she said referring to his way of doing business -- at the expense of human life. She says he told her to print an article about it. “But I was afraid,” she said. “One day I will print all.”

She left Colombia within a week, and today vows never to return. Escobar’s death in 1994 offered no comfort. “I didn’t know who was working with Escobar at the time,” she said. There was no way of knowing who might remember her. The risk in returning is too great for Mora Mass. “Why would I put my family through that? I know I would put them in danger.”

“If I go to El Colombiano and I get killed, my death would not be reported,” said Mora Mass. “They would have to come here, to New York, to kill me. At least here, I know I will be in the New York Times and there will be an investigation.”

Fatalism is a common attribute among Colombian journalists.

David Aquila Lawrence is a freelance journalist who has spent years covering Colombia, most recently visiting in March for BBC World. He describes a stoicism that borders on numbness among working Colombian journalists. “They keep poking death with a stick, especially the TV people,” Lawrence said. “Colombians are fatalistic.” He recalled overhearing a conversation that two human rights activists had: ‘I hope they get me in the office and not at home. I don’t want to bother with these bodyguards.’ He also said that his colleagues had been threatened and that some local stringers for widely read publications in the United States won’t use a byline.

“Self-censorship by individuals and organizations is pervasive,” Lawrence said about Colombia. “The country is at war and people have acclimatized a bit too much. People are fairly casual about danger.” Despite the dangers, Lawrence says that he uses no security, and generally takes no serious precautions when on assignment in Colombia.
“There are regular threats, fewer to international journalists than to locals, though both are normal in Colombia,” he said. But Lawrence understands that Colombian journalists can’t flee as easily as he can. “They are under incredible pressure.”

“I am not able to live with all that pressure,” said Elisabeth Mora Mass.

But she believes that after enough time spent as a journalist in Colombia, a reporter comes to thrive on the danger. “To live in fear is part of their pleasure.” She says they seem to enjoy knowing that each story they do could be their last.

“Impunity is Colombia’s biggest problem,” said David Lawrence. “If there is no consequence for killing journalists, it will continue to be an easy way to silence us.”

Colombian journalist Richard Velez, 47, has been in exile in New York City for the past three years. Like Mora Mass, he is also from Medellín, where Velez left behind 14 brothers and sisters he expects to never see again. When Velez finally left Colombia for good, his house was under constant surveillance and protected by officers all day everyday.

By the time Richard Velez lived through an afternoon in the southern Colombian village of Caqueta where he was covering a local peasant rebellion – a day that would permanently alter the course of his life – he had already been shot twice in an assassination attempt against him, and had been the victim of multiple kidnappings and had witnessed the deaths of friends who were kidnapped. He had already, violent attacks and death threats before a final set of events sealed his future as a refugee. Even his first wife, Luz Marina, then press secretary for Colombia’s Supreme Court, was murdered along with scores of judges in a November 1985 massacre at the Palace of Justice.

Velez recalled his 1990 kidnapping at the hands of guerrillas. “Upon my release they gave me a letter to read to the media,” said Velez, who was held for 15 days. “It demanded the withdrawal of the elite force of the national police, an organism that was responsible for the massacre of young people in the poor neighborhoods of Medellín. They told me if I didn’t comply with the demands, other kidnapped journalists would be killed.”

He remembers being urged by friends later to leave the city to alleviate stress caused by his kidnapping. “But I liked what I was doing and I kept covering Medellín.” One of the news outlets he worked for, TV España, couldn’t find a reporter willing to cover Medellín because of the dangers involved, so Velez ended up with that job in 1990.

Velez developed a passion for covering hard news and terrorist activity in his country. “We were targeted by both government authorities and organized drug traffickers,” he said of journalists covering politically charged news in Colombia at the time.

In August 1996, Velez covered a peasant uprising in Caqueta as military tried to control the situation with violence. Velez left his camera on the ground rolling tape as violence grew bloodier under a light rain. He watched as Gen. Nestor Ramirez ordered mass killings of peasants in the village. “Some were caught by soldiers who struck them with bayonets or butts of their rifles. Some soldiers cut peasants with their own machetes.”

“I got all of this on tape, never thinking they would come after me since I was merely a reporter doing my job,” Velez said. The details of the event reveal Velez’ extraordinary courage and commitment to his profession. He was brutally beaten by a number of military soldiers yelling for his tape. “I didn’t feel any pain, my only concern was the material that I had risked so much to record and I knew that if they took it from me the country wouldn’t know what happened here.” Velez’ aggressors thought that by destroying the camera they had also destroyed the footage. Velez remarkably managed to save the tape, sending it with a colleague who hid it in her underwear and ushered it safely to national broadcast.

The event put the issue of oppression of freedom of the press into the mainstream, documenting the story of the assaulted journalist all over Colombian media. It was news for two days, until another atrocity tore it from newsworthiness.

Velez lay in the hospital for 15 days with a punctured liver, a lost testicle, several broken ribs and respiratory problems from the gases the military had been spraying at the peasants. In an effort to take the heat off the military, Gen. Nestor Ramirez told the press that Velez’ beating was a publicity stunt mounted by guerrillas in an attempt to slander the army. He told them that Velez was a spokesperson for FARC, and in so doing, made Velez even more a target for military and paramilitary forces.

The threats began. Phone calls to his home daily: “You’re going to die, you f-king rat.” Notes were sent to his television station: “You have the power of information. We have the power of weapons. Die you dog.”

“I had to wear a bulletproof vest to go to work and everyday I was accompanied to and from my house by two agents of the Personal Protection Service,” said Velez.

The final threat to he and his family was left under their door in the form of a condolence card: “Mr. Velez. Rats die flattened in the road. Peace in your tomb.”

Velez left Colombia for New York in October of 1997. A year later, he was joined by his second wife and their two small children when his application for political asylum was approved.

Irma Londoño, 44, lives in Miami in political asylum obtained in June 2000. Political asylum in the United States is not easily granted. The applicant is required to prove that his/her life had been directly threatened. The vacunas or tariffs that Colombians are frequently forced to pay to Colombian rebel groups and paramilitaries also complicate matters, tying them, however remotely, to the groups as supporters.

Temporary Protection Status (TPS) is unfortunately not an option for fleeing Colombian immigrants. Colombian nationals have yet to be granted eligibility for TPS in the Unites States, the way nationals from other war-plagued countries are. “I love Colombia, but I’m glad it’s not my country, so in some ways it’s not my problem,” said journalist David Lawrence.

Londoño reported on issues for Colombian Army Intelligence. She was targeted by guerrillas after publication of Narcofiscal in November 1999, a book she co-authored which provided detailed analyses of Colombia’s drug trade and its funding. But, Londoño’s anti-Communist position was already known. Her journalism was overwhelming reflective of her views.

Londoño even found herself the object of persecution by other journalists. When she worked for Caracol Television in 1998, leftist journalists complained about her views to their news director who fired her as a result.

Real fear for her life, however, came because of her book, Narcofiscal.

The harassment started with the slashing of her car tires and a broken windshield while she attended a party for journalists. Men began called her home early in the mornings and late at night. They would laugh into the receiver and hang up. The threats intensified. She would arrive home to the sight of young men on corners waiting. “They were so young, boyish faces with short haircuts,” she said of the men that followed her and staked out her home. “I was amazed by how young they were.” Like Velez, she was also called rat and told she would pay with her life.

Londoño had two days to leave.

She gave her young son to the military for hiding while she prepared. “I left behind two big beautiful dogs,” she said, but that is all she laments. “It’s a wonderful feeling that I don’t have to look over my shoulder anymore,” she said happily. “At least now I don’t have to worry that people are coming to get me wherever I am.” Though political asylum is perfect for her, Londoño admits it is harder on her 9 year-old son who left behind friends and a half-brother in Colombia.

On the future of journalism in Colombia, Londoño is as pessimistic as most. She believes the country hardly stands a chance of a free press. “The ones that go out to the jungle to cover the guerrillas are affiliated with them,” she said of journalists working in Colombia now.

Colombia’s Pastrana administration once held the luster of hope, but now in its final days has failed to reach peace accords with the rebels or rightist militias. The prognosis for Colombia and the journalists covering its conflict grows grimmer by the day.

Raney Aronson, now a producer for PBS’s Frontline, saw a nation wrought by fear and anti-American and anti-media sentiment, when she was there covering a hostage story for ABC News in August of 1998. But, most amazing to her was what she observed in President Andre Pastrana. She and correspondent Charles Gibson sat for an extravagant lunch with President Pastrana, only a few weeks into his presidency. “He was glowing with optimism,” she said of the then new president. The savvy, well-manicured, and strikingly attractive Pastrana had almost convinced them that he would lift the nation out of its dark days. Aronson remembers Pastrana telling them, “Colombia had sunk as low as it could go.” When she sees him on television now, she recalls the image of an electrifying new president over a six-course lunch of colorful fruits and vegetables and compare it with the markedly aged man she sees now.

President Pastrana will turn over the presidency after Colombia’s general elections on May 26. The likely incumbent, Alvaro Uribe Velez is believed to have strong ties to the right-wing paramilitaries. “His plan shows those ties and a strengthening of the paramilitaries,” said Bruce Bagley. “As this war deepens, the military and presidency will be more together.” Uribe may owe his popularity to the leftist guerrillas. Many Colombians are bitter about Pastrana’s attempts to negotiate peace with the FARC and the subsequent total breakdown of the peace process.

The election itself is generating controversy with reports of Uribe supporters making threats to his opposition supporters. Meanwhile, the right-wing paramilitary group is, according to the Associate Press, intimidating nationals into voting for Uribe. All political sides involved are said to use journalists in an effort to manipulate election results through slanted reporting.

When people most familiar with the Colombian conflict are asked to comment on the nation’s future, there are often shrugs and sighs. “We’ll see rising levels in human rights abuses,” warns Colombian expert Bruce Bagley.

“Colombia’s headed for a bloodbath.”

All sides of the conflict have sunk so low that the practice of journalism has been converted into what Colombian journalist, Eduardo Marquez described in an article, as “a kind of mirage, and as a result both Truth itself, and one's commitment to society in general, have taken second place; in this context, mere survival has become number one priority.” He says the credibility of the press has been eroding consistently.

“Threats of violence, or hidden complicity due to decisions taken at an editorial level, are what govern the logic behind whatever information is allowed to make it into the press.” As news of atrocities grows more and more commonplace, he asserts, so does the media’s tendency toward sensationalism. He says that many Colombian nationals are tuning out from the news all together. Fear and corruption may run too deep for Colombians to place trust in anything anymore.

“As long as drug money comes from user nations, the justice system will be hard pressed to resist corruption or cope with the investigation of killings, of journalists and others,” said Lawrence.

“Colombia is lurching towards total war,” said Bagley said. He cautions that Gen. Tapias’ prediction that Colombia should begin to see some improvement over the next three to five years is optimistic. “I think it’s more like 10 years.”

But for its exiled reporters, Colombia is presumed dead.

Left are the pains of adjustment to a foreign country and the feeling of being imprisoned within it. Under United States political asylum, Richard Velez can never cross the country’s borders. He wishes he could return to Colombia and pick up life at some point before the massacre at Caqueta. “I miss my job,” he said in Spanish on a busy Upper Westside corner. “I can’t work here. I don’t speak the language.” He says his work has lost importance. Velez earns a modest living as a cameraman doing films of weddings, bar mitzvahs and other ceremonies.

It isn’t hard to understand why Velez, whose reporting was more akin to the work of a combat soldier, would feel confined in the United States as a freelance wedding photographer.

Support groups have been formed throughout the United States to help Colombian immigrants adjust to life away from home and cope with post-traumatic stress and other fears. “The biggest fear of people in exile is that they cannot be really free to speak without endangering themselves or a loved one back home,” said Patricia Dahl, coordinator of the New York City chapter of the Colombia Support Network. “The biggest hurdle now facing human rights efforts is to make distinct the struggle of the domestic population to live their lives free of the interference of aggressive policies.”

“Living in asylum is like living in a nightmare,” said Velez. “I feel like a prisoner.” He describes a profound sense of displacement. He says that life is deeply sad, but is also quick to remind himself of the many people who have gone through similar persecution and even worse. The lives of over 35,000 Colombians were lost in the country’s civil war over the past decade alone.

“My story is everybody’s story,” said Velez.

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