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COLOMBIA PASSES PEACE BILL

Colombia passes controversial peace bill

Manage Alerts | What Is This? BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) -- Congress passed a bill granting reduced punishments to right-wing warlords who disarm, a key step in President Alvaro Uribe's strategy to wind down Colombia's decades-long conflict. Opponents said it will let killers off the hook.

The legislation demands paramilitary leaders confess their crimes, return stolen goods and compensate victims. In exchange, prison terms are limited to eight years.

A congressional panel on Wednesday began hammering out a compromise measure after slightly different versions were approved by the lower chamber late Tuesday and by the Senate a day earlier. Uribe was expected to enact the legislation yet this week.

Passage came after Uribe toughened the proposal under pressure from rights groups and U.S. lawmakers who warned it was overly lenient toward leaders of the brutal far-right paramilitary United Self-Defense Forces, or AUC.

Uribe has been in peace talks with the 13,000-strong AUC for more than two years. The paramilitaries, blamed for some of the worst atrocities in the war, were formed as private militias in the 1980s by landowners and cocaine dealers to guard against Marxist rebels. The rebels, who enjoy little popular support, have been battling for social revolution since 1964.

Both sides tap Colombia's lucrative illicit drugs trade as a source of funding. The conflict kills more than 3,000 people every year.

Although designed to encourage the AUC to disband, the legislation could also apply to the guerrillas if they eventually decide to sign up to a peace process.

"Never before in peace processes anywhere in the world have there been so many requirements as those we are imposing during the negotiations with the armed groups," government Peace Commissioner Luis Carlos Restrepo said.

But opponents say the proposal lacks teeth, will likely leave the paramilitaries' massive drug trafficking empire untouched and won't bring about national reconciliation.

"This law has nothing to do with peace or justice, and it's not going to ensure the dismantlement of the criminal structures of these Mafia that are deeply engaged in drug trafficking," said Jose Miguel Vicanco, head of the Americas Division of Human Rights Watch.

By viewpoint on Jun 23, 2005, 07:22 in Politics & the war.

ColomBuenazo says on Jun 23, 2005, 08:08:

Dark Moment in Colombia's History This is a sad moment in Colombia's history. By passing a law which grants the paramilitaries rights and benefits of immunity and impunity for all the heinous crimes committed for the past couple of decades, the Colombian congress and its backers, the Uribe administration, have begun writing a new chapter of Colombian history. This episode will have to do with perpetuating hate, intolerance, injustice and war. It's clear that the regressively right-wing policies of Uribe will only FURTHER the political chaos in the country.

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Mr. Hollywood says on Jun 23, 2005, 09:08:

Someone with a longer memory than me? Is there anyone here who can speak to the kind of penalties that were included in the peace law that demobilized the M-19? I'd be very curious to know if they served hard time before they were allowed to re-enter civil society.

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007CA says on Jun 23, 2005, 20:51:

I agree, ColomBuenazo. It is a discouraging time to say the least.

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Sr Tertius says on Jun 26, 2005, 18:12:

M-19 Maybe the former members of the M-19 may answer your question better than me:

http://semana2.terra.com.co/opencms/opencms/Semana/articulo.html?id=85308

There was a general amnesty except for crimes deemed "atrocious" in light of international humanitarian law... the kind rather uncommon in M-19 operations, but quite characteristic of the paramilitary.

Ultimately, the process with the AUC and the one with the M-19 are not quite comparable. In the first case, you have to have all the safeguards to guarantee that this is not a negotiation between the right hand and the left hand, if you know what I mean. There is an enormous conflict of interest here, where recycling paramilitary troops into legal military personnel (of one kind or another), and eliminating any connection between the military and violations of human rights, serves the interest of both parties. The formula applied to the M-19 was very successful, but it cannot be simply transplanted to any other process.

"El que a hierro mata..."

"When the finger points to the moon, the fool looks at the finger" (Chinese proverb)

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