[A-List] Colombia: state powers enhanced

["Keaney Michael" <Michael.Keaney@xxxxxx>]

Colombia's new powers 'aimed at civilians'

Sibylla Brodzinsky in Bogota
Thursday September 12, 2002
The Guardian

Colombia's new government has granted its security forces sweeping
powers to arrest suspects without warrant, and allowed it to impose
travel restrictions and curfews in the most violent areas of the
war-torn country.

The government argued that the measures, the most drastic since
President Alvaro Uribe declared a "state of public unrest" on August 12,
are necessary to fight leftwing rebels and outlaw paramilitary groups in
a 38-year-old war that claims more than 3,500 lives a year.

Human rights activists warned that civilians are the targets of the new
measures, rather than guerrilla or paramilitary fighters.

Under the measures set out in a decree issued late on Tuesday, police
and soldiers can arrest suspects without warrant and hold them for up to
24 hours before handing them over to prosecutors.

The decree also authorises the president to declare special zones of
"rehabilitation and consolidation" under military control. Residents of
these zones will have to register all weapons and telecommunications
equipment and advise authorities of any travel plans. Foreigners will
have to ask for special permission to enter the zones.

Authorities can also tap communications lines with a judicial order in
order to seek criminal evidence or to prevent a crime.

The argument is that the measures would make it easier to capture rebels
and paramilitary fighters "who often hide themselves as civilians".

"In many cases, the security forces have had evidence of the presence of
terrorist groups ... but have had to deal with a restrictive legal
framework that kept them from reacting quickly," the defence minister
Marta Lucia Ramirez told congress.

Colombians, who elected Mr Uribe last May for his hard-line stance
against rebels, have applauded the measures to crack down on insurgent
violence. Just five days after taking office, he declared a state of
public unrest that gave him powers to impose security measures by
decree.

Using those powers, he has imposed an assets tax on wealthy Colombians
to pay for his fight with the insurgents.

But a respected human rights activist, Gustavo Gallon, of the Colombian
commission of jurists, warned that the new decree indicates that the
government is now going after civilians in their homes rather than
fighting insurgents on the battlefield.

"The civilian population has a lot to fear with these measures," he
said. "It is clear that this government sees suspects on every corner,
it sees possible guerrilla collaborators in every human rights activist,
union leader and even journalist. They are going to be detaining people
on a whim."

Mr Uribe, a lawyer whose father was killed by Marxist rebels about 20
years ago, said he did not fear controversy.