Six months after the National Strike erupted in Colombia, impunity continues for human rights violations committed against protesters. Over the summer, CAL participated in Mission SOS Colombia, an international mission to observe and report on the government’s response to widespread social protests and conditions that protesters were facing. This post highlights the Mission’s key findings on excessive use of force by state actors and harms committed by corporations in the context of the protest. More information is available in the Mission’s report in Spanish.
The Protests
After a harsh pandemic year and a half, more than 43% of Colombians are living in poverty. Earlier this year, protesters took the streets demanding changes to tax and labor reforms that would further impoverish the middle and lower classes. Many sectors of society, including young people, feminists, Indigenous communities, racial justice movements, peace activists, environmental defenders, and union leaders demanded that Iván Duque’s government step up the implementation of the Peace Agreement and guarantee their right to protest. Indigenous and Afro-Colombian communities fighting against corporations like Cerrejón demanded an end to continuous harassment and death threats. Environmental defenders fighting corporate abuse, like Jani Silva --who has received several death threats--, asked for protection. During the protests, riot police inflicted grave injuries on hundreds of people “under the pretext of restoring order.” Independent journalists suffered attacks, social justice lawyers were threatened, and union leaders had to flee the country after receiving death threats.
While the Colombian police and military’s violent response to the protests quickly gained international notoriety, corporate complicity in the crackdown hasn’t received much attention. As detailed below, evidence suggests that companies are providing support to state forces known to commit abuses against protestors and have engaged in mass retaliatory dismissals against workers suspected of participating in protests. The role of the private sector in the crackdown is particularly concerning given its history of complicity in human rights and environmental abuses during the civil conflict.
The International Mission
The Mission SOS Colombia, comprised of 41 commissioners from 14 countries, received individual and community testimonies and met with local and national authorities regarding the response to the protests. The Mission visited the country just as the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights published its report on the crisis in Colombia and condemned “the serious human rights violations that have taken place during social protests in the country.” Aiming to build a comprehensive picture of the forms of violence during the protests, the commissioners visited eleven regions of the country. Unlike other missions that took place over the course of the protests, this one had the specific mandate of examining corporate involvement in the repression.
As a Colombian and US trained attorney and former Legal Fellow at CAL, I represented CAL in the Mission. I visited the city of Barrancabermeja, in the Northeast of Colombia. Young protesters from this region, home of oil giant Ecopetrol, told me and my fellow Commissioners about many forms of state violence they had experienced, including arbitrary arrests, gender and sexual violence, and death threats. They talked about how riot police had violently repressed peaceful demonstrations throughout the city but remained at a distance during protests that took place near Ecopetrol’s refinery plant, allegedly to avoid bad publicity that could be linked to a company listed on the New York Stock Exchange. Social leader and fisherwoman Yuli Velázquez, who has repeatedly denounced Ecopetrol’s contamination of water sources in the region, told us of murder threats against her. Young women, fearing for their lives, told us about moving from their homes, quitting their jobs, and cutting their hair to avoid being recognized by police officers who threatened to find and kill them for participating in protests. Although many protesters sought protection from transitional justice institutions--as these are one of the only government institutions they told us they could trust,-- covering events that occurred after the signature of the Peace Agreement in 2016 is outside of these institutions’ mandate, and they offered little recourse.
Findings on Abuses by Corporate Actors
Although security agreements between corporations and police forces are often negotiated behind closed doors, protesters told us about the difference in police behavior depending on whether protests took place near or far from Ecopetrol’s oil refinery. For years, like other oil companies, Ecopetrol has maintained “cooperation agreements” with police and military forces. Witnesses reported that, to protect both the company’s reputation and facilities, riot police would only engage in repressive confrontations far from the refinery. In contrast, the most repressive and violent police responses took place either in the outskirts of the city, or near public buildings that were later burned down by criminals who infiltrated the protests and whom, according to several reports, police officers called.
The fact that police forces are aligned with corporations is problematic and dangerous. Using private warehouses to detain protesters, as reportedly happened in Cali, takes us back to dictatorships like Argentina’s, where the military used private companies’ facilities as illegal detention centers. Chasing and attacking protesters in cañaduzales resonates with the long history of dispossession of Black people's land in the Cauca region, where the highest numbers of threats and murders of environmental leaders in recent years are reported. Because of their labyrinthine geography, cañaduzales are places where, historically, armed groups linked to drug trafficking disappear corpses and drug lords exchange goods and services. Not only have corporations worked to frame protesters as criminals, they have also used mass dismissals and targeting of union leaders as an old intimidation strategy to delegitimize protests and link them to terrorist or guerrilla groups.
Commissioners were tasked with looking carefully into corporate conduct during the protests. Nationwide, the Mission received information on the role of companies in the context of serious human rights violations, including the following complaints:
Use of the facilities of the Éxito Supermarket warehouse as a police operation center, where illegal detentions, torture and homicides were carried out;
Police chasing and attacking protesters in cañaduzales plantations, where the entry of human rights defenders was blocked;
Use of violent discourse and stigmatization of protestors through company communications. The Mission learned of a case in which some companies initiated retaliatory legal actions against protesters for their participation in the protests.
Corporate obstruction of negotiated solutions between the government and protesters. The Mission learned of a sugar mill’s lawsuit against a city ordinance that created roundtables between Cali’s mayor’s office and protesters;
Military forces prioritizing the protection of companies and private property over guaranteeing the rights of protesters and public property;
Unjustified mass dismissals by companies in retaliation for employee participation in the protests;
A restaurant’s refrigerating truck was spotted transporting police officers;
An ambulance was spotted transporting police officers. Other ambulances were reportedly used to transport police force ammunition;
Social media companies censored freedom of expression and eliminated content related to protests and serious human rights violations.
Findings on Abuses by State Actors
The Mission’s final report, published in early October, systematizes the testimonies of hundreds of people that my fellow Commissioners and I interviewed. Their stories suggest that police and military forces responded to legitimate social protest with a military strategy similar to that used to combat armed actors in the past. The Mission’s final report highlights eleven war-like responses that state actors implemented in response to the protests, including the following:
Use of excessive and disproportionate force. For example, riot police throughout the country shot people at close range targeting protestors’ faces and eyes;
Use of weapons with unauthorized ammunition and improper use of permitted ammunition to cause greater lethality;
Planting evidence and/or abusing power to criminally prosecute protesters;
Instituting terror and social control through violently enforced curfews;
Surveilling movement leaders;
Gender violence and sexual violence (i.e., threats of rape against female protesters, including minors); and
Use of classist and racist slurs.
Participating Organizations
The Mission heeded the urgent call of these convening organizations: Fundación Comité de Solidaridad con Presos Políticos (CSPP), Fundación Forjando Futuros (FFF), Centro de Investigación y Educación Popular/Programa Por la Paz (Cinep/PPP), Instituto de Estudios para el Desarrollo y la Paz (INDEPAZ), Corporación Jurídica Libertad (CJL), Comisión Intereclesial de Justicia y Paz (CIJYP), Campaña Defender la Libertad un Asunto de Todas, Alianza de organizaciones Sociales y Afines, Coordinación Colombia Europa Estados Unidos (CCEEU), Plataforma Colombiana de Derechos Humanos, Democracia y Desarrollo (PCDHDD).
Along with CAL, the following organizations participated in the Mission: Fundación Los Ojos de Chile, Comisión Ética Contra la Tortura / Comisión Ética Internacional de la Verdad Colombia, Izquierda Unida Alemania, Asociación de Solidaridad con Colombia KATIO (ASOC-KATIO), Equipo jurídico de Canadá, Projet Accompagnement Solidarité Colombie (PASC), Forest Peoples Programme - UK, Asamblea de Cooperación por la Paz, Comisiones Obreras, Centre Delàs d’Estudis per la Pau, AESCO, Amazon Frontlines, Alianza por los Derechos Humanos, Corporación de Promoción y Defensa de los Derechos del Pueblo – CODEPU, Latin America Working Group, Colombia Human Rights Network, Aluna Acompañamiento Psicosocial, Equipo de Estudios Comunitarios y Acción Psicosocial, Centro de Acción Legal en Derechos Humanos, Tennessee State University, Mugarik Gabe, SERAPAZ (Servicios y Asesoría para la Paz), JASS Asociadas por lo Justo, Red Nacional de Defensoras de Derechos Humanos en México, Serpaj- Colectiva de Cultura de Paz y Noviolencia, Servicio del Desarrollo Humano Integral del Vaticano, Nexus Human Rights, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México - UNAM, and the International Bar Association.
In Closing
The Mission verified complicity between corporations and state actors in human rights violations against protestors who took to the streets to demand a better Colombia. This alignment is dangerous, prioritizing private interests over public rights. While more will continue to be revealed in time, the international community should maintain a close watch on the companies who facilitate or benefit from abuses linked to Colombian protests.
Isabella Ariza is a former Legal Fellow at CAL and Mission SOS Colombia Commissioner. The Mission’s report, in Spanish, is available here.
