In Some Societies, to Be Gay Is to Be Dead : Rights: Death squads hunt the ‘disposables’ in Colombia.

Whether or not you agree with them, the raucous and noisy demonstrations of gay protesters in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Sacramento are a vivid expression of basic civil rights that are all too often taken for granted in this country. Elsewhere in the world, there are no such demonstrations, only a conspiracy of silence against those who would dare to be themselves.

In my country, Colombia, there are no public protesters, even though homosexuals and members of other defenseless groups at the margins of society are being killed. In response, people who are basically honest and good stand by in silence.

Last spring, in addition to the dozens of prostitutes, transvestites and petty criminals who were killed on Colombian streets, five well-known homosexuals were murdered. These people--known in Colombia as los desechables, or “the disposable people”--were slain by right-wing paramilitary extremist groups that go hunting at night as part of their systematic campaign to rid the country of “public shames” and “undesirables.”

This killing of homosexuals has been taking place over the last seven years, while the international press has been too distracted by stories of Colombian cocaine capos and guerrilla warfare to take much interest in the slaughter of hundreds of members of our society’s underclass.

The “social cleaning death squads” go by such colorful names as “Love for Medellin” or “Clean Cali.” They claim to be restoring the “law and order” that has been “lost” in Colombian society. In general, these men have nothing to fear. Witnesses are too afraid of reprisals to speak out.

Amnesty International has found that the killings are carried out by, or at least with the acquiescence of, Colombia’s armed forces. While the local press has covered the stories, government officials in Colombia are reluctant to become involved with these cases for fear of being associated with gay issues. The results of the few official inquiries that were conducted have not been made public.

According to Justicia y Paz (Justice and Peace), a Bogota-based Catholic human-rights watchdog organization, in the first six months of 1991, the number of crimes committed by the “social cleaning death squads” reached 195. That does not include the many homosexuals whose bodies were so badly mutilated as to make positive identification impossible. According to the Colombian Committee to Protect Human Rights, more than 600 such unidentified bodies that showed clear signs of torture were found in the second half of 1990.

But cold statistics don’t give any sense of the fear that homosexuals and other “disposable people” feel. They cannot take for granted even the right to exist. Nobody cares about them--their lives or even their deaths. There is no one in the street demanding rights for these people; they have no public recognition, no institutions, no organizations, no advocates and, finally, no rights. There is only an awesome, deafening silence.

That is why, when I heard the chanting of “Gay rights now!” in the demonstrations against Gov. Wilson’s veto of AB 101, I was reminded that evil’s greatest ally is silence. It is the same silence I remember at the discreet and respectable funeral of my brother, Guillermo, who was shot and killed by gunmen from a speeding car six years ago. He was killed for being gay in a country where being gay can cost your life.