The criminal gangs of drug traffickers? BACRIM, as the Colombian government called?, Are now "the greatest threat to the country," said this week the police commander Gen. Oscar Naranjo. Almost half of the more than 15,400 murders in Colombia last year? 47%? are the responsibility of armed groups, the result of a failed demobilization of paramilitaries, which terrorized for two decades.
Official figures indicate that the BACRIM operate in 21 of the 32 Colombian departments (75% of the territory) and are led mostly by middle of the front demobilized. But while some officials insist that, with few exceptions, their crimes are related to the drug business, the reality is that undermine social leaders, threaten and impose rules in areas they control.
The killing earlier this month of two biology students from a prestigious university in the Caribbean Bogota Córdoba department? Cradle of paramilitaries? made the country recognize that this threat is much worse than it had hitherto accepted. Although last September Defense Minister Rodrigo Rivera, said the groups were BACRIM "without local power, easily manageable", but in Cordoba last year, 575 people were killed.
In the first two weeks of 2011 were 31 crimes. Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in its annual report that the 20 massacres suffered in 2010 in the entire country represents an increase of 41% compared with the previous year. The murders of trade unionists, attacks on human rights defenders and threats to social leaders, particularly those who dare to claim land for those displaced by the paramilitaries, are some of the atrocities attributed to them in its annual report HRW .
"The situation remains critical of organized labor," says Alberto Vanegas, responsible for human rights of the CUT (Unitary Central of Workers of Colombia). Colombia is the country with the highest number of murders of trade unionists in the world. In 2010 died Jan. 44 and two more have been killed.
Vanegas, also questioned the official figures of the fight against impunity. Since 1986, 2,774 trade unionists have been killed according to figures from the CUT. Of these crimes has been investigated only 25%. Since the Government highlights the 260 Vanegas judgments but stresses that these are for those who fired the trigger.
"For the masterminds, impunity remains 99%" HRW also points to the situation of the leaders of groups of victims who claimed lands. 45 have died since 2005. The organization draws attention to the crime of Oscar Maussa, assassinated in November 2010 after receiving threats. Tied him to a tree and beaten to death.
Land restitution is a priority of the government of President Juan Manuel Santos. The lowest estimates say that the paramilitaries seized more than two million hectares. Incoder? Colombian Rural Development Institute, the body responsible for certification of these properties? was complicit in this plunder.
"There was a dark period that more of an assistant Incoder he could identify with a chief," said the new manager of this entity, Juan Manuel Ospina. HRW, in a letter to Vice President Angelino Garzón, advised that the attorney general, Viviane Morales Hoyos, modify the "poor" methodology used in the investigation of crimes.
In the letter, the organization recognizes that the Government of the Saints "has taken positive steps" to deal with these groups. One of his most feared warlords, Pedro Oliveira Guerrero, alias knife, was shot in a police operation last December. But HRW stresses "the historical persistence that paramilitaries have had, the extent of their criminal networks and the political and economic power they have accumulated [in Colombia]" and recommended that the authorities investigate and prosecute officials who have tolerated or collaborated with these groups. 
Official figures indicate that the BACRIM operate in 21 of the 32 Colombian departments (75% of the territory) and are led mostly by middle of the front demobilized. But while some officials insist that, with few exceptions, their crimes are related to the drug business, the reality is that undermine social leaders, threaten and impose rules in areas they control.
The killing earlier this month of two biology students from a prestigious university in the Caribbean Bogota Córdoba department? Cradle of paramilitaries? made the country recognize that this threat is much worse than it had hitherto accepted. Although last September Defense Minister Rodrigo Rivera, said the groups were BACRIM "without local power, easily manageable", but in Cordoba last year, 575 people were killed.
In the first two weeks of 2011 were 31 crimes. Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in its annual report that the 20 massacres suffered in 2010 in the entire country represents an increase of 41% compared with the previous year. The murders of trade unionists, attacks on human rights defenders and threats to social leaders, particularly those who dare to claim land for those displaced by the paramilitaries, are some of the atrocities attributed to them in its annual report HRW .
"The situation remains critical of organized labor," says Alberto Vanegas, responsible for human rights of the CUT (Unitary Central of Workers of Colombia). Colombia is the country with the highest number of murders of trade unionists in the world. In 2010 died Jan. 44 and two more have been killed.
Vanegas, also questioned the official figures of the fight against impunity. Since 1986, 2,774 trade unionists have been killed according to figures from the CUT. Of these crimes has been investigated only 25%. Since the Government highlights the 260 Vanegas judgments but stresses that these are for those who fired the trigger.
"For the masterminds, impunity remains 99%" HRW also points to the situation of the leaders of groups of victims who claimed lands. 45 have died since 2005. The organization draws attention to the crime of Oscar Maussa, assassinated in November 2010 after receiving threats. Tied him to a tree and beaten to death.
Land restitution is a priority of the government of President Juan Manuel Santos. The lowest estimates say that the paramilitaries seized more than two million hectares. Incoder? Colombian Rural Development Institute, the body responsible for certification of these properties? was complicit in this plunder.
"There was a dark period that more of an assistant Incoder he could identify with a chief," said the new manager of this entity, Juan Manuel Ospina. HRW, in a letter to Vice President Angelino Garzón, advised that the attorney general, Viviane Morales Hoyos, modify the "poor" methodology used in the investigation of crimes.
In the letter, the organization recognizes that the Government of the Saints "has taken positive steps" to deal with these groups. One of his most feared warlords, Pedro Oliveira Guerrero, alias knife, was shot in a police operation last December. But HRW stresses "the historical persistence that paramilitaries have had, the extent of their criminal networks and the political and economic power they have accumulated [in Colombia]" and recommended that the authorities investigate and prosecute officials who have tolerated or collaborated with these groups.
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