FAIT Committee Meeting

STANDING COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS AND INTERNATIONAL TRADE

COMITÉ PERMANENT DES AFFAIRES ÉTRANGÈRES ET DU COMMERCE INTERNATIONAL

EVIDENCE

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

Thursday, December 2, 1999

• 0939

[English]

The Vice-Chair (Ms. Colleen Beaumier (Brampton West—Mississauga, Lib.)): I call to order this meeting of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade, pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), for an examination of the situation of human rights in Colombia and Canada's relations with that country.

In May 1999 the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade agreed to hold hearings on the human rights situation in Colombia. The first hearing with non-governmental organizations is taking place today. On December 7 we will be having one with government officials.

• 0940

To all of our witnesses, welcome. Normally we do ten-minute presentations from each group. However, with the number of witnesses here today, that may take up the entire meeting, and I think members have questions.

We're going to begin with the Toronto Tribunal on Human Rights. With us is the Honourable David MacDonald and Mr. Jeffry House.

Welcome.

I think the first two will be.... Whoops, it's in French, and I'm not the least bit bilingual.

Mr. Jeffry House (Prosecutor, Toronto Tribunal on Human Rights in Colombia): Madam Chair, we hoped to be able to divide up our time. I will speak first, Professor Schabas of Montreal will speak next, and the Honourable David MacDonald will speak at the end of our time.

The Vice-Chair (Ms. Colleen Beaumier): That's fine. Let's begin.

Mr. Jeffry House: Madam Chair, members, I thank you very much on behalf of the Toronto Tribunal on Human Rights in Colombia for giving us the opportunity to speak to you about Colombia.

I am going to talk about the massacre in Barrancabermeja, which was the initial reason the tribunals were set up in both Toronto and Montreal.

On May 16 and 17 of 1998, a massacre took place in Barrancabermeja, the oil capital of Colombia, where 32 people were killed or disappeared. As a result, 300 human rights and non-governmental organizations in Colombia issued a call for international response and assistance in ensuring that impunity did not continue to reign in Colombia.

I travelled to Barrancabermeja in January and February of 1999, where I interviewed the witnesses to the massacre. I propose to give you a précis of that. Something similar is included in our document, which I believe you all have.

At 8.30 on the evening of May 16, a Saturday, three military-style vehicles penetrated the area of the southwest of Barrancabermeja. On board the three vehicles were 30 to 40 armed men. They were dressed in quasi-military garb and had machine guns, rifles, revolvers, and other weapons, including bayonets.

Significantly, they passed a military checkpoint, called Retén, without being challenged. This was extremely unusual, given that Barrancabermeja is in an oil-producing area that is extremely heavily guarded. An attack on the oil industry there would be devastating for the country and the government.

At any rate, the three vehicles passed by the checkpoint and came to a discotheque known as La Tora. There were only two young men in the disco at that time. The people jumped out of their vehicles, surrounded the disco, took the two people out by force, all the while kicking and shoving and pointing their bayonets, and put the two into their trucks.

They went down the road another kilometre or so and found a pharmacist outside his business. This was an older gentleman, I believe 59 years old. He was thrown into the truck.

Another half-kilometre down the road they turned into a sub-type neighbourhood, a barrio. They came to a soccer field, which was their main target for the night. At that soccer field there was a community event under way. People were dancing, drinking beer, and playing horseshoes. Corn and other kinds of eaten-by-hand foods were being sold.

• 0945

The 30 to 40 armed men surrounded the entire block that was occupied by the soccer field and started screaming that each person should put their head on the ground and lie down, face down. The men were kicking at and hitting the people who were there. Approximately 100 people were on the site.

After everyone was lying down, the paramilitary, as they said they were in the course of their shouts—they said “We're the paras, and the war has come to you”—began lifting people up by the hair. They took a brief glance at each face and selected people to put into the truck. The selection principle seems to have been that they were males over 14 years old and under 30. One female was taken with the males.

After a cursory glance, they were put on their feet and run, with bayonets and kicks and culatazos, or rifle-butt clubbing, into the trucks.

At this site, one young man said in a loud voice, “I won't go on the truck, I don't know who you are.” An order was given and his throat was cut. He died on the spot.

After about 10 to 15 minutes at this location, the trucks proceeded around the corner and down the road. They came upon a 15-year-old boy seated outside his home on a half-tire. Tires are used as fences, and there was a half-tire outside his home. They threw him into the truck.

Down the road another 1.5 kilometres, they passed a location known as Pozo Siete, or seventh well, which was also a military checkpoint. Again, no one challenged them, although they had people on the truck at this time. They went beyond the checkpoint, got out, blocked the highway, and went both up and down the street.

The paramilitary who went up the street went into a billiard parlour and took out all three of the patrons of the billiard parlour. There was a fellow selling lottery tickets nearby, and he also was taken away. All four of them were placed in the truck.

They came upon a game of horseshoes. When one man tried to run inside a house, they followed. They shot through the roof of the house and shot him to death in the backyard.

I was taken to the backyard and saw the bullet holes where this gentleman had fallen. I was told that there had never been any investigators on the scene at all to try to find the bullet or to ask any questions about what had happened.

Meanwhile, the trucks had stopped the traffic. A couple of young men came by on motorbikes. They were knocked off their motorbikes and thrown into the truck.

As well, some of the paramilitaries who had gone south along the street came to a type of indentation in the road and began shooting their submachine guns, claiming that there were guerrillas in the bushes, although fire was never returned and there was no indication that anyone saw anyone in the bushes. They returned to the truck as well.

The truck now had approximately 30 people on board. It again went past the military checkpoint at Pozo Siete unchallenged, continued down the road, and passed another checkpoint—the original one, Retén—and continued along the road to Bucaramanga, the nearest large city.

The next morning, the bodies of five other people were found tossed at random along the road. These were five of the people who had been at the community event.

During my observations there, one of the things I was interested in was what investigation, if any, had been done. I can inform this committee that I spoke to approximately 20 eyewitnesses to the events. Most of the eyewitnesses I spoke to had never been interviewed by the police at all.

• 0950

Some people went on their own to CREDHOS, a human rights organization there, to leave an affidavit. I had access to the entire file of affidavits, about 75 of them. Many of those were provided to the tribunal members, including the Honourable David MacDonald.

It was of interest to me that the bodies along the road to Bucaramanga were never viewed by the government. No one ever took their pictures. No autopsies were ever performed. It was left to the family members to contract a private funeral parlour to go and pick up the bodies of their loved ones and arrange for a funeral.

No one ever searched for any of the bullets, whether by way of autopsy or by way of the machine gun bullets shot into the little decline. There are many dirt roads there, but there was never any examination of the road or the shoulder to try to find out something about the tire tracks, for example, of these trucks.

Very interestingly, we had evidence that during the one and one-half hours the paramilitaries were inside this area between the checkpoints the police did not answer their telephones. Neither did the army. The stoppage of traffic on the highway was within 200 metres of a military base called Termo-Electrica. I saw from the base where the people had been thrown onto the trucks and where the shooting had occurred. The military base was in clear view. As well, tests that were done established that it was easy to hear, especially at night, the report of machine guns at that distance.

Essentially, those are the facts. They're not really in contention. No one says this didn't happen or that there's any other explanation for it. You might be interested to know that the paramilitaries did take responsibility. They gave a press release a couple of weeks later in which they said the 25 missing people were tried, convicted, and executed, their bodies burned and their ashes thrown into the river.

The head of the paramilitaries of Colombia later gave an interview that was reported verbatim in Cambia, which is similar to Time magazine or Newsweek or Maclean's. In it, he offered to stop massacres if the guerrillas would stop what they were doing. He was asked whether he didn't feel bad that the people who were killed were not active combatants. He said, well, he slept tranquilly, because he knew they were either guerrillas or from the social sector that supports guerrillas.

That's my presentation. Thank you.

The Vice-Chair (Ms. Colleen Beaumier): Thank you.

Mr. Schabas.

[Translation]

Mr. William A. Schabas (Professor, Département des sciences juridiques de l'Université du Québec à Montréal, and member of the Comité chrétien pour les droits humains en Amérique latine— Tribunal d'opinion de Montréal): Thank you, Madam Chair.

I am here as the representative of the tribunal that was convened in Montreal. That tribunal, which I had the honour of presiding, was made up of legal experts, parliamentarians, union leaders and members of the civil society. The documents that you were given include a copy of the tribunal's ruling and additional comments prepared by Madam Justice Andrée Ruffo, who was a member of that tribunal.

I will not dwell on the facts, since the witnesses heard by the Montreal tribunal were essentially the same as the ones who appeared before the Toronto tribunal. Our factual conclusions are quite similar to those of the Toronto tribunal.

I would like to draw your attention to a more legal aspect of the tribunal's findings. We must insist on what those involved in human rights issues call the “culture of impunity”. The culture of impunity describes a situation where those responsible for the most serious violations of fundamental rights go unpunished.

• 0955

This can take several forms. We are quite familiar with the situation in certain states where, after legal proceedings have taken place, some kind of amnesty is granted. An amnesty may even be granted before those responsible for the atrocities that were committed are punished. There are numerous examples of that, including in South America. In Colombia, because the problem is the lack of law enforcement, the most serious violations are never subjected to an investigation or to proceedings by legal authorities. This, of course, strips the legal system of its deterring effect. It encourages future violations. It is also prejudicial to victims, who have no personal satisfaction and who cannot find the truth about the illegal things done to them and to their close ones.

The need to prosecute serious violations is stressed in international case law, including in the recent rulings of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. The ruling distributed to you include the appropriate references. This need also underlies the philosophy of the new International Criminal Court, whose status was recognized by both Colombia and Canada.

In both the Toronto and Montreal rulings, crimes committed in Colombia are considered war crimes and crimes against humanity. We refer to war crimes because the international law now recognizes that war crimes may be committed during internal conflicts, including the one in Colombia. We refer to crimes against humanity because, to the extent that the disappearance of people, among other crimes, takes place in a broad and systematic fashion, they can also be crimes against humanity.

There are three options to remedy the situation. First, a state such as Canada can attempt to prosecute those responsible for such crimes, even if though they were committed in Colombia. The Criminal Code was amended during the 1980s to allow Canadian tribunals to judge World War II war criminals. These provisions also apply to crimes that are being committed now. The problem of course is that we must first get a hold of those who are responsible for these crimes. This right remains in effect, but it is problematic.

The second option is to ask the United Nations to create an international tribunal such as the one that exists for Rwanda and for the former Yugoslavia. This requires of course a resolution from the security council, of which Canada is a member. That is also an interesting option to consider.

Finally, domestic tribunals remain the best option to fight crimes against humanity. We must urge Columbia's justice system and courts to assume their responsibilities, to find out the facts and to ensure that those responsible for the massacres described in the two judgements receive adequate punishment.

I thank you and I now invite you to hear the Hon. David MacDonald, who will complete the presentations of the two tribunals. Thank you.

[English]

Hon. David MacDonald (Tribunal Member, Toronto Tribunal on Human Rights in Colombia): Thank you.

To conclude our presentation, I just want to say that it was a remarkable experience that in both Montreal and Toronto earlier this year a significant cross-section of Canadians entered into, for several days, a tribunal to hear witnesses directly affected by this massacre.

• 1000

It was a remarkable experience and is an expression, I think, of the depth of concern felt by many people in this country, by many of the organizations, some of whom are represented here this morning, about the seriousness of the situation in Colombia. It preceded by only a few weeks the visit of the President of Colombia, who came here, as I recall, in June.

Now, one would think that after the extent of publicity about the events that took place, there would have been some clearing of the air on the part of the Colombian authorities, that they would have had a complete investigation, as indeed Minister Axworthy had asked for shortly after the massacre a year and half ago.

I have not heard of any response either to our Minister of Foreign Affairs or to anyone else, for that matter, with respect to these issues. In fact, if you look at the latter part of our brief, on page 11—I'm not going to read it to you—there's a indication of the kind of further harassment that is taking place, harassment of the very people who were involved in bringing to public light the extent of the massacre. The office that was referred to earlier by Jeffry House, the CREDHOS office, has had, since its creation, six of its members murdered, two of its leaders forced into exile, and many of the remaining members served with death threats.

In fact just a few weeks ago, between October 16 and October 18, the office of CREDHOS was ransacked and the hard drive of its computer, containing all of the information collected over the last five years, was taken away, stolen. Of course this affects all the records, legal cases, and claims against the authorities that relate to the massacre. You don't have to be too brilliant to understand why that particular raid took place.

In addition to that, on October 19, another member of the CREDHOS board, Pablo Javier Arenales, received a death threat in which he was told, and I quote—this is strong language—“You son of a bitch, you smell like a rotten corpse.”

CREDHOS has declared that all of this is part of a concerted strategy to silence the very voices of those who are attempting to defend against these human rights abuses. This is in the face of official requests from several ministers of our government for a full explanation, for a clearing of the air of the events that surrounded that massacre.

There are further details, but I think you can see that there's a widespread pattern of continuing human rights abuses. We referred in the year 1998 to some 198 massacres that took place. Well, by actual count this year, the figure stands at some 270 in the first 9 months. This is not a situation that is somehow improving. It is a situation that is worsening. That's why strong measures of the type that will be proposed here this morning need to be considered.

There are five recommendations in our brief, which I refer you to.

First is that this committee issue a public statement. I want to say first of all that when our tribunal made its own recommendations in early May, one of our key recommendations was that this committee might do what it is in fact doing today. We very much want to thank the members of the committee for taking this responsibility, for responding to this request, because it's only through this kind of further public examination and public exposure of the events in Colombia that—hopefully—some positive action measures might be taken. We would ask, therefore, that the committee, out of this meeting this morning, issue its own statement, adding to the kinds of pressures that need to be kept on the situation.

Secondly, we would ask that our ambassador in Colombia, who is certainly well aware of this—we know there has been a good deal of activity at the level of representatives in our embassy—would conduct his own visit to the community of Barrancabermeja to see the situation, to meet with the organizations, to receive a full briefing, and that he then call for an implementation of effective measures to guarantee the protection of persons and organizations under threat.

We would ask that our ambassador be instructed to formally submit to the Government of Colombia the communiqué from Minister Axworthy and the findings of the Tribunal on Human Rights in Colombia, calling on the Government of Colombia to provide a comprehensive written report, which will be made public. We think this is the kind of minimal requirement that should take place.

Thirdly, we would hope that, working with the Department of Justice, we or the committee might receive a legal opinion as to how it would be possible to prosecute for crimes against humanity the perpetrators of this massacre and parties thereto in Canada.

• 1005

Fourthly, we would like to see a full examination of what aspects of Canadian law might be required or amended in order to deal with the actual extradition and trial of persons responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Colombia.

Finally, I would like to suggest that Canada has a unique international opportunity at the moment, as a member of the Security Council, where issues of this nature are raised from time to time, to exercise its opportunities there and to look for the establishment of an international war crimes tribunal for Colombia. We think that taking that additional step will then draw together other members of the international community to see if once and for all actions can be taken that will end the horror, bloodshed, and misery that has been going on with increasing frequency in Colombia.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

The Vice-Chair (Ms. Colleen Beaumier): Thank you.

Now we'll hear from the Inter-Church Committee on Human Rights in Latin America, with Bill Fairbairn.

Mr. Bill Fairbairn (South America Program Coordinator, Inter-Church Committee on Human Rights in Latin America): Thanks, Madam Chair.

The Inter-Church Committee on Human Rights in Latin America welcomes the opportunity to testify at these hearings, and we commend the standing committee for convening them.

ICCHRLA is a national ecumenical coalition compromised of more than 20 Canadian churches and religious organizations, formed in the wake of the military coup in Chile in 1973. We've closely monitored the situation in Colombia since 1988, sending numerous missions to the country in cooperation with Colombian church and human rights partners.

We have prepared a written submission for these hearings, which highlights some of our principal concerns and recommendations for Canadian government action. Unfortunately, time doesn't allow me to speak to each of these now, but I urge the committee to endorse them and press for their implementation by the Government of Canada.

Before I go any further, I'd like to share with members of this committee one of the most recent urgent appeals from Colombia, which we received just a few days ago as we were preparing for these hearings.

Last Sunday morning, Edgar Quiroga, a well-known and important grassroots leader and human rights activist in Colombia, together with another man, Gildardo Fuentes, were forcibly disappeared in the Colombian state of Bolivar. According to direct information we received, the men were picked up by an army unit, presumably from the 5th Brigade, and subsequently handed over to members of a paramilitary group active in the region.

On Monday, I received a call telling me that the two men had been tied to a tree and were being savagely tortured by the paramilitary agents, in the presence of many witnesses from the community. We immediately contacted the embassy in Bogotá and sent a letter of protest to the Government of Colombia demanding that the two men be returned alive, but there's still no news as to their fate. We don't know if they survived the torture. We don't know if they're alive. We don't know if they're dead. Last night I was told that witnesses and other campesinos from the region have fled for fear that they may be killed.

This is the reality of Colombia today. Our committee and many other credible human rights organizations have documented literally thousands of cases like the one I just described to you. The presentation you heard just before mine describes one massacre that occurred in Colombia last year. That was one of 198 massacres that occurred in Colombia during 1998. The figures for 1999 are even worse, with close to 300 reported massacres to date. That's 300 massacres, and each one of them has left behind a legacy of trauma and devastation.

The violence doesn't stop there. Colombian human rights organizations are documenting an average of between 10 and 11 politically motivated killings or forced disappearances every single day.

This climate of terror has brought about massive internal displacement, recently described by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights as “nothing less than a human catastrophe”. The estimated number of internally displaced in Colombia now exceeds 1.5 million people. More than one-third of these people have been displaced within the last two years alone.

We're fortunate to have with us today Luis Garzon, the president of the CUT, the Colombia labour federation. I'm sure both he and our colleagues from the Canadian Labour Congress will tell you of the systematic attacks against trade unions in Colombia.

Those of us here today who share a love for Colombia and a profound concern for her people have seen many of our friends and colleagues in Colombia threatened with death, kidnapped, or murdered. Colombia's finest sons and daughters are being wiped out.

There's a widespread misperception in Canada as well as internationally that all of the violence in Colombia is directly linked to the drug cartels. This simply is not the case. There are many different authors responsible for political violence in Colombia. Among them are the drug cartels, the state security forces, the guerrillas, whose violations of international humanitarian law we have strongly condemned, and the paramilitary death squads.

• 1010

I want to use the time given me today to focus on the actions of paramilitary groups because, according to a recent report of the Colombian Commission of Jurists, they are currently responsible for close to 80% of the politically motivated killings and disappearances in the country.

There are a few things you need to know about paramilitary violence in Colombia. First of all, as someone who has travelled extensively throughout Latin America during the past 16 years on behalf of the Canadian churches and who has taken detailed depositions in countries like Chile, Uruguay, Peru, and Argentina, to name but a few, I can tell you without a doubt that I have never heard about the types of atrocities that I'm hearing about today in Colombia. In the northern part of the country, I've personally taken testimonies of women whose children were decapitated by paramilitary agents brandishing chainsaws.

I've taken many more similar testimonies. Paramilitary violence is responsible for the vast majority of human rights abuses and forced displacement today in Colombia. Villagers only have to hear rumours that the “head-choppers” are arriving and they flee in terror, often abandoning their lands and their livelihoods.

The second thing I want to reinforce—and you may hear it repeated several times this morning, but I don't think it could be overemphasized—is the overwhelming proof that the state security forces are providing ongoing and active support to paramilitary forces. This is not confined to one part of the country, and it's not a case of a few bad apples or isolated incidents, as Colombia's foreign minister, Maria Emma Mejiá, tried to say to this committee a few years ago. This is a practice that is widespread and systematic.

In a report to Congress, Colombia's own ombudsman stated that paramilitary groups “have become the illegal arm of the armed forces and police, for whom they carry out the dirty work the armed forces and police cannot do...”. He further stated that paramilitary activity represents “a new form of exercising illegal repression with no strings attached”.

The third thing I want to say is that report after report—and I've brought a few of them here for you to see—by both Colombian and international organizations have documented the human rights situation in Colombia and the failure of the Colombian government to implement the vast majority of recommendations made to it by international bodies.

The United Nations and the OAS have developed a set of carefully considered recommendations, which they repeatedly called on the Colombian government to implement. I can't go into all those recommendations now, but were they implemented, they would have an important impact in improving the human rights situation in Colombia. Unfortunately, successive Colombian governments, including the present one, have lacked the political will to implement the vast majority of these recommendations.

Now, what enables this situation to go on for so long is very often the willingness of countries like Canada to go on acting like everything is normal. Our brief to this committee contains nine recommendations, but given the time constraints, let me highlight just a few of them.

First of all, regarding peace in Colombia, some of my colleagues around the table will be updating you on the various initiatives for peace, so I won't do that now.

But while we also are deeply committed to seeing peace in Colombia and we encourage the Canadian government to give every support to efforts aimed at finding an authentic peace with justice in Colombia, we would like to highlight the statements of the United Nations Human Rights Commissioner, Mary Robinson. When referring to Colombia last year at the Human Rights Commission, she said:

There are those who argue that you need peace in order to have human rights. I prefer the model of the [Colombian ombudsman]—you need human rights in order to have peace.

So while making every effort to achieve an authentic peace in Colombia, we believe that the single most important contribution of the Canadian government to advance the cause of peace and human rights in Colombia is to press the Colombian government to fully comply with the clear and precise recommendations made to it by international bodies such as the UN and the OAS.

The need for decisive Canadian action to address this human rights nightmare is needed because the growing scale of atrocities has coincided with growing Canadian trade and investment in Colombia. A key question we have to ask ourselves is to what extent Canadian companies are benefiting from the violence or helping to exacerbate it.

Two weeks ago, you heard direct testimony from Mr. Kimy Pernia of the Embera Katio Nation about how a dam supported by a loan from the Export Development Corporation of $18 million U.S. is threatening the physical and the cultural survival of the Embera Nation and how people who have opposed this dam have been killed by paramilitary forces.

• 1015

In the state of Bolivar, an area rich in gold deposits, the arrival of foreign mining companies, including the Canadian Conquistador Mines, has coincided with the arrival of paramilitary groups, who have waged a campaign of terror, massacring local inhabitants, causing thousands of people to flee, leaving the area free and uncontested for mining companies to exploit. It's a situation with many parallels to the Sudan.

That's why ICCHRLA applauds the forthright and the ethical stand of Foreign Minister Axworthy with regard to the case of Talisman Energy Inc. in Sudan. We urge that it be applied as well to Canadian companies operating in wartorn Colombia. We believe that just as in the case of Sudan, Canadians also want assurances and rules to guarantee that Canadian enterprises that have moved into Colombia are not aggravating the conflict there or worse, seeing the human rights climate for people in that country.

Canadians also want to know, in the case of the Export Development Corporation, that in its support for projects there has to be a human rights impact assessment done first in consultation with credible organizations. Where a project cannot be conducted in a fashion that does not contribute to repression or human rights violations, EDC support should not be extended.

Our brief also calls for the urgent need to enact legislation to export controls policies, to ensure that Canadian-made goods for military end use is subject to export controls.

At present, there are serious gaps in Canadian legislation. This has allowed Canadian-made helicopters to be provided to Colombian security forces, forces that have been implicated in a pattern of gross and systematic human rights violations. For that reason, we urge the Government of Canada to bring forward the necessary legislative changes to ensure that all Canadian goods exported for military end use are subject to export control, and that no such goods are exported to human rights violators.

In the meanwhile, we urge the Government of Canada to ensure that there will be no further sales of Canadian-made helicopters, or any other goods, to the Colombian police or armed forces. We furthermore call on the Government of Canada to take the lead in pressing for the adoption of new international standards that will address this serious gap.

Finally, Madam Chair, we have other recommendations that deal with cases of refugees, the need for Canada to welcome more refugees to Canada from Colombia. We are pleased that the numbers have been beefed up for the year 2000, but 450 cases is very small when you consider the gravity of the situation in Colombia.

Finally, I would say that we would embrace the recommendations and the concerns raised by the Tribunal on Human Rights in Colombia. ICCHRLA was one of the member organizations that helped to establish the tribunal here, and we would certainly support the recommendations.

Thank you.

The Vice-Chair (Ms. Colleen Beaumier): Thank you.

Now, from Amnesty International, we have John Jones.

Mr. John Jones (Country Coordinator (Colombia), Amnesty International (Canada)): My name is John Conrad Jones. I am the Colombia coordinator for Amnesty International, Canadian section, English speaking. I have prepared a brief that summarizes Amnesty's concerns.

I have been in constant consultation with the international secretariat of Amnesty International over the past two weeks while preparing this brief, so in a sense it is a summary of the position of Amnesty International. The brief has been distributed. It will be translated into French.

I wish to highlight some of the issues we have here, please. These are some of the specific concerns of Amnesty International. Most of the death squad-type killings of civilians and the massacre of communities is being carried out by the AUC. That's the Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia. This is an umbrella group of all the paramilitary groups of Colombia, whose at least public leader is Carlos Castaño. That is his name. AUC and other paramilitary groups operate with almost complete impunity, and with the assistance and complicity of the army.

It should also be mentioned that the guerrilla groups also commit numerous infractions of international humanitarian law, particularly kidnapping for ransom and attacks against economic and military or peace installations, which sometimes cause numerous civilian casualties. Amnesty International condemns these actions too.

A major concern would be the persecution of human rights defenders and civilian social activists of many types. The security forces and their paramilitary allies continue their campaign against human rights defenders. Over the past two years, more than 20 leading human rights defenders have been killed. We say “leading” ones, but there are many others who we would say were human rights defenders, but they were not in leading echelon positions. Scores of other human rights activists and other community leaders or prominent leaders of trade unions have either been killed or been forced to seek safety outside the country, or they're in hiding inside Colombia while waiting for some foreign government to give them refuge. Some organizations have been forced to close their office because of threats. This includes the Colombian national office of Amnesty International in Bogatá.

• 1020

Carlos Castaño, who is the leader of the AUC, has characterized human rights offenders and other social activists as guerrillas in civilian clothes. In August 1999, in the days following the murder of Jaime Garzon, who was a leading Colombian journalist and satirist, a death list was circulated in Bogatá threatening the lives of over 20 civilians from different professions associated with the search for peace. Let me explain this, please. This is very critical.

President Pastrana set up a special civilian commission as a sort of intermediary to negotiate between the ELN faction of the guerrillas and the Colombian government. It turns out that Jaime Garzon, because of his high social prominence, was one of those selected. Initially, it was believed that those responsible for the murder were the AUC and Carlos Castaño. It is now believed it is because of a hard-line faction within the Colombian army.

There is a hard-line faction within the Colombian army that wishes to give the international community the impression that the situation is completely out of control between the guerrillas and the paramilitary, who they maintain they have no linkage with at all. And they wish, therefore, to justify extreme measures that they intend to take shortly, and also to justify increased militarization, particularly foreign intervention militarization. There is even talk of a U.S-Latin American intervention force in Colombia, which is presently being discussed in Washington.

Going beyond that, it is not simply a question of intimidation of human rights defenders, but also the intimidation of official Colombian government personnel charged with the protection of human rights and of judges responsible for enforcing the law. There are three main government organizations responsible for promoting human rights and investigating political crimes: the Fiscalia, the Procuradaria, and the Public Ombudsman. In May 1999, Carlos Castaño, the head of the AUC, publicly threatened Dr. Alfonso Gomez, the head of the Fiscalia, because his department was investigating paramilitary human rights violations. Subsequently, the head of the Fiscalia's special investigative unit fled the country in July this year.

Another concern is impunity. As has already been mentioned, there is almost complete impunity in Colombia. Carlos Castaño has many arrest warrants against him. He has a high public profile and gives regular interviews to newspapers and politicians, yet he is never arrested. This situation has continued for several years. In January of this year, there were over 500 outstanding arrest warrants issued by the human rights division of the Fiscalia against paramilitary leaders and other members, which the security forces had failed to act on. In May 1999, this year, the Fiscalia issued a warrant for the arrest of Camilo Morantes, the paramilitary leader behind the massacre in Barrancabermeja. However, the security forces have failed to detain him, or any other paramilitaries, in connection with the crime.

I should point out that I had a recent e-mail from Amnesty that there's a mission from Amnesty International presently in Colombia reporting that paramilitary members and army members have been seen playing soccer together in one region of Colombia.

A major factor in impunity has been the system of military courts, whereby military personnel accused of human rights violations are judged by military courts, who practically always acquit. A very confusing issue in Colombia has been what they legally call “acts of service”, whereby military personnel could not be prosecuted for human rights abuses, such as disappearance, or extrajudicial killing or massacre, because in the Colombian legal code these have been acts of service.

• 1025

In 1997 the Constitutional Court of Colombia ruled that crimes such as genocide, torture, and forced disappearance would no longer be considered as acts of service and would henceforth be tried by civilian courts. This is a new development. However, extrajudicial execution has not been ruled out as an act of service and the Colombian government has yet to pass legislation codifying the crimes of forced disappearance and genocide in the penal code. It therefore becomes very hard to prosecute people.

Amnesty International also has a concern that the Government of Colombia keeps putting off measures to address and confront the human rights crisis until it has completed the peace process. It is the position of Amnesty International that the human rights issues can and must be addressed and given priority in parallel with the peace process, and that it is not necessary to wait until a durable peace process is in place and being implemented before any major human rights initiatives can begin.

Amnesty International has specific recommendations to the international community, which includes Canada.

Military aid: Amnesty calls for the supply of military aid to the Colombian army not to be renewed until there is sufficient evidence to prove that the institution has carried out all measures necessary to exclude from its ranks any officials implicated in human rights violations and/or support or tolerance of paramilitary groups.

AI also calls on all governments to make sure that effective means are in place for checking that military aid supplied is not to be used by units or individuals implicated in human rights violations, specifically in relation to Canada. The sale of Bell helicopters by a company in Mirabel to the Colombian military is of concern because these are dual-purpose machines that can easily be converted to attack helicopters that can be used against a civilian population in areas of conflict.

A last recommendation I would like to bring to your attention, Madam Chairman, is that Amnesty International has recently created a special division within its international secretariat to focus on the special dangers faced by human rights workers and defenders. This term also includes trades union and other social and community activists and leaders.

A high proportion of the work of this special division presently has to do with Colombia. Many of these victims urgently need either permanent or temporary protection and asylum outside Colombia. Amnesty International very strongly urges that other countries, including Canada, immediately take steps, or further steps, to facilitate and expedite this process of granting refuge and asylum and eliminate time-consuming bureaucratic procedures that cause long delays that can put people's lives at great risk.

Finally, Bill Fairbairn of ICCHRLA has already mentioned the urgent actions. Recently a Spanish cooperant was murdered by a death squad in Colombia—about two days ago—and I have an urgent action on this. But I would like to bring to people's attention this enormous great heap of urgent actions that have just come to me—and these are only some of them—all on Colombia, in the last couple of months. They come about once a day. I get about two or three or four or five a week; it just depends, but I get lots of these.

Thank you, Madam Chairman.

The Vice-Chair (Ms. Colleen Beaumier): Thank you.

National Action Committee on the Status of Women, Joan Grant-Cummings.

Ms. Joan Grant-Cummings (President, National Action Committee on the Status of Women): Thank you. We're pleased to be presenting and we're pleased that you have followed up on your commitment to us to ensure that these hearings take place. We also want to strongly urge you to not only listen to us but to act, because we feel there's been a lot of listening and talking about Colombia for years. And what we're here saying as Canadian NGOs is that the time for talk is over and it's time for action now.

I was pleased to be a member of the Toronto Tribunal on Human Rights in Colombia and I fully support the report and the recommendations made by my colleague on the other side.

NAC is here specifically because we want to share with you a slice of the life of some of the people who have been impacted by this violence. As we talk about Canadian foreign policy and international trade and we talk about the different human rights mechanisms, I think we need to be clear that this is about people and what is happening to communities.

• 1030

Bill talked about the massacres that have occurred. What you need to recognize is that when a massacre occurs, every single person in that community is impacted, including the elderly, young people, and children yet to born. There were women who saw their husbands killed and who had children or were pregnant at the time, in that massacre in Barrancabermeja, for example. We've met the children who were born since their fathers were killed. And we're talking about people who are living in forced poverty, who have been forced to migrate, and who even to this day do not want to talk about themselves as being internally displaced or as being impacted by this violence, for fear of reprisals.

I've certainly had the honour of being invited into the homes of people in Colombia in four different communities. I've talked to a number of trade union activists, feminists, gay and lesbian activists, campesino groups, and student groups, and I think the story is clear for us. It's not a story; it's people's lived experiences, and we have responsibilities, both as everyday Canadians and members of Parliament, not to become or remain complicit in the human rights abuses within Colombia. That's our message at these hearings.

I want to talk about just one of the communities that we're working with currently. It's a community of about 7,000 people, 95% of whom are African Colombians. The unemployment rate in that community is 75%. In the rest of the country it may be 50%—in some areas—but here it's 75%.

Over 50% of these families are headed by single mothers precisely because the fathers either have been killed or have been forced to leave the community to seek work. In other places, they are being forced to leave because of death threats.

Within these communities there are many children and many youths whom we expect to see in school, expect to have access to food, and expect to have access to shelter, but they do not. People are living in homes.... In this particular community, what they have done is dump land on the coast to form makeshift homes. The homes last a maximum of about seven years—homes made out of wood.

This particular community lies in a part of Colombia that the Colombian government advertises as the wave of the future, but somehow the wave hasn't caught the children and women in this community, in the majority—certainly not the campesinos who have been displaced, certainly not the African Colombians, and certainly not the indigenous Colombians in this community.

However, the communities have decided that they're not going to take this lying down. They're not going to lie down and play dead. They have strived to thrive without support from countries that benefit from what was taken from them on their land, because many of them were moved from land that is now mined by Canadian corporations, European corporations, or American corporations. They were cleared from their land by the paramilitary forces that you've been hearing about.

So whether we want to debate about whether there is a supposed link or not, people are very clear. Since they were removed from our land, it has become a place of very active mining, it has become a place where pipelines have been laid, and it has become a place where telecommunications giants now govern. We enjoy the benefits of that in the north, within Canada, but we have people who are living in communities without food systems, without running water, and without lights, based on what happened to them.

I also want to talk to you about the fact that when you talk about foreign policy in Canada.... We just went through the atrocities in East Timor finally being revealed, and what I see happening in Colombia in terms of our inaction is that by not paying attention to the many human rights reports—some of which Bill Fairbairn already put on the table here—we're again being complicit. We are again sanctioning the killing of people, the underdevelopment and the de-development of communities.

Canada tried using soft diplomacy and an aggressive trading strategy with Indonesia to get the Indonesians to comply with observing the human rights of the East Timorese. We know that didn't happen, so I think we have a clear example of what does not work. We also know that we have a seat on the UN Security Council. We're not there just to sit, we're there to act. I'm imploring you, as Canadians, to make sure you act when it comes to Colombia.

• 1035

Recently we supported the giving up of loans to Colombia from the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. NAC was one of the organizations that globally said to the World Bank and the IMF that they could not give these moneys, these supports, without looking at the human rights conditions, because they are directly linked. We cannot continue to pretend that we can subordinate human rights to trade. We cannot continue to pretend that the conditions that IMF and the World Bank loans came with do not impact people's daily lives. Some of these individuals have been impoverished because of the harsh conditions attached to those loans that have created downsizing and redundancy. We have 2,000 children who have no access to public education, and who cannot even afford the set-up of a church school that would cost them half a U.S. dollar a month.

Clearly, we cannot say that Minister Martin or Minister Axworthy don't have any control over this, or that the Canadian government doesn't. If we for once would put our money where our mouth is in terms of human rights and say, no, this is the way we will do this instead, I think we would not have thousands of Colombians being impoverished and living on the streets today because of the IMF and the World Bank loans that recently were given to Colombia without any conditions around peace with justice, or human rights, or anti-poverty measures, or social program reform. There is nothing like that added to the picture.

When it comes to our prudence, I think that is where our prudence should lie. We support funding to countries like Colombia when we know they are clearly violating people's human rights, from a state perspective and other perspectives. We must not be complicit by pretending this money isn't going to do that, because it does do that. It shores up banks, but it de-develops communities.

We're urging Canada not to make Colombia into another East Timor. In fact it probably is in a worse situation than East Timor right now, given the number of internally displaced people.

The fact is that we are pushing aggressive trade. When we log onto our embassy website, it's trade that we're pushing. We're not pushing human rights, and that is something that must change.

I also want to say that I found something quite reprehensible in my meeting with embassy officials to talk about the support we're giving to NGOs in Colombia and about the work we're doing on the ground in Colombia, because that is where we want to focus right now. CIDA has decreased its grants to Colombia with the claim that Canadian NGOs do not want to work in Colombia. I'm looking around this table and I'm seeing many NGOs that are starving but which know exactly who we need to work with. This process is being obstructed by our own government process, and CIDA is claiming that NGOs in Canada do not want to work in Colombia or with Colombian NGOs.

We want to specifically make a recommendation that CIDA at least double its grants within the next fiscal year, and that they actively work with us to facilitate the development of those communities within Colombia with which many of us are engaged, because NGOs in Canada are not going to be complicit. We're not going to, by omission, not deal with these issues. We have made a pact with peace in Colombia, and we're hoping that our government will also participate in that pact by protecting and guaranteeing an advance in the human rights of people in Colombia.

We will be outlining all of this in our written brief to you so that you know where we're coming from, and we look forward to the work ahead on Colombia.

Thank you.

The Vice-Chair (Ms. Colleen Beaumier): Thank you very much. We'll be hearing from CIDA next week, so we can ask them about this as well.

From the Canadian Labour Congress, we have Hassan Yussuff.

Mr. Hassan Yussuff (Executive Vice-President, Canadian Labour Congress): Thanks, Madam Chair.

Before I begin my brief, I would like to also acknowledge two other colleagues who are here with me this morning. Dick Martin is the president of the ORIT, which is the regional hemispheric organization for the trade union movement; and Anna Nitoslawska works in the CLC's international department on Colombia and the Americas as a whole.

Of course, we are honoured and pleased to have our friend and colleague, Luis Eduardo Garzon, from the CUT, here today. He will give additional testimony in regard to the CLC brief.

In regard to Colombia, this is one country that obviously is a priority for us in terms of the region. As you know, the Canadian Labour Congress has been involved in doing work to try to bring changes in countries. South Africa is one example. We were in El Salvador in the past, and most recently we were in East Timor to highlight the need to recognize the sovereignty of that country, and in Nigeria, which has now retained democratic control of their country.

• 1040

It's also important for me to state that part of the larger framework of the work we're doing in the region is to try to build a civil society and to ensure that the labour movement is a critical part in building civil society. Of course, Colombia, as I highlight in our brief, will exemplify some of the points we'd like to make.

Given the time constraint, I'm not going to read the entire brief, which you have in your possession. I'll just summarize some key points.

The Canadian Labour Congress appreciates this opportunity to participate in the round table discussion with members of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade. Because of the dimension and the complexity of the crisis in Colombia, we hope this is the first in what will become an ongoing, regular dialogue with the committee and its members.

The CLC also appreciates the invitation extended to Luis Eduardo Garzon, president of CUT, Colombia's largest national labour federation, to present first-hand testimony on the human rights situation of Colombian workers. The CLC believes Mr. Garzon's remarks will help the committee frame the social, political, and economic context and point out avenues for Canadian policy towards Colombia that will support the aspirations of the vast majority of Colombian people. We are indeed pleased and honoured to have Brother Garzon with us this morning.

A major recent report on Colombia refers to trade union activity as a high-risk occupation. The report released earlier this month by the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions, the ICFTU, called the situation disastrous.

In our brief we said 2,500, but Brother Garzon said this morning close to 3,000 trade union activists and leaders have been murdered in that country since 1987. Many more have been kidnapped, tortured, threatened with their lives, and prosecuted in numerous ways, while thousands have been forced to flee their towns, regions, or even the country itself. Colombia is the most dangerous country in the world in terms of exercising basic union rights of freedom of association and collective bargaining. Although it is a formal democracy, trade union activity, dissent, and protest can often cost lives. It's also important to note that ICFTU, in its report, acknowledges that of the trade unionists who have been killed in the world, 50% have happened in just one country, Colombia.

The situation is not getting any better. From January to July of this year, at least 37 trade unionists have been assassinated. Two were kidnapped and disappeared, 8 were victims of attempted assassinations or abductions, 30 received death threats, and 20 were unfairly arrested by the state. Trade unionists are also known to have been tortured. Trade union offices have been raided and bombed. In Colombia, trade union leaders live surrounded by bodyguards and travel in bulletproof vehicles because their lives are constantly in danger.

In October 1998, a large public sector strike took place, which lasted 21 days. During that time, nine union leaders were assassinated, including the vice-president of the CUT. Jorge Ortega Garcia was also gunned by an unassisted assassin as he arrived home on the evening of October 20. Jorge was the founding member of the CUT, a member of the Permanent Assembly of Civil Society for Peace, and a human rights activist. He also received death threats on numerous occasions.

The government has failed to provide adequate protection to trade unionists' right to life. Colombia's long-standing armed conflict has resulted in a climate of intolerance among all principal actors of the war. Workers are often caught in the middle of the situation when they exercise their right to organize a union at their workplace or take on union activities with local, regional, or national responsibilities.

It is not uncommon to hear government authorities claim that unions are engaged in subversive activities. Paramilitaries, meanwhile, view the union movement as an ally of the armed insurgents, whereas certain insurgent groups consider as traitors those who choose political options rather than armed struggle or those who do not share the political proposals or methods of the struggle.

The perpetuators of violence and crimes committed against trade unions have enjoyed complete impunity, which in turn has generated even more violence. The government itself concedes that very rarely have judicial inquiries led to the identification and prosecution of those responsible. It is clear that trade union rights can only be exercised in a climate free from violence and threats of any kind, and this is far from the case in Colombia. The government has tried repeatedly to justify itself, hiding the situation of armed conflict in the country on the one hand and, on the other hand, the steps it has taken to set up specialized bodies to deal with the violence.

• 1045

The last such campaign was displayed in Geneva earlier this month when the Government of Colombia mounted an aggressive campaign to stop the governing body of the International Labour Organisation from convening a commission of inquiry on violations of freedom of association by the Colombian government. A negotiated agreement between the government and labour representatives was ultimately reached, providing for postponement of a decision to convene a commission of inquiry pending another direct contact mission to take place in the new year.

In the past decade, there have been three direct contact missions to Colombia on freedom of association, in September 1988, September 1991, and October 1996, with the ILO providing unprecedented technical assistance to the Colombian government as compared to other Latin American countries, where the results are meagre and far from satisfactory. As a member of the governing body of the ILO, the CLC is closely monitoring the developments with a view of supporting the firm action of ILO.

On November 15, the CLC wrote to Minister Lloyd Axworthy, urging the Canadian government to support fully the establishment of an ILO commission of inquiry and not to be deceived by the Colombian government authorities' propaganda campaign. We urge the foreign affairs committee to make sure Canada adopts a firm position on this issue.

Trade unionists are prosecuted in Colombia because they engage in legitimate and peaceful trade union activities, which are perceived as a threat by powerful economic and political interests of all stripes. Meanwhile, the state has failed so far to guarantee protection for physical safety of union leaders.

The CLC is also concerned that in a context of Colombia's escalating war, there is increased intolerance for legitimate social dissent and protest. Last August, a national strike took place to protest the economic policies of the Pastrana government in many parts of the country. The protests, which were peaceful, were violently dispersed by excessive use of force by the security forces. On the eve of the protest, there were death threats against union leaders and threats of bombings at union offices. On the day of the protest, over 500 persons were detained, and in some cities the police used tear gas, water cannon, and even gunshots to disperse the protesters.

Colombia's labour movement is fundamentally committed to achieving a negotiated political solution to the long-standing armed conflicts in that country. In recent years, union leaders and the union movement as a whole have been actively engaged in other sectors of civil society. In various initiatives and activities demanding an end to the war, the labour movement mobilized its membership to support the peace referendum of October 1997 and, again, the peace assembly in 1998. It is also cooperating with the National Peace Council, the state agency created by law to support the government's peace negotiations.

But the trade union movement is also very clear that genuine peace is more than the absence of war. If peace is to be achieved in a wartorn Colombia, social justice issues must be part of the negotiations. It's unacceptable for the government to sit down at the table with armed insurgents while it engages in economic and social war on workers and the population at large by adopting a policy that severely undermines social and economic rights. Peace without justice, without the participation of the labour movement and other sectors of civil society, will not resolve the root cause of the conflict in Colombia.

Finally, the CLC wishes to refer to one more measure taken by the Pastrana government that raises further questions about the government's commitment to social change, particularly on women's equality. We refer to a decree issued in June 1999, which effectively dismantles the national women's equity directorate by downgrading its status from an autonomous agency with funding, staff, and budget to a mere advisory body in the presidential office. The decision, strongly opposed by Colombia's women's movement, including the trade union women, flies in the face of national and international commitments made by Colombia, especially at the fifth UN conference in Beijing. In a traditionally male-dominated society such as Colombia, the decision constitutes a serious blow to any progress on issues related to women's equality.

• 1050

In conclusion, Colombia's political violence has its historical roots in widespread social injustice, the concentration of wealth and land among a small elite, and the closed and undemocratic nature of traditional Colombian politics.

Violence has been endemic to the Colombians for many decades. In the period between 1948 and 1960, known as La Violencia, 300,000 people were killed—about 2% of the country's total population. What followed was a pact among the political elite that excluded genuine popular participation and fostered great social polarization and continued violence by a variety of irregular armed forces, including the guerrillas, paramilitaries, criminals, and private assassins at the service of the drug trade.

As Canada develops a growing relationship in Latin America in general, Colombia in particular, it is essential that this relationship serve to promote universal democratic values and sustainable development strategies. In this regard, and bearing in mind the various issues raised in our presentation, the CLC wishes to make the following recommendations to the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade for the Government of Canada.

The Government of Canada must continue to speak out forcefully against human rights violations in Colombia, including trade union rights violations, whenever they occur. They must say clearly and unequivocally that they will look for concrete evidence of progress on human rights, including implementation of recommendations made by the UN Commission on Human Rights and other multilateral bodies such as OAS, particularly on the issues of impunity and displacement.

The CLC urges the Canadian government to follow closely the developments of the ILO in the coming months and to support the convening of a mission of inquiry if there is no substantive progress on the complaint filed against the Government of Colombia for violation of freedom of association. At the same time, Canada should actively encourage Colombia to extend its fullest cooperation to the contact mission when it visits Colombia.

The CLC recognizes and welcomes the increasingly proactive role played by the Canadian embassy in Colombia in monitoring human rights situations in the country. However, we urge the committee and the Canadian government to incorporate into its framework a set of basic labour standards as provided for in the ILO Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work, adopted by Canada and Colombia at the ILO annual conference last year.

Furthermore, the CLC takes this opportunity to call on the government to ratify without delay the new ILO declaration of principles and urge the Colombian and other governments in the hemisphere to do likewise.

We would like to encourage the committee to look at creative and innovative ways for Canada to support the peace process. Canada's support for the work of the Office of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights is an important step in the right direction, but it's not enough.

Canada's peace-building fund program should be made more readily accessible to civil society and civil society groups, including the labour movement, to support the strengthening of civil society, awareness-raising, and education for peace and good governance. In this regard, particular attention and support should be allocated to the newly formed social front, led by the union movement in Colombia.

We urge CIDA to develop a labour rights screening process for all bilateral programs and development assistance projects in Colombia. Such a process should be developed in close coordination and consultation with the labour movement in Canada and Colombia to ensure the development aid does not further undermine workers' basic rights.

Given the situation of continued widespread violence, Canada must continue to offer refuge to trade unionists, human rights defendants, and all legitimate refugee claimants. The designation of Colombia as a source country in 1988 is welcome. This must be complemented by additional support to both short-term and long-term refugees and their families in numbers that reflect adequately the dramatic human rights situation in Colombia.

The Government of Canada should be encouraged to explore the involvement of multilateral organizations such as the United Nations in order to counterbalance the dominant influence of the United States government in Colombian affairs. Similarly, regional initiatives provided for by the Santiago summit action plan should be encouraged and strengthened.

Canada should be prepared to take the lead in working with like-minded governments on an international level, in consultation with the Colombian authorities, to press for peace in Colombia. Canada is uniquely positioned today to play a more active role in the hemisphere's affairs and to promote the traditional Canadian values of tolerance, dialogue, and compromise.

A few weeks ago, Canada hosted the fifth meeting of the FTA ministers in Toronto. For the first time since the initiative was launched in Miami in 1994, the hemisphere trade union ministers agreed to meet face to face and listen to the concerns of civil society—a small step in the right direction. Next year Canada will host the general assembly of the OAS, and the year after, the next hemispheric summit of the heads of state.

• 1055

The Government of Canada must seize these opportunities to advance democracy, respect for human rights, social justice, and equality in the region, and move away from exclusively promoting and encouraging expanded trade and economic liberalization, as it has done to date.

Finally, the CLC and its affiliate unions and Canadian workers will continue to support our brothers and sisters in Colombia in their demands for social and economic justice and for peace. Our struggle for workers' rights; decent jobs; good public services, including education, health care, and child care; and pension and social protection in Canada are the same issues the Colombian labour movement is fighting for in their country.

This was clearly understood by the delegates to our convention last May, when they unanimously endorsed a resolution committing the CLC to strengthening solidarity ties with Colombian workers, demanding respect for basic human and workers' rights, and supporting them in a quest for peace and social justice.

I would like to call on Luis Garzon to supplement and add to the CLC presentation.

The Vice-Chair (Ms. Colleen Beaumier): I'm going to take a shot at this one—I know no Spanish, but this looks wonderful—the Central Unitaria de Trabajadores.

Voices: Oh, oh!

The Vice-Chair (Ms. Colleen Beaumier): No?

Luis Garzon, I'd like you to introduce your organization, please.

Mr. Luis Eduardo Garzon (President, Central Unitaria de Trabajadores (CUT)): [Witness speaks in Spanish].

The Vice-Chair (Ms. Colleen Beaumier): Do you mind doing a little bit of translation of the presentation?

Mr. Luis Eduardo Garzon (Interpretation): I'm really thankful for the invitation to talk before this parliamentary standing committee, and also to the CLC for having given me this chance to talk for the ten minutes I have to talk to you. I also have had the chance to listen to what the other people around the table have said, and that has given me the idea to talk about something different, something that's not been mentioned here.

My first concern is for the Colombian people. Now is a very important time in our history, because we have the option of finding a political solution to the conflict, or the risk of a military intervention that would spread the conflict to the whole region. So we are at a very essential point of our history.

The trade union movement, especially the organization I represent, the CUT, has been aware of the problems, and we are trying to raise the awareness of the problems at a national level, together with the NGOs.

• 1100

Since October 1997 we have been working to find a political solution to the conflict in Colombia. We have worked on many fronts. We elaborated a mandate for peace, where 12 million Colombians voted for peace and to end to the conflict in Colombia. We worked to build a national assembly of civil society, where all the groups went together to work for peace. We also participated in the peace community with the Inter-Church Committee and in Germany with the national convention. After the killing of Eduardo Umana Mendoza, we also have been trying to raise the awareness of the whole population, working with the NGOs to find a political solution to the conflict in Colombia.

The civil society in Colombia are all in favour of a political solution to the conflict. But what is important for us now is the international community, what the international community can do about it. Our struggle is also against the indifference of the international community.

That's why this committee for me is what I call an oasis in the desert. It's very welcome to see there are people in the world who are aware of the situation and want to do something about it. Especially knowing there's a Canadian parliamentary committee doing this, at least hearing us, is very important, because then you will send your concern to your government.

We believe this is the way to instruct people about what's going on in Colombia, because many think these are savages, and a political solution to the conflict is not going to work, and everything is related to drug problems. We see that really, in this sense, globalization grows, but solidarity diminishes around the world.

• 1105

Everything the CLC has presented to you this morning is true, and it saves me from taking the time to go through the same things. They are all true, and you have them here. I am an example of what the report says. I live with seven guards permanently around me. I have two armoured cars, my house is armed, my office is armed. We have no choice. We either leave the country under those conditions or we accept the risks involved and continue struggling. That's why the international position is very important. It's essential.

We want to indicate that we recognize that the Canadian government has to take a very strong position in unrestrictedly supporting the negotiations for the peace process in Colombia that will start in January. In the middle of this war we are going to start a negotiation process with several of the actors involved—the FARC, and alternative cultures—but the process will continue in any case, with the initiative of the EPL. We want the Canadian government to be proactive and to be stronger in supporting this peace process in Colombia.

We also urge the Canadian Parliament to put pressure on the U.S. government, because their intention is to have the conflict spread to the region and they really are seeking military intervention. So it is very important for Colombia what the U.S. government decides. We urge the Canadian government to put pressure on the U.S. government.

• 1110

We have been hearing that as a result of the violations of human rights in Columbia—as a result of the problem with union leaders and the violation of rights in all these sectors—military intervention is justified. We are certain that any military intervention would worsen the problem, because the problems would no longer be focused in Columbia, but would spread to Venezuela, Peru, Brazil, and Ecuador.

That's why it's very important that you understand that as desperate as we are, we don't want any international intervention that would worsen the problem. There are some initiatives that would worsen the problem, like extradition, for instance.

I want you to understand me clearly: we are against drug trafficking and everything connected with the drug trade, but extradition would worsen the problem, because then they would say there are terrorists in the country, and that would give them a chance to intervene militarily. And we don't want this.

What we really want from the Canadian government is that as they develop their economic initiatives in Columbia and invest money in Columbia, they also fight for human rights, especially in trade. So what we want in Columbia is for the Colombian institutions to finally work in a civil society, so the trade union leaders can do their jobs and the society can continue working normally. This is what we want. We don't want to be considered a troop of savages—the way we say it in Colombia—where nothing is going to work because we don't know how to live civilly, so the military intervention is justified because we are dealing with a troop of savages.

I am sorry for the way I express myself, but my welcome here was so warm, especially your presentation when my intervention started, that I felt this is a catharsis for me of what's happening in Colombia, and I wanted to give it all to you.

The Vice-Chair (Ms. Colleen Beaumier): We have to be out of here at 12 o'clock.

I'm sorry that you're near the end. I probably should have been a little stricter with those who were at the beginning, although their presentations were interesting.

Next we have Eleanor Douglas and Emmanuel Rosenthal.

• 1115

Mr. Emmanuel Rosenthal (Spokesperson, Pueblos Hermanos Lazos Visibles): Thank you, Madam Chair. I'll start and Eleanor will follow.

I am one of those Colombians who had to leave. I was the director of CISALVA, near Universidad del Valle in Cali, the violence prevention institute. That was my crime. I was one of the people who was trying, with a whole team of people in the country, to find a peaceful negotiated solution to the problem.

But I'm honoured now to say clearly, as Luis Eduardo said before me, that Colombia is not a country of drug lords, savages, or people who are genetically inclined to war. Colombia is a country which, in spite of a gross inequity and the circumstances of abuse created within and outside the country by a minority, has one of the most creative diversities of people who have a right to live in this world, as García Márquez said when he received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1982.

I'm very grateful for this opportunity here, and hopeful that this shows the beginning of a major change in the Canadian attitude toward Colombia and its problems.

I am representing here today both Canada and Colombia—not all of Canada of course, and even less all of Colombia, with its diversity and so on—in an initiative born in Colombia by a coalition of 25 organizations of the many throughout the country that are working for creative peace projects, for human rights, for social development, in a diversity of views. It does not include the whole diversity of views and positions, but is an alliance coalition borne in Medellín, including groups from Bogatá who are now jointly working for peace and a negotiated solution.

But I'm also representing the Canadian coalition for Pueblos Hermanos Lazos Visibles, a sister country's visible links, which is working one to one with those organizations, but also as a unit toward the purposes of a negotiated solution in Colombia. Civil society here and there is seeking to find ways out of these problems, and this is whom I'm speaking on behalf of. So I've been welcomed here—that's another way of saying this.

I would like to say that these coalitions exist as well now—even though this is a project born this year—in Spain, Germany, France, and the Netherlands, and they're working actively in coordinating efforts, and so on.

We would like to endorse what has been said before us, and support it strongly. The point I'd like to make here—because many of them have been made already, so I'll just summarize—is that the future scenarios in Colombia are three.

One is a scenario of exclusion and permanent war. And I'd like to underscore the order. The structural exclusion of most Colombians from their right to be and live with dignity has led to war, and war leads to further exclusion and further war. That's one scenario. It's unacceptable. It's impossible. But it will spread and is spreading already to the region.

That's the first scenario. That has to change and can't go on. The origin of this problem is structural and is based on inequities and social injustice for the benefit of local and foreign elites.

The second scenario is a scenario of military intervention and foreign pacification of the country that would be based on the racist and biased assumption that Colombia is indeed a country of drug lords, savages who must be pacified by force. This is absolutely unacceptable and will lead to further genocide under the indifferent eye of all people in this continent. We feel the only country in the whole continent that could stand and face the United States' interest in creating this false image of our country is Canada, and it should stand and stop the lies the U.S. is producing to promote its intervention.

We are not a country of savages. We have a right to change our reality. Our problem is that we haven't been allowed to do it.

The third scenario is precisely what some of the people before me were presenting: the need for a negotiated political solution to our problems. There are processes taking place. They are weak and they are being threatened by forces that are against peace—for global economic interests.

That third scenario has to be supported, and we see the role of the Canadian government, particularly supported by civil society organizations such as the ones present here, in developing these negotiated solutions.

• 1120

Eleanor will talk about our recommendations. We have provided you with a brief, the charter that guides the coalition, and the Medellín declaration of the coalition of institutions there.

Ms. Eleanor Douglas (Spokesperson, Pueblos Hermanos Lazos Visibles): We have six recommendations, three of them dealing with Canada's potential role in the international and regional scenario, and three recommendations looking at Canada's bilateral relationships with Colombia.

As a background to this, we feel there are a number of instruments in place that Canada must use that have been developed in fact by this government, by the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs.

One of them, first of all, is the very intense relationship Canada has with the hemisphere and the leadership role Canada is playing at this particular moment in the hemisphere. And growing out of the Santiago summit and a number of obligations, we would like to see Canada use that to play a role, and it can play a role, with the situation in Colombia.

As other people have mentioned, with a seat on the Security Council, with statements by the Canadian government that the Security Council must be concerned about civilian casualties in situations of war, we also feel this is a way to look at the situation in Colombia that Canada should be taking advantage of.

Thirdly, your own policy of looking at the issues of security from the individual's point of view we feel is certainly another instrument that Canada can use in looking at the Colombian situation.

So in terms of recommendations, we insist that Canada use all of the efforts and tools possible to promote a negotiated political settlement to the situation in Colombia. The violence is getting worse, it's not getting better. Initiatives that the government has taken with Norway could be expanded, as other people have said, to bring other countries into providing some sort of stop-gap to the situation, to the build-up of U.S. military forces.

We insist that the Canadian government provide leadership in the hemisphere by looking seriously at what the U.S. is doing. We heard last night there were 5,000 assistants from the drug enforcement agency. There are as many military advisers in Colombia today as there were in El Salvador during the height of the war.

There are other people in Colombia saying that plans do exist—whether or not they'll be implemented—for an intervention if required. As others have said, it is becoming, or made to appear as, a regional conflict. So Colombia is painted by sectors of the U.S. government as a major regional security threat.

So we would urge Canada to provide leadership for humanitarian civilian intervention in an acceptable way that leads to a decrease in the levels of conflict in the country and that encourages all the actors to continue the process towards a negotiated settlement.

On the bilateral relationship between Colombia and Canada, we would certainly urge you to consider a coherent overall strategy for the country so that what you do with the right hand somehow doesn't get knocked off by the left. And that means looking at policies of intervention at the IMF and World Bank level, at local initiatives to support grassroots work in Colombia. A lens of peace-building, a lens of justice, a lens of human rights security should be used to look at everything that Canada does in this particular crisis situation.

Our second recommendation: The CIDA program currently under review in Colombia is going to begin a new phase. We would really urge that the Canadian government again apply those kinds of lenses to a new CIDA program in the country. We recognize that some of the work CIDA has done has been beneficial to protecting human rights. We feel that part of the resources have been used more to look at issues of privatization, which increases conflict, which throws workers out of jobs, and this is not what Colombia needs right now. We need a coherent CIDA program in the country.

• 1125

The last and final recommendation: That there are lots of civil society actors, both in Canada and in Colombia especially, who are working on these issues, and we need to work with them. We urge the government to hear those voices consistently. We need to hear the voices of people who are working on research, on developing alternatives to the situation in the country.

One of the examples that was brought to our attention was something...between war and peace, in Central America, where Canadian organizations, Central American organizations, and the Government of Canada participated in discussion and dialogue over a period of time that did look, in a consistent way, at alternatives and ways forward.

So we're urging Canada to play a role. Emmanuel said that probably the only country, for geo-political reasons right now, that can take a different stand in the Americas, given the U.S. position, is Canada. So we're leaving you with that strong message to take up the case of the tragedy unfolding in Colombia.

Thank you.

The Vice-Chair (Ms. Colleen Beaumier): Thank you.

Could I ask the last two groups to highlight their briefs, because I believe the members do have questions. I have a list. I apologize for the time constraints here. We can go a little past our time, but I understand there will perhaps be a vote between noon and one o'clock. Thank you.

We have witnesses from Peace Brigades International.

Mr. Luis van Isschot (Regional Coordinator, Peace Brigades International): Good morning, and thank you for this opportunity to express our profoundest concerns for the human rights crisis in Colombia today.

I am the North American coordinator of Peace Brigades International, Colombia Project. I spent all of last year in Barrancabermeja, Colombia.

I was there the day of the massacre, May 16, 1998. In its aftermath, we at Peace Brigades have accompanied the families of the victims and the human rights workers who continue to call for a thorough and transparent investigation.

Established five years ago at the request of human rights workers in Bogotá and Barrancabermeja, Peace Brigades currently provides protective accompaniment to members of 12 Colombian non-governmental organizations as well as to the members of internally displaced communities.

During these past five years Peace Brigades has been witness to some of the worst cases of human rights violations in the country. Through our work we have heard testimonies from individuals, communities, and organizations affected by the violence.

Speaking personally, I have passed through a paramilitary checkpoint just minutes away from a regular army base. I have also accompanied human rights workers in the middle of the night to observe the forensic study of the bullet-riddled bodies of students killed in a guerrilla raid.

In 1997 our physical presence helped to prevent a paramilitary attack on a human rights activist in the town of Sabana de Torres, not far from Barrancabermeja. And as we speak, members of the Peace Brigades' team are returning from a joint NGO and Colombian government investigative mission to verify the facts in the case of disappeared campesino leader, Edgar Quiroga, previously described by Bill Fairbairn from the Inter-Church Committee.

Peace Brigades is committed to a non-partisan, non-interventionist approach to human rights work. We do not denounce human rights violations, nor do we lobby on issues of public policy. Rather, our role has been to help create and maintain breathing space for Colombian human rights organizations to do their work. We meet regularly with government officials, military commanders and foreign diplomats to express our concerns. The support we receive from the international community allows us to provide protection to Colombian human rights activists.

We are here today as an expression of the grave concern of many ordinary Canadians, those of us who have lived and worked in Colombia, our families, and many others.

By the end of these hearings you will be familiar with some of the details of the Barrancabermeja case. The May 16 massacre is only one tragic example among thousands, and as we have already heard from others' testimony, massacres occur on almost a daily basis in Colombia.

• 1130

I would now like to give the floor to Stephen Law, my colleague, whose recent field experience can provide us with insight into the devastation and hope that coexist in another of Colombia's hard-hit regions, Urabá.

Mr. Stephen Law (Spokesperson, Peace Brigades International): Thank you, lucha.

My name is Stephen Law, and I was a Peace Brigades volunteer in Colombia in the region of Urabá. Urabá is the region that arguably has been most affected by the violence in Colombia, consistently rating the highest number of assassinations in the country, resulting in massive displacement of the civilian population. In Urabá Peace Brigades accompanies communities displaced by the violence that have declared themselves to be peace communities, maintaining their neutrality in the midst of civil war.

I'm going to read to you a letter I wrote in April while in Colombia, which I hope will personalize a little of what you're hearing and place some names to the statistics;

Dear Friends and Family,

Five days ago paramilitary death squads entered the peace community of San José de Apartadó and killed three people and wounded three others.

I have spent the past five days accompanying the community. I returned from the morgue in Apartadó with the bodies of two members of San José; the cracks in the wooden coffin dripped blood between juts of the truck and swirled around my feet as we made our way past the military blockade which had been set up (after the fact) to provide security to the community. The military blockade, which had been regularly in place days prior, was conspicuously absent the night of the massacre. As we arrived in San José, the plaza was filled with the campesinos who had been terrified the night before by the incursion of the paramilitaries. They silently moved towards the truck and removed the coffins and placed them in the training centre where the community leader was assassinated; Anibal Jimenez had been involved in the peace process since its inception, and was one of the most important leaders in the community.

The night the paramilitaries entered San José, Anibal was watching t.v. with his 2 kids, aged 9 and 11. Just prior to being shot, Anibal realized what was about to happen and gave the little money he had to his eldest son and murmured his goodbyes saying, “they are going to kill me”. As he walked towards the assassins with his arm outstretched in greeting they shot him five times. His kids clung to his body for 2 hours while the community huddled in fear.

Gabriel, a youth of 16 who had been watching television in a kiosk on the edge of the plaza was interrogated and shot, and had his throat slit. Daniel had his stomach sliced open with a foot long jagged edged fishing knife. He later spent an hour trying to hold his guts in, as he slowly slipped away. Others were more fortunate. One lay on the ground and played dead. Another was merely wounded by shrapnel and three others miraculously managed to escape a barrage of bullets and grenades which were directed at them.

For nearly 2 hours the community remained in their houses, afraid to come out in fear that the paramilitaries were still there and ready to attack them. When at last they felt safe and made their way into the plaza they made the grisly discovery of the latest victims of their community. Fifty-two members of the peace community of San José have been killed since its inception on March 27, 1997.

These five past sleepless days and nights we provide vigilance taking turns being alert and walking around the town, waiting for the paras to enter, waiting for more deaths... It is a totally surreal experience, one that has left me tense, frightened and with deep sorrow.

News has reached us of other assassinations in more Peace Communities. We are now fearful for the displaced living in nearby Turbo. Our team is providing 24-hour accompaniment, sleeping in the shelters and coliseum where the displaced are located. The magnitude of the tragedy is hard to fathom, the orphans of Anibal, the fear of the survivors, the horror of the communities.

We are not sure when this violence will end.

Steve.

All told, 14 members of the peace communities in Urabá were assassinated the week of April 7, 1999. Peace Brigades continues to accompany these peace communities and their leaders.

• 1135

Mr. Luis van Isschot: Peace Brigades would like to draw your attention to a very serious incident that occurred two weeks ago in the Urabá region. On November 18, 1999, Iñigo Igiluz Telleria, a Spanish citizen from the NGO Paz y Tercer Mundo, Jorge Luis Mazo Palacios, a Colombian priest, and four others were returning from a humanitarian mission along the Atrato River. According to eyewitness accounts, the boat in which they were travelling, clearly marked with the name of the Spanish organization, was rammed by a craft carrying heavily armed paramilitaries. While their four companions managed to swim to shore, Iñigo Telleria and Father Palacios drowned.

I knew Iñigo from the months he had spent in Barrancabermeja working with displaced campesino farmers. Iñigo's death is a tragedy for his family, his community, and for all of us whose lives he touched in Colombia.

Peace Brigades is deeply concerned about this direct attack against foreigners and international humanitarian workers. We would like to ask this committee to write a letter to Colombian authorities in support of all international humanitarian organizations, including Peace Brigades International.

Peace Brigades' four offices in Colombia are currently staffed by 25 cooperants from 10 European and North American countries. A young man from Montreal is in fact leaving for Colombia tomorrow, December 3, to join the Peace Brigades team. The implications of Iñigo's death affect the work of all aid and human rights groups in Colombia. For this reason, we feel it's important that the international community vocalize their support for international and Colombian NGOs.

During Peace Brigades' fifth anniversary celebration in Bogotá this past October, Canadian Ambassador Guillermo Rishchynski reiterated his intention to travel to Barrancabermeja and Urabá. Canadian, British, French, German, Spanish, Dutch, Swiss and Austrian embassy officials have visited these wartorn regions more than a dozen times in the past five years. In the majority of cases, Peace Brigades organized their itinerary.

In the same spirit, we would like to extend an invitation to the members of this committee and the Canadian government. We would be happy to assist in organizing a comprehensive itinerary so that you might experience first-hand the urgency of the human rights crisis in Colombia.

Thank you very much for your attention.

The Vice-Chair (Ms. Colleen Beaumier): Thank you.

Mr. Raby.

Mr. David L. Raby (Chair, Canadian Initiatives for Peace with Justice in Colombia): I'm here on behalf of Canadian Initiatives for Peace with Justice in Colombia. Our fundamental purpose is to contribute to the search for a solution to the Colombian armed conflict by disseminating information about the Colombian situation in Canada and, in particular, by disseminating the views of Colombian popular organizations. We hope also to facilitate dialogue between these organizations and their Canadian counterparts, and contact with Canadian authorities, with a view to promoting a positive Canadian role in the solution of the Colombian conflict.

I have some remarks about paramilitarism, but I will skip over those since it has already been amply dealt with.

I want to say a few things about narcotics in the state, the peace process, and the social roots of the armed conflicts.

While the narcotics issue is obviously a major problem in Colombia, it is not the fundamental cause of the conflict, which existed for more than 20 years before drug trafficking became serious in the 1970s. Occasional dramatic incidents like the two deadly bombs recently detonated in the northern suburbs of Bogotá, apparently by drug cartels in response to the extradition of some of their members, make headlines because they occur in upper-middle-class districts of the capital, but they are marginal in relation to the ongoing armed conflict.

More significant is the fact that the most notorious capos of recent times, Carlos Castaño, head of the so-called united self-defence forces of Colombia, the major paramilitary organization, remains curiously untouchable. When, a few months ago, Castaño was almost killed by the FARC in a guerrilla offensive against his stronghold in the Nudo de Paramillo Mountains, among those reported to be defending his headquarters were regular troops of the Colombian army.

That incident just helps to reinforce the evidence of complicity between some of the narcotics interests and important sectors of the Colombian state, both military and civilian. But this should come as no surprise, since the drug cartels bought their way into, or in some cases emerged directly from, the traditional Colombian oligarchy—large landowners, ranchers, real estate speculators, and so on. Ranching and some types of commercial agriculture have become important instruments of money-laundering for narcotics interests. This is a further reason for paramilitary offensives to drive peasant farmers out of such areas.

• 1140

For that reason also, there is no real possibility of an alliance between the drug cartels and the insurgency. The thesis of the narco-guerrilla is a myth propagated by the United States as a pretext for intervention. Neither the FARC nor the ELN are involved in any serious way in drug trafficking, a fact that has been publicly recognized by President Pastrana in recent months. This, of course, does not mean that the guerrillas are saints. They also have to answer for abuses they have committed. But I think this should not divert us from the major issues at stake in the conflict. Those issues bring us to the social roots of the armed conflict.

What virtually no media commentators on Colombia recognize is that the present armed conflict originated not 20 years ago with the emergence of the drug cartels, or even 35 years ago with the foundation of the FARC and the ELN, but more than 50 years ago with the assassination of the great popular and populist leader Jorge Eliécer Gaitán.

Gaitán was a lawyer who made a name for himself defending peasants and labour organizers and entered Parliament as a Liberal in the 1930s. A consummate orator, he attracted a massive popular following with his call for radical agrarian and labour reform and his denunciation of oligarchic control of both the Conservative and Liberal parties.

By 1947, Gaitán was in control of the Liberal Party, and it was generally expected that he would win the next presidential elections three years later. His assassination on April 9, 1948, provoked massive popular riots in Bogotá and spontaneous insurrection in other parts of the country, and it was the crucial event in the origins of the complex civil war known as La Violencia, the violence, which caused some 300,000 deaths over the next ten years. Of course, today we wonder why that particular period should have been labelled the violence, because it obviously didn't stop. Although in 1958 the two dominant parties temporarily put an end to the fratricidal strife by a power-sharing arrangement known as the National Front, the violence never really ceased and the underlying problems were never resolved. This is the key to understanding the Colombian conflict today. It is the consequence of a frustrated popular revolution.

When the Argentine president, Juan Domingo Perón, heard of Gaitán's assassination, he declared “That country will not return to normality for 50 years”, and he was right. Colombia is the only major Latin American country never to have experienced a real social reform or political change.

Gaitán's daughter Gloria points out that after his death many of his followers took up arms in the face of repression and became Liberal guerrillas, and

This gave rise to the guerrilla movement, whose development continues down to the present with the same characteristics which were the political aims of Gaitán.

In other words, the Colombian guerrilla movement predates the Cuban revolution and has deep roots in the country's history and, equally, the oligarchic state, which uses the facade of a sham democracy to thwart any real change, resorting to a combination of military and paramilitary repression to maintain the status quo. This also goes back to the time of Gaitán.

If any peaceful solution is to be found to the Colombia problem, it must address the fundamental causes of the conflict, which means it must entail real and substantial measures of social and economic justice. All our Colombian informants and interlocutors, trade unionists, indigenous and black community leaders, educators, lawyers, and human rights workers, as well as representatives of the insurgency insist on this point. The issues they raise are the same as in the time of Gaitán, except now much more acute after 50 more years of repression and injustice: to return land to peasant cultivators displaced by rapacious landlords; to guarantee land, water, cultural autonomy and self-government to indigenous and black communities; to make democracy more than a sham by providing security for political opposition; and to ensure that the country's immense natural resources are exploited in a rational and controlled way, with the benefits shared by the majority.

• 1145

I'll conclude with our recommendations.

The first is that the Canadian government lend support to the peace process, which is underway, establishing contact with the parties to the negotiations, and creating political and diplomatic opportunities to favour the resolution of their differences; that Canada follow the example of other countries, such as Germany, Switzerland, Norway, Spain, Venezuela, and Mexico, in offering its territory for meetings and its good offices for the parties in conflict to present their proposals.

The second is that the Canadian government use its influence to ensure that the peace process in Colombia not be constructed on the basis of impunity for crimes against humanity.

The third is to demand that the Colombian state take effective measures to end paramilitarism and to prosecute those responsible. There must also be a thoroughgoing restructuring of the armed forces and police to remove those implicated in human rights abuses and to democratize these institutions.

The fourth is that the Canadian government use its influence to favour the participation of Colombian popular organizations in the peace process and the reconstruction of the country.

At present, in the negotiations taking place in Cuba between the Colombian government and the ELN, one of this organization's key proposals, reportedly already accepted by the government, is the convening of a national convention of Colombian society, to which Luis Eduardo Garzon referred. This is intended to be an assembly to debate the country's future on the grounds that the resolution of the conflict should not be the exclusive preserve of the government and the insurgency, but should involve representative organizations of the Colombian people.

This national convention may include Colombian immigrants and may involve preparatory sessions to be held in other countries. Germany, Switzerland, and Norway have apparently already indicated their willingness to host such meetings. It would be desirable that Canada should also indicate its willingness to help in this way. Furthermore, as the peace process advances, Canada should be prepared to provide economic and technical assistance for the implementation of programs to benefit the vast majority of Colombians.

Thank you.

The Vice-Chair (Ms. Colleen Beaumier): Thank you.

Now for the questions, and we're going to have to be really strict on our timeframe—one round.

Madame Debien.

[Translation]

Mrs. Maud Debien (Laval East, BQ): Good morning ladies and gentlemen, even if it is late. I extend a special welcome to Mr. Garzon, who told us in a touching way about his concerns, which we share of course.

Madam Chair, let me first say that we regret having so little time to ask questions to the witnesses and thank them for the quality of their testimonies. Since we have several questions, we will of course have to go very quickly.

I will begin with you, Mr. Garzon. You spoke about the peace negotiation attempts in your country, and about your will and that your people to achieve a negotiated political solution. I would like you to tell us what you really think about the chances of such negotiations being successful. On the one hand, you are rejecting any international peace building initiative, and I can understand that. On the other hand, you are asking Canada to take a very firm or strong stand regarding the Pastrana government and this negotiated political solution.

What exactly are you asking from Canada regarding the firm or strong position that it should take?

• 1150

[English]

Mr. Luis Eduardo Garzon (Interpretation): We have heard what Amnesty International has said about it, and not only our group but the whole Colombian population have very serious concerns about this negotiation and why people are taking different positions concerning the negotiations. It is said that people are taking different positions to be better placed if there is an intervention, and here all the parties are involved, not only the guerrillas but the government and every other party. We believe that is possible, that people are trying to find the best way they can be positioned if a military conflict takes place. We believe that although this is a possibility, we have to fight within civil society, with the help of the international community, to avoid a military intervention and to find a happy solution for the country.

Canada can provide support inside Canada, to make Canadian society aware of the negotiations that are going on in Colombia and to spread the information about the results of the negotiations and how different parties are negotiating to reach a peaceful solution in Colombia. Externally, Canada can put pressure on the U.S. government to do the same thing.

[Translation]

Mrs. Maud Debien: Do I have any time left?

The Vice-Chair (Ms. Colleen Beaumier): Mr. Robinson.

[English]

Mr. Svend J. Robinson (Burnaby—Douglas, NDP): Thank you. I want to join in thanking all of the witnesses for their very powerful and moving evidence this morning, and particularly, of course, to welcome Compañero Garzon from Columbia. I want to thank the witnesses also for their personal engagement. We've heard very moving stories from Steve and others about the extent to which they have personally put their lives at risk, and Compañero Garzon and others as well. The extent of that is quite incredible, and I want to thank them and members of the tribunal for that, and indeed all those who have given evidence this morning.

I share the frustration of Madame Debien that the time is so limited that we really don't have an opportunity to explore in a dialogue the recommendations that have been made. I want to give the assurance—and I'm sure I speak on behalf of members of our committee—that we will take very seriously all of the recommendations that have been made to us, and we will report to the Government of Canada as a committee and ask the government to respond to our recommendations. Obviously, we will be synthesizing all of the recommendations that have been made here, and hopefully we'll be able to do that as a priority.

I just have one question in the very limited time I have available. We've heard about what's been happening in the streets of Seattle and elsewhere. The links between what's happening there and what's happening in Columbia and what's happening here are very real—the clash between civil society on the one hand and global corporate power and their allies in governments, like Colombia, on the other.

I'm wondering about the role of Canadian corporations in Colombia, what role they are playing. We've heard about Talisman in Sudan and Axworthy's recent interventions in that regard. Is there a role that Canadian corporations could be playing and should be playing to help put pressure on the Colombian government to respond to these horrifying abuses that are taking place? I address that to any of the witnesses who may wish to comment. I know the tribunal made a recommendation on this. I don't know if they or others want to comment.

• 1155

Mr. Hassan Yussuff: In terms of Canadian investment in Colombia, there has been some research done on this. It's in its final stages. We'll probably make it available to members of the committee.

The evidence, I guess, is that Canadian investment in Colombia has increased. We need to understand the link between the increased investment and the reality, the violence and the repression of trade unions in that country. It is specifically for that reason Canadian corporations will go to countries like Colombia. There's an understanding that the conditions are such that trade union rights are not being respected. The reality is that they can do it with impunity. So there is a direct link being made here.

In terms of the research, from my understanding, what's been done so far points out very specifically where the investment has taken place and of course the increase in violence and some other human rights abuses. I think it is incumbent on the Canadian government to start enforcing some very strict adherence to our own fundamental values as a country in terms of what we expect of corporations when they invest in places like Colombia.

In terms of the committee's work, it would be important for the committee to call upon the Canadian business community investing in Colombia to come and testify as to how they are promoting human rights and international values in regard to their investment in Colombia. I think that's an obligation. The committee should summon them to the committee to testify. We strongly support that. I think it's imperative that this link be made, because we know for a fact that there are links between the violence and the investment strategies. There have been displacements of people from whole regions because of hydroelectric projects.

I think maybe Mr. Garzon could supplement this in terms of other sectors where this is happening.

For instance, in the flower industry, people are working with very toxic substances in terms of manufacturing and producing flowers. Most of them are sold in our country. What is the correlation between the shipping of flowers to our country and the adherence to international standards in promoting health and safety in the working conditions for workers in that country?

I'm sure Mr. Garzon can make some more comments.

Mr. Bill Fairbairn: Actually, I would like to add something.

Our brief also points to that concern, that the bulk of Canadian trade and investment with Colombia in sectors like telecommunications and oil and gas are precisely the areas where the trade union movement has been hardest hit in Colombia. Brother Garzon could speak to that, certainly.

In the testimonies we're taking on the ground in Colombia, many areas of the countries where there are mining interests are the areas where the communities are being forcibly displaced. It's been recognized as well by Francis Deng, the UN representative on displacement, that multinational corporations are one of the key elements behind forced dislocation in Colombia.

I just wanted to reinforce, then, what the CLC said about the need for Canadian companies to report on how they are not contributing to human rights abuses. You can't just go to Colombia and assume it's business as usual. This is a country where your presence in the country could involve serious human rights abuses, as we heard just a few weeks ago at this committee with the Embera Katio people in northern Colombia.

The Vice-Chair (Ms. Colleen Beaumier): Thank you.

Mr. Garzon.

Mr. Luis Eduardo Garzon (Interpretation): The Colombian gas industry really is in the hands of Canadians from north to south, all over the country. That shows you how important Canadian capital is in the country. They are the owners of the oil industry, really.

The Vice-Chair (Ms. Colleen Beaumier): Thank you.

Madame Marleau.

Ms. Diane Marleau (Sudbury, Lib.): Thank you for coming before us. I will join with my colleagues in saying that we're very concerned about what has been going on in Colombia. It is a very serious situation.

• 1200

You have talked about our corporations who may be participating in human rights abuses. If you have anything specific, I would like you to really bring it forward. Most of our Canadian companies like to pride themselves on ethical behaviour, and if they are not behaving ethically I think the Canadian public would like to know.

I think the Canadian public would be great allies in pressuring Canadian companies who may not be doing things as they should. I think it would be very important to know specific examples or occurrences rather than just vague things. It's very difficult to know exactly what is happening, in that sense. Please, if there are any specifics, make them public. I think that would work very much in favour of ending them, if they're happening.

As well, on the peace-building front, I understand some programs are being worked on in Colombia. They are reasonably successful but they are very small. Can you tell me how much further we can go and what else we can do to help promote peace among the warring factions?

The guerrillas have been kidnapping very large numbers of people. I believe they are the ones who are the most responsible for some of the problems. How can CIDA, through its peace-building front, do more to promote the kind of peacemaking that's possible, first of all?

Ms. Eleanor Douglas: Certainly those of us working in international development recognize a number of the initiatives Canada has taken in Colombia—for instance, the $1.5 million three-year fund to support four human rights organizations. Our point is that we need much more of that. I don't think we need some of the other things CIDA is supporting, which would be much larger amounts of money for—

Ms. Diane Marleau: What are the other things, specifically?

Ms. Eleanor Douglas: The telecommunications field, for instance, helping the Colombian government to figure out the rules of deregulation. The company has within the last week been put up for sale. Bell Telephone is in Colombia, and has major interests in the cellular telephone.

So, yes, we do ask the question of who is going to benefit from this. Is it going to be the Colombian people or is it going to be Canadian companies?

There's another very large CIDA project of around $11 million looking at regulations in the mining field and taking into consideration environmental concerns. This does not seem to be the kind of CIDA program we'd really be thinking about in the country we've been describing all morning. The CIDA team is in the fields right now. They're there for three weeks. We're going to be meeting with them as soon as they get back with, we hope, a new kind of program.

So in terms of your question, I think that's one way of looking at it, from the Canadian side. But from the Colombian side, myriad people are working at very local levels in the kinds of communities Steven and Luis have talked about, and in human rights groups. As well, women are working on issues of training in non-violence, training in negotiation, training in how to talk to the different actors when we meet them in the countryside.

There are thousands of initiatives Canada could be supporting through a real peace-building and justice-type lens. It's not because there aren't opportunities. So we're really pressuring CIDA—and I'm just talking from that point of view—to have a different type of program in Colombia, because the current program does not reflect the type of situation the country's under.

[Translation]

The Vice-Chair (Ms. Colleen Beaumier): Mrs. Lalonde.

Mrs. Francine Lalonde (Mercier, BQ): Let me first say that I wish we could convene another meeting to discuss this issue, because I was very impressed by the quality of all your testimonies. You have expressed contradictory views, and this is what is interesting. If everyone said the same thing, there would be no need to call quality people like you.

However, in order to go beyond these general views, we need more time to talk with these people. To reread their testimonies will not be good enough. Madam Chair, I respectfully submit this issue to your attention.

• 1205

In the meantime, I have a question for Mr. Garzon. If our other witnesses would like to comment, I invite them to do so. I believe that the crux of the issue is that the government and those of its members who are in favour of justice and civil society, and who want to bring changes are themselves intimidated by paramilitary groups, or by guerrilla groups in certain cases. In any case, the army, which is responsible for enforcing the law and arresting offenders, is also involved in violence. Is that not the crux of the issue? How can civil society, with the help of the international community, overcome the army? Do we have to convince it? Perhaps I did not get at all.

[English]

Mr. Luis Eduardo Garzon (Interpretation): The first thing that you have to understand in the Colombian situation is that the institutionality is not working; it's absent. In a democratic society, you must have the political parties working, you must have the unions, and you must have the justice system, the parliamentary system and the government working together within the civil society. This is not working in Colombia. We don't have the institutions.

Actually, the problems of absence of institutionality have various different elements. There is daily violence caused by drug trafficking and by economic problems, poverty, and political intolerance.

The basic thing we have to do is to start building the civil society, the democratic society, from the base, really. Second, we need to have all the parties to the problem understanding and spreading the information about what's going on in the country and knowing each other, because, as you can see, not only the confusion.... There are so many actors and so many different problems. I understand your confusion in understanding the conflict in Colombia. Within Colombia we have the same problem, because there are too many actors and too many different positions.

The first thing is to have spaces like this, where we can discuss and understand what is going on, to have them outside the country and also in Colombia so that people start to know what's going on.

• 1210

Last week we were discussing the same problem with the Italian government and with the Spanish government. We reached the conclusion that we needed spaces—spaces in those countries and spaces also within Colombian society—to digest, to understand this peace process or this war process. Once you understand, then you can see what contribution Canadian society can make. Probably the first contribution will be also to allow the same spaces for understanding, like what's occurring in our country.

Mr. Emmanuel Rosenthal: There are two examples of such concrete spaces in the experience of Canada that it would be important to tap into, that have been successful.

One of them was here, when the war was taking place in Central America. The spaces were open, but not just as open spaces, period. In an alliance among governments, government agencies responsible for these processes, NGOs within Canada with knowledge of the problems in Colombia, who have experience in that, and their counterparts—NGOs and civil society members—in Colombia, we first developed an agenda of major issues to be addressed in order to achieve peace.

They had a permanent round table for a set period of time, where each one of the items.... First we negotiated the agenda, and then, under the discussion of each item, we brought in the different factions, even the warring factions, and we heard them here. Then each chapter produced a set of recommendations for the different parts, which were first of all feasible, viable, and were concrete and took into consideration an accurate knowledge of the reality there. That's one proposal.

The other one is that there are institutions, groups, and organizations in Colombia under the gun right now. Those are precisely the ones fighting for...they are precisely the ones that you need to provide clear proposals to change things. In the past, when the Southern Cone was involved in dictatorships, Canada supported those organizations so that they could not only survive but produce proposals for a new society to be created. That's another concrete proposal.

As Svend Robinson said before, let us carry on with this dialogue, because this cannot be but the beginning. But we do have concrete proposals here.

The Vice-Chair (Ms. Colleen Beaumier): Thank you.

Mr. Raby.

Mr. David Raby: It's quite simple. Yes, in some ways the conflict is very complicated, but as Luis Eduardo Garzon said, this is partly a confusion created by the media. The fundamental issues are not necessarily so complex. Processes of negotiation have begun, and I think it would be tragic if those negotiations were to fail for lack of international support. This is where I think Canada really can play a significant role, along with other countries, in trying to support and broaden the negotiations that are already underway.

The Vice-Chair (Ms. Colleen Beaumier): Thank you.

I'm really sorry we have to end this session, but listening to all of your comments will help us to pose better questions when we have the government representatives here next week.

Thank you, all of you, for appearing, and thank you for taking the trouble to prepare your briefs. We shall read them in preparation for questions for the government next week.

The meeting is adjourned.