COLOMBIA : Plan to OK Private Security Forces for Farmers Draws Fire

Frustrated by the unrelenting violence that grips Colombia, the government is planning to legalize private security groups in the countryside as a way for rural citizens to protect themselves.

But the proposal has outraged human rights experts, who fear the private groups will turn into paramilitary death squads like those that have been responsible for much of the violence.

The security plan raises questions about the ability of President Ernesto Samper’s government to impose law and order and highlights Colombia’s poor human rights record.

Critics say the proposed security squads, intended to protect ranchers from kidnaping and theft, could easily degenerate into lawless organizations dedicated to assassinating peasants and suspected Communists. The new squads could resemble those that have killed thousands of Colombians since the late 1980s.

“It makes no sense that a state unable to control the use of violence would make the problem worse by creating such groups,” said Juan Gabriel Gomez, a lawyer for the Colombia section of the Andean Commission of Jurists, a human rights organization.

The commission’s section on Colombia estimates that 30% of politically motivated killings with identified culprits are carried out by death squads and paramilitary groups, often with links to the military and police.

There are an estimated 3,000 political killings each year in Colombia, more than the total number of people killed in Gen. Augusto Pinochet’s “dirty war” against communism in Chile.

Samper has taken numerous steps aimed at improving Colombia’s human rights image.

He got Congress to approve the Second Geneva Protocol on the treatment of civilians in time of war and said he would introduce human rights courses and offices in military garrisons.

Yet, recently released reports by international agencies note widespread impunity for police and army crimes.

The most recent report by Human Rights Watch/Americas says police contribute to a per-capita murder rate for children eight times that of the United States. Police involved in such crimes rarely receive anything more than dismissal, the report says.

It recommends, among other measures, that the government punish “civilians and security forces who abet, deploy or participate in paramilitary groups.”

But the government also faces powerful pressures at home.

Conservative ranchers demand that officials protect them in areas where guerrilla groups make money by kidnaping them and stealing their cattle.

This year, more than 430 farmers have been kidnaped. Many small and medium-sized ranching operations have closed, and drug traffickers have moved into the void, accumulating an estimated 30% of Colombia’s usable farmland in recent years.

The pressure is so great that Defense Minister Fernando Botero was heartily applauded when he unveiled the proposal on private security groups at the annual ranchers conference.

“We are in total agreement with the government,” Cesar de Hart, president of the powerful Society of Colombian Farmers, said in an interview with the newspaper El Tiempo. “This is consistent with the state’s incapacity to provide security to Colombian farmers.”

Observers say Botero also has been influenced by Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori’s success in arming peasant patrols to fight guerrillas and may wish to enlist similar help in pushing back Colombia’s Communist rebels.

Botero insisted that the government will review the background of members of the new security groups and the weapons they receive. Local civilian and military authorities will oversee their conduct, he said.

“The development of private security groups subject to strict state supervision should not be confused with criminal groups, protagonists of the most abominable crimes,” Botero said.

But critics warn of a “Frankenstein” phenomenon, recalling that state-created groups have committed some of the worst atrocities.