===================================
"We have become the objects of our
own work," said Agustin Jimenez...
"We have gone from protecting others
to protecting ourselves."
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LOS ANGELES TIMES

Friday, 8 May 1998

Rights groups become targets
----------------------------

By Juanita Darling

BOGOTA -- For more than a decade, Colombian human rights activists have 
denounced the killings of leftist politicians, union leaders, journalists and 
peasants caught in the middle of the country's long civil war. 

Now they are denouncing the assassinations of their colleagues--and taking 
precautions because of threats to their own lives. 

"We have become the objects of our own work," said Agustin Jimenez, a 
lawyer with the Committee in Solidarity with Political Prisoners, a public-
interest law firm. "We have gone from protecting others to protecting 
ourselves."

Last year, 17 human rights activists were killed and two dozen were 
threatened, according to the Colombian Jurists' Commission. 

Statistics are not yet available for 1998, but two high-profile killings, in 
late February and mid-April, have made it clear that the killings have not 
stopped.

Police believe that the same hit squad of two men and a woman posing as 
journalists killed both Jesus Maria Valle, chairman of the Human Rights 
Committee for Antioquia, a war-torn northern province, and Eduardo Umana, 
a lawyer who defended political prisoners, including guerrillas. 

Beyond that, the authorities have no leads, said Luis Enrique Montenegro, 
Colombia's head of police intelligence.

"These are not isolated incidents," said Jorge Rojas, director of the group 
Consultants for Human Rights and Displaced Persons. "There is a message of 
terror and fear that these murders have generated. Above all, the message 
is, 'You are not safe, even in your office or at home' because that is where 
they have killed people."

By posing as journalists, the assassins have also made human rights 
activists cautious about meeting with reporters, who had been an important 
outlet for information.

Observers say the killers' motive is clear. 

"What this demonstrates is the level of intolerance that some radical 
elements of the country have reached," the weekly newsmagazine Semana 
said.

After Umana's killing last month, President Ernesto Samper met with human 
rights groups to offer them a $ 1.2-million security program that provides 
everything from cellular telephones and steel doors on their offices to 
bulletproof vests, self-defense courses and bodyguards. 

Some organizations have accepted the steel doors, but the idea of 
bodyguards appalled activists.

"Arming ourselves is not compatible with our existence as defenders of 
human rights," Rojas said.

The activists say what they really want is for the government to tone down 
the rhetoric of politicians and military officials. The military routinely 
accuses rights groups of overlooking abuses by the country's insurgents and 
focusing on the army's mistreatment of civilians. 

Further, activists say, intelligence reports have linked lawyers who defend 
guerrillas to the insurgent movements, which are financed by a combination 
of kidnapping ransoms, extortion and "taxes" on cocaine and heroin 
production.

"The former governor of Antioquia said that we were a parallel diplomacy 
internationally for the guerrillas," Jimenez said. 

Military officials have accused his group of taking money obtained through 
guerrilla kidnappings, he added.

In reality, Jimenez said, the lawyers are funded by donations from Swiss, 
Swedish, German and British civic groups. 

The activists believe that such disinformation encourages attacks by 
extremists, and the rights advocates who met with Samper demanded that 
he order a review of intelligence files to rid unproven references to their 
groups as subversive.

They also insisted that Samper enforce a directive, issued last year, that 
cautions both armed forces and government officials not to make 
disparaging remarks about human rights activists. 

Copyright 1998 Times Mirror Company