Migration!

Dear readers,
I'm moving this blog to its new home at my author's website, JHarrisonline.com. All further blog posts will be located there.

Thanks for reading, and as always,
Send lawyers, guns and money,
J.

Peace Makes Strange Bedfellows

If politics and war make strange bedfellows, the partnerships forged by their counterpart are just as eccentric. Both human rights NGOs and former Colombian president Álvaro Uribe are speaking out against the Legal Framework for Peace and its approval in the Colombian Senate.  

The constitutional amendment aims to pave the way for a peaceful resolution of the Colombian armed conflict, through demobilization of militant groups, political participation and social reintegration, and amnesty or reduced sentences for combatants and war criminals that confess their crimes and compensate their victims.

The former commander-in-chief and human rights defenders, including Human Rights Watch and the Presbyterian Church USA’s Colombia Accompaniment Program, aren’t parties that share the same soapbox with any frequency.  (Uribe, in fact, has made quite a name for himself denouncing HR defenders as guerrilla sympathizers, going  so far as to call HRW’s Americas director an “accomplice” of the FARC.)

On the surface, the complaints appear the same: The transitional justice legislation is overly lenient on those who commit atrocities and grant impunity to the country’s worst criminals. A closer inspection of motives, though, reveals that the opposition to the Legal Framework for Peace is as ideologically polarized as ever.

The former head of state’s issues with the bill center around granting political legitimacy to the FARC and the political “uncertainty” it would create in the country. While he does address “impunity,” he seems to be far more concerned with showing leniency to guerrilleros than with the concept of impunity on the whole. (It should be noted that Uribe, in 2010, harshly criticized the guilty verdict of retired Col. Alfonzo Plazas Vega for his part in the forced disappearance, torture and murder of several civilians during the retaking of the Palace of Justice in 1985. Uribe called the officer—sentenced to 30 years in prison for whisking away 11 cafeteria employees from the smoldering rubble to the army’s Cavalry School to be tortured and eventually executed—a military man that simply “sought to do his duty”.)

Human Rights Watch’s strenuous objections boil down to the fact that they consider the amendment to essentially constitute complete amnesty for human rights violations and crimes against humanity.

From HRW’s press release on the subject (emphasis mine):

Three fundamental problems persist in the most recently approved version of the bill:

1.      The amendment empowers Congress to suspend the sentence of any guerrilla, paramilitary, or military member convicted of war crimes or crimes against humanity, including those deemed “most responsible” for such abuses. Congress would thus have the authority to guarantee that top FARC commanders convicted of atrocities do not spend a single day in prison. If Colombia’s Constitution provides guerrilla leaders with the opportunity to avoid incarceration, it is only to be expected that they will demand it—and nothing less—the day they sit down to negotiate with the government.

2.      The amendment limits the prosecution of atrocities to those individuals found “most responsible,” and empowers Congress, and subsequently justice officials, to exempt from criminal prosecution countless guerrillas and paramilitaries responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

3.      Military personnel responsible for heinous crimes will be eligible to benefit from dropped prosecutions and sentence suspensions. These benefits would even extend to military members responsible for extrajudicial executions known as “false positives,” despite the claim by the bill’s sponsor in the Senate, Roy Barreras, that such individuals should not be eligible since “that was never the intention or the spirit of the legislators.” Irrespective of the asserted intent of the legislators, the most recently approved version of the amendment applies to “state agents, in relation to their participation in [the internal armed conflict],” and on multiple occasions, Colombian justice authorities have found that false positive cases are related to the internal armed conflict. Cases of false positives have repeatedly been prosecuted as “homicides of protected persons,” a strictly conflict-related crime defined by the Colombian penal code as “caus[ing] the death of a protected person due to and in the course of the armed conflict” (Source)

It’s a sad fact that the road to peace is a delicate and volatile balancing act between truth, justice, and reconciliation.  Armed actors have no reason to turn themselves over to civilian justice without an incentive—reduced sentences, social reintegration, political participation, and so on. It’s an entirely valid perspective that reducing sentences betrays the victims and their families, robbing them of the vindication of seeing those who’ve shattered their world answer for their crimes. On the other hand, a full confession is the only way to get closure for the families of the “disappeared”—a staggering number put at over 55,000 in the last thirty years by the United Nations. 

No peace effort or transitional justice process can ever lead to complete satisfaction for all persons involved and affected—those who want an end to the conflict, those that just want to lay down their arms and go home, those that thirst for retributive justice and vengeance, those who’d like complete amnesty. 

No legislation can achieve that end, that perfect blend of peace and justice, of remorse and forgiveness.  But HRW is correct: This constitutional amendment is a far cry from the best of all possible worlds. A peace agreement that leaves smoldering resentment, caused by a feeling of powerlessness and a lack of judicial vindication, is not peace; it’s merely a fleeting cease-fire. A lasting peace, a healing of the society as a whole, cannot be realized without giving due consideration to the victims’ need for justice.

Send lawyers, guns and money,

J. 

Prisoner of War, Victim of Circumstances

For the past three weeks, French journalist Romero Langlois has been held by the FARC. Unsurprisingly, the FARC claim the taking of the journalist is not, in fact, kidnapping. Because kidnapping was formally renounced as a political tool by the subversive group, and if there's one thing the guerrilla front has shown, it's that it's definitely known for keeping its word.

Instead, they're claiming that Langlois is a prisoner of war. The guerrillas maintain that he was "dressed in a military uniform" when he was wounded and taken captive in the middle of a firefight between government troops and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. More than likely, he was wearing a kevlar helmet and vest, as has become standard practice for journalists operating in war zones. However, "dressed in a military uniform," in order to qualify for POW status, would require him to be dressed in a Colombian Army camo suit, with identifying marks.

That, however, is belaboring the point--a point is believed by no one who isn't already firmly in the leftist group's corner. It's pretty hard to mistake a dSLR (maker: Nikon; calibre: 35mm) for the Colombian army's battle rifle (7.62mm, manufactured by Galil).

Like most other positions taken by the FARC, this is to garner them both legitimacy and publicity. They've admitted they have him, and are willing to turn this non-combatant over, under three conditions: 1. The Red Cross facilitates the exchange; 2. Piedad Cordoba (a Colombian legislator involved in most of the past peace & hostage-release talks) takes an active role; and 3., a delegate from French President-Elect Hollande's government attends the release. Ultimately, this lends legitimacy to the group; a major national government sitting down and negotiating with the FARC, rather than with the actual elected government of Colombia gives them political capital to use.

UPDATE: A brief review of International Humanitarian Law, outlined in the Third Geneva Convention, says that war correspondents who accompany (or are "embedded with") armed actors can be considered prisoners of war. See Part I, Article 4.A:

Art 4. A. Prisoners of war, in the sense of the present Convention, are persons belonging to one of the following categories, who have fallen into the power of the enemy: 
...
(4) Persons who accompany the armed forces without actually being members thereof, such as civilian members of military aircraft crews, war correspondents, supply contractors, members of labour units or of services responsible for the welfare of the armed forces, provided that they have received authorization, from the armed forces which they accompany, who shall provide them for that purpose with an identity card similar to the annexed model. (Source: International Red Cross.) [Emphasis mine.]

UPDATE: Yesterday’s assassination attempt on former Interior Minister Fernando Londoño is likely to put a kink (at best) in any exchange/release scenario. If the bombing was in fact carried out by the FARC, negotiations are very likely to be off the table, nixed by any one of the parties involved: The Santos government, Ms. Cordoba, the Red Cross, or the Hollande administration.

War In So Many Words: Semantics, Warfare, and the Hague

Most politicians have a few words or phrases that they avoid like the plague. In the latter years of his second term, George W. Bush’s was “recession.” Former Colombian president Álvaro Uribe’s was “armed conflict.” He said it time and again: “There is no armed conflict in Colombia.” There are terrorists and drug traffickers and “criminal bands,” but paramilitaries and revolutionaries are a thing of the past.

Unfortunately, wishing doesn’t make it so. A friend from Santa Marta once remarked to me that the only people who believe there’s no armed conflict in Colombia are Uribe’s yes-men. Paras actively engage in forced disappearances, displacement, and atrocities in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, the world’s tallest coastal mountain range that provides the backdrop to one of the Caribbean’s prime tourist spots. The Aguilas Negras routinely carry out “social cleansing” in poor neighborhoods of major cities, including the capital of Bogotá—and yes, the reality is just as ugly as the euphemism. The Colombian attorney general’s office has reported that some eighty percent of the so-called “new criminal bands” are led by former paramilitaries. To this day, Mr. Uribe insists that there is no warfare in Colombia: Only lots and lots of criminals.

It’s quite the conundrum, from the perspective of international law: Namely, if it’s not armed conflict, how could Uribe justify the use of the military in bombing raids against FARC encampments, including 2008’s strike into Ecuador? The international community’s pretty clear on its disapproval of bombing civilians. Definitely a “go straight to jail, do not pass GO, do not collect $200” scenario.

Even speaking domestically, it’s clearly a gross violation of due process, depriving members of the FARC and other rebel groups—who don’t have belligerent status according to Uribe—of life and liberty without trial. Colombia, it should also be noted, does not allow for capital punishment.

Current President Santos is either quite astute or has some very sharp people working for him. The language of his Ley de Victimas—“The Victims’ Law,” which provides for reparations for victims and their families—specifically labels the nation’s decades-long blood-hurricane as “armed conflict.” Suffice it to say, Mr. Uribe’s less than thrilled and has been very outspoken on the matter. (To give credit where due, former US president Bush understands that the job of retired heads of state is to keep their opinions of their successors to themselves.)

Santos’s justification was succinct: “If we say that there’s no internal armed conflict… [former] President Uribe and he who was his Minister of Defense, now President of the Republic… will go straight to prison.” The President of the Republic has acknowledged what Colombian and international jurists have known for some time: bombing and/or machine-gunning civilians (albeit heavily-armed, felonious civilians) is a crime. They could find themselves at the Hague standing trial for atrocities.

Uribe dismissed it with his customary blasé attitude, a Bush-esque “ends justify the means” approach that seems to indicate that he doesn’t understand, or more likely, doesn’t care about, the gravity of the situation. His fear is that granting belligerent status to illegal armed groups will validate and legitimize them, putting them on the same level as the Colombian armed forces.

It’s by no means legitimizing the FARC or other rebel movements, according to Santos. Instead, it allows Colombia to bring its full might to bear without violating international law. Santos stated his desire plainly: “What I want is for the whole world to understand very well that, under international law, a country and its fuerza pública [literally: public force; a Spanish term for a nation’s military and police forces] can operate under the umbrella of International Humanitarian Law, which presupposes an internal armed conflict.”

President Santos is correct: Without recognition of belligerence, Colombian authorities have been systematically engaging in war crimes by intentionally targeting civilians. At that point, the concept of “just war” is irrelevant; a just war (if there is such a thing) has to be waged in accordance with certain standards.

Broken Chains, Spanning a Continent

Colombia’s Supreme Court ruled that evidence collected during the 2008 “Operation Phoenix” is inadmissible in the nation’s courts. As with so much regarding the internal conflict, it comes as a surprise only to the Colombian government.

“Phoenix” was a cross-border bombing raid into the jungles of Ecuador in March 2008. The strike’s target was a FARC encampment, home to “Raúl Reyes” (real name: Luís Devia Silva; spokesperson for the guerrilla movement and member of the group’s Central High Command) and his not-so-merry men.

The raid touched off a diplomatic firestorm between Colombia’s completely unapologetic then-President Uribe and his Venezuelan and Ecuadorean counterparts. It turns out that Ecuadoreans were quite upset about having their airspace and sovereignty violated, their soil and even citizens bombed, and their territory invaded by foreign troops. That kind of conduct is generally considered in international relations circles to be, at best, horribly rude and at worst an act of war.

In the aftermath, Colombian military personal recovered evidence from the ruins of the guerrilla bivouac, including USB flash drives and laptop computers. The files found on the recovered equipment were used in criminal proceedings against politicians and even a Chilean national currently on trial in his native country and awaiting extradition to Colombia for his involvement with the FARC.

Until recently, that is.

The Chilean Supreme Court suspended the proceedings against Manuel Olate, and numerous criminal proceedings have come to a screeching halt due to the Colombian high court’s ruling.

It all comes down to the concept of “chain of custody.” In practical terms, it means that evidence can only be used in a criminal process when it’s been collected, stored, transported and transferred in accordance with a jurisdiction’s laws. Any disruption in the chain of custody creates the possibility for interference that could adulterate, alter or destroy the evidence in question, which in turn could affect the outcome of a trial. It’s why evidence lockers are so tightly controlled and why the police don’t give tours of active crime scenes.

To make a long story short, the Colombian Armed Forces stomped all over due process during Operation Phoenix. The evidence was collected:

• By military personal who lacked law enforcement powers and authorization to do so,
• In an area where Colombia has no jurisdiction of any kind,
• Without a warrant,
• And without the knowledge, consent or participation of the Ecuadorean government or the relevant law enforcement authorities.

To be fair, the Colombian government turned over the data to Interpol for independent verification, and that entity declared that it had found no traces of manipulation.

From a chain-of-custody/due-process perspective, though, there are two problems with this:

1. Interpol found no signs of tampering. That could mean that no one had fiddled with the bits, or it could mean that the transgressor(s) hid their tracks very, very well.
2. Interpol is not a Colombian national institution.

The Supreme Court made the right call: Even if the Raul Reyes laptops hadn’t been manipulated and had been certified as such, they would still be fruit of the poisonous tree; that is, the result of an illegal search. And it wouldn’t be beyond the realm of possibility for a cynic that the Colombian military—rarely an organization to get caught up in existential ethical conundrums over rights personal, civil or human—would contemplate or carry out evidence tampering.

Due to a broken chain of custody, the veracity of the evidence can be neither confirmed nor trusted. Without chain of custody, there can be no proof—and without it, no justice.

Letting Facts Speak for Themselves: Press Coverage of High-Profile Felons

The headline on the full page piece in El Tiempo proclaims, "MARIO URIBE, THE END OF A CHIEFTAIN." A photo of the subject occupies about a fourth of the sheet, showing him with hands clasped in front of him in an almost beatific pose. The caption informs distraught readers that he ranked as "one of the most influential politicians in Antioquia in recent years."

A quotation sidebar illustrates Mr. Uribe's character and career as a civil servant. A fellow legislator notes that "he was a serious leader in Antioquia. In the rancher's union, he always enjoyed great acceptance," and the author tells us, "…His friends and family recognized a strong and lordly character."

The article measures 22 paragraphs; over half are dedicated to Mr. Uribe's education, personal life, early professional endeavors and political career. Non sequiturs such as, "Like all Uribes, he loved fine horses," put a human face on this electoral titan.

The obvious conclusion, from the author's admiring tone and glowing summary of a life lived to the fullest, is that the piece is an ode, a eulogy—from the Greek for "praise."

The piece features precious little in regard to the actual point of the article, stated clearly in the subhead: "This week the Court sentenced him to 7 years and 6 months' incarceration." Only in the second-to-last paragraph does a reader learn why this great man is suffering the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune (at the hands of the Colombian justice system): concierto para delinquir agravado, or "aggravated conspiracy to commit crimes".* That is, he worked with paramilitaries to ensure political influence.

Rather than offering the who/what/when/where/why, El Tiempo has opted for an homage to the convicted. While there's nothing wrong with presenting another side of one found guilty, it behooves a writer, and the paper they write for, to write a balanced piece. One has to wonder where it all comes from. The story of one politician's corruption and ties to Very Bad Men reads as a footnote, an afterthought, rather than the entire point.

Is the reporter a hardcore Uribista, one of many, who believes that the Uribe clan can do no wrong? Is the editorial team facing political pressure from the Uribes or from higher up the totem pole? After all, the family of current President Juan Manuel Santos—Alvaro Uribe's handpicked successor—did found the paper and still maintains considerable influence. Or did no one care enough to do the right thing, journalistically speaking? Extricating one factor from the rest is a Sisyphean task… and ends up a moot point.

Colombia—and other nations saddled with similar social, economic and political situations—have to create a free press willing to print the news and raise hell, regardless of threats, bribery and disapproval from those in power. News outlets such as El Tiempo play an essential role in shaping the national discourse, as well as the public's perception of the national social reality. It's an immense responsibility, and it's all too easy to abuse or, in the case of ET's coverage of Mario Uribe's legal troubles, to shirk entirely.

It is, however, part and parcel of the job. If you don't like it, if you can't handle the pressure, you are, I'm afraid, in the wrong line of work.

Send lawyers, guns and money,

J.

*For those with a US or English legal background, this probably doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Translated from the Wikipedia article: "Conspiracy to commit crimes is, in Colombian criminal law, a criminal offense that was established to take measures against offenses such as kidnapping, the formation of ilegal armed groups, terrorism, and extortion, among others. It occurs when two or more persons meet or conspire to observe an agreement or pact that has as its purpose the organization of said individuals in a society or group with criminal ends, without being specified what type of offenses will be committed, the time and place, or against who or what they will aggress, but what will be its principal activity: committing crimes.

WikiLeaks: Publish and Be... What, Exactly?

WikiLeak’s release of thousands of US State Department diplomatic cables certainly qualifies as printing and raising hell, but one has to wonder if what they’re publishing is really all that newsworthy.

The first two info dumps in July and October 2010, on the Afghanistan and Iraq wars* respectively, were journalistic coups on the order of Woodward/Bernstein crossed with the Pentagon Papers. The amount of data that had been concealed—the secret history, if you will—from the citizenry of the US and the global community was simply staggering.

The diplomatic cables are a letdown after those revelations. More than that, they’re hardly surprising. Anyone who has more than a passing acquaintance with world events is well aware of just how obsessed the Chinese government is with Internet censorship; that Putin is the power behind Medvedev’s throne and running awfully close to a dictator; that Berlusconi is the vain, mostly ineffective figurehead of a barely-cohesive coalition government; and that Brazil wants to play the “Everyone’s Best Friend”† game. (Here is an interesting analysis by a couple of NYT writers.) In short, there’s a lot of data but little in the way of news.

What the cables represent are the internal monologues of a massive, often unwieldy bureaucracy with a very complex task. The idea that sentiments similar to those expressed by various ambassadors and diplomatic officers have not been espoused by the State Department’s counterparts is difficult to imagine. To be honest, I consider it more than likely that, upon hearing the WikiLeaks announcement, more than one diplomat or foreign-affairs minister experienced a moment of intense, buttock-clenching terror. Perhaps Lula da Silva put it best: "...It was thought that the Americans were better, but in the end they do the same silliness that the whole world does."†

Every day, we—as individuals, operating in a mind-bogglingly complicated system of social exchange and interaction—tell a hundred little white lies, even if it’s just smiling and saying “no worries” when someone steps on our feet or spills their coffee on us. Our private thoughts and immediate reactions are analyzed, discarded or modified, and then stifled or communicated in a calm, considered manner. This is what lets societies function.

In the office or any collaborative environment, we laud the one who can meld disparate elements, groups and interests into a single, functioning—or at least not self-sabotaging—unit. No matter whether it’s hand-holding the newbie, cajoling the whiner into carrying a fair share of the load, or concealing utter contempt for the pettiness of one or more parties (or all of them), the diplomacy of that person is rightly praised.

All that WikiLeaks accomplished was making those initial, impulsive and, most importantly, private thoughts of the bureaucracy public, in essence airing someone else’s laundry (dirty or not-so-).

If there is in fact egg on the State Department’s face, it’s due to having a database for supposedly confidential cables about as secure as America OnLine circa 1995. One doesn’t keep their innermost thoughts and desires where anyone might come along and have a peek at what might or might not be the author’s true feelings. In that regard, few words suffice to describe just how badly the State Department screwed up. One could argue that this grievous error is the State Department lying in the bed it’s made.

On the other hand, that doesn’t absolve WikiLeaks, nor does it strip the act of the somewhat childish, “Nyah nyah!” quality that seems to characterize it. This latest info dump doesn’t seem to stem from the same journalistic drive to seek truth and report it that defined the Afghan War Diary or the Iraq War Logs, so much as a desire to make the US government look bad. [Full disclosure: Anyone who has read anything I’ve written knows that I don’t think the US government needs any help at all in that regard. But giving a fair shake, and giving credit where due, is an integral part of journalistic ethics and integrity.]

Keeping secrets does not imply nefarious purposes; malice in secrecy comes from the subject matter that’s hidden, not the simple act of hiding.

*Note: WikiLeaks.org's servers are down at the time of publication, so here's Wikipedia's entry.

†Note: Linked page is in Spanish.