Court Says Colombian State Responsible for Patriotic Union “Extermination” – No Mention of US Role / By W.T. Whitney Jr.

_{^{The survivors and family members of the victims of the genocide against the Patriotic Union party celebrated the IACHR Court’s ruling, which declared the Colombian State responsible for the extermination of UP militants and members in the mid-1980s. Photo: Corporación Reiniciar/Twitter}}

Rubí Andrea Forero, 52 years old, talked to Prensa Latina about the recent court ruling in the Patriotic Union’s case against Colombia’s government. She felt relief. She has coped with her father’s murder on February 27, 1989 and her awareness of “impunity and continuing crimes”. She recalls “silent longings and frustrated dreams from the war” and the “fears, absences, and frustrations” of families and friends.

Teofilo Forero, Rubí’s father, was a union president, a deputy in the Cundinamarca legislature, and Bogota City councilor. Nationally, he was a leader of the CTC Labor Federation and organization secretary of Colombia’s Communist Party. That party, the interviewer explains, was the “vertebral column of the Patriotic Union (UP in Spanish-language initials).” The UP dates from 1985.

On January 30, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR Court) announced its long-anticipated ruling in the UP case. The Court named the Colombian state as responsible “for violations of human rights committed against more than 6000 members of the Patriotic Union political party during a period that began in 1984 and lasted for more than 20 years.”

(The Special Jurisdiction for Peace, established under the 2016 Peace Agreement between the FARC and Colombian government, indicated in 2022 that “5,733 persons were assassinated or disappeared in attacks directed against the UP.”)

The Court ruling cites a “plan of systematic extermination … relying on participation by state agents and acquiescence by authorities.” It cites “forced disappearances, massacres, extrajudicial executions, assassinations … [and] impunity.”

The peace agreement between the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and Colombia’s government in 1984 enabled demobilized FARC insurgents, Communist Party activists, and others to create the UP. The organization undertook to “promote the social, economic, and political transformations necessary for building a peace with social justice,” according to the Reiniciar Corporation, stalwart defender of the UP since 1992.

As 1985 closed, the UP had established “2,229 grassroots organizations” in more than 200 municipalities and rural districts. In early 1986, 15 UP candidates were elected to Colombia’s Congress, 18 to departmental legislatures, and 335 to city councils; there were 23 UP mayors. In elections a few weeks later, UP candidate Jaime Pardo Leal proved to be the third most popular presidential candidate. The UP was a powerful political force.

Then came catastrophe. Assassins killed “nine congresspersons, 70 city council members, and dozens of deputies, mayors, and grassroots leaders,” and also “labor leaders, students, artists, activists, and sympathizers” from all sectors. Two presidential candidates would be murdered.

The IACHR Court ordered reparations. The state must pursue investigations of “gross violations of human rights and [that way] determine penal responsibilities.” In addition, disappeared victims must be located, victims cared for, and the Court’s decision publicized. The Court called for protecting UP activists now, a national educational campaign, recompense for “material and immaterial damages” and a national day of commemorating UP victims.

The Reiniciar Corporation in 1993 led in submitting the UP case to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR). That agency collected evidence and collaborated with the Colombian government to reach a settlement, but to no avail. The case moved to the IACHR Court in 2017.

No longer able to field electoral candidates, the UP in 2002 lost its “judicial personhood” and state recognition of its status as a political party. Reacting to IACHR verification of persecution, election officials in 2013 restored the UP’s former status.

UP participation in elections was evident recently in the party having joined the victorious Historic Pact coalition of President Gustavo Petro. Former UP activist Germán Umaña serves as minister of commerce in the Petro government. He had abandoned political life after the assassination in 1998 of his brother Eduardo Umaña, law professor and defender of human rights.

Revival of the UP and its distancing from a violent past go along with Colombia’s tentative turn to peace. In that regard, the government on January 1 announced a ceasefire among combatant groups; among them the Colombian Army, National Liberation Army guerrillas, two groups of narco-trafficking paramilitaries, and two dissident insurgencies formerly part of the now defunct FARC.

However, the UP story is about U.S. military intervention as well as peace in Colombia.

Journalist Nelson Lombana Silva sees the IACHR Court decision as “not solely applying to the Colombia state, but also to Colombia’s liberal-conservative, criminal oligarchy that decided to remove this political movement,” and did so “with U.S. participation.”

Historian Ivan David Ortiz, investigating the failure of the 1984 peace agreement, notes the FARC’s explanation at the time, that “hegemonic political and economic sectors continued the warlike policies of the United States.” He cites the FARC’s claim that, “the anti-peace offensive in Colombia came from the Pentagon.” (1)

An Amnesty International report of 2005 covers the same ground:

Efforts by the government of President Belisario Betancur (1982-1986) to initiate peace talks with guerrilla groups in the mid-1980s heightened concern that any peace agreement would have entailed land and other socio-economic reforms. This dynamic strengthened the alliance between the traditional economic elites and the armed forces and spurred on the development of paramilitary structures under the coordination of the armed forces.

Accessory information points to U.S. involvement within this context. Paramilitaries bore most of the direct responsibly for massacring the Patriotic Union. Paramilitaries coordinate their operations with Colombia’s military, which has a supervisory role, as documented here and here. The impetus for the paramilitary phenomenon derived from recommendations of a U.S. “Special Warfare” consulting team in 1962.

Secondly, Colombia’s military, the paramilitaries’ senior partner, thrives due in part to the U.S. government’s generous support and financing. The flow of billions of dollars to Colombia’s military is notable. It began in 2000 under U.S. Plan Colombia and continued for more than ten years. Drug war, the usual justification for U.S. partnering with Colombia’s military, has been useful as a cover for war against leftist guerrillas and against left-leaning political groups and social movements.

Ultimately, it seems, there was a big element of U.S. proxy war in the deadly suppression of the UP. U.S. would-be masters of global affairs have long manifested instant readiness to blot out popular risings viewed as threatening to their accustomed ways. Viewed like this, perpetrators of the anti-UP violence were kin to Bay of Pigs assailants in Cuba, Contra warriors in Nicaragua and Ukraine’s military fighting against Russians now.

Note: (1) Iván David Ortiz Palacios, “El Genocidio Político contra la Unión Patriótica,” (Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Bogotá, 2007), p. 17

_{W.T. Whitney Jr. is a political journalist whose focus is on Latin America, health care, and anti-racism. A Cuba solidarity activist, he formerly worked as a pediatrician, lives in rural Maine. W.T. Whitney Jr. es un periodista político cuyo enfoque está en América Latina, la atención médica y el antirracismo. Activista solidario con Cuba, anteriormente trabajó como pediatra, vive en la zona rural de Maine.}

US Must Return Its Political Prisoner Simón Trinidad to Colombia – W.T. Whitney Jr.

*In this Jan. 13, 2002 photo, Commander of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, (FARC) Simón Trinidad reads a declaration during a press conference in Los Pozos, Colombia. | AP*

Murderous violence and oligarchy were at the center of Colombian political life during the 20^th century. Colombians by the millions were marginalized, impoverished, and/or displaced from small land holdings. Violence and the failings of liberal democracy turned Simón Trinidad into a revolutionary. Few in the United States and Europe know about him. Colombia’s allies in both places overlook the Colombian terror regime.

Simón Trinidad matters; his time has come. This leader of the former Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) faced bizarre and unfounded criminal charges in a U.S. court. He’s being held under the cruelest of conditions in a federal prison in Florence, Colorado. He will die there unless he is released. Simón Trinidad will be 70 years old on July 30.

An international campaign is demanding that the U. S. government return Simón Trinidad to Colombia. What follows is an appeal on behalf of that campaign. Here are some facts:

Trinidad’s birth name was Ricardo Palmera. His family included lawyers, politicians and landowners and was based in Valledupar, Cesar Department, Colombia. There, Palmera worked as a banker, taught economics in a regional university, and managed his family’s agricultural holdings. Affiliated with the Liberal Party, he favored agrarian reform. Then Palmera joined the left-leaning Patriotic Union, formed in 1985.

That electoral coalition was immediately smothered in violence and murder. Palmera’s close comrades were being killed. Others departed for exile. On October 11, 1987, assassins killed Patriotic Union presidential candidate Jaime Pardo Leal, someone whom Palmera greatly admired. Discovering that he too was about to be killed, Palmera left Valledupar and joined the FARC. He took the name Simón Trinidad.

With that insurgency, Trinidad was responsible for propaganda and political education. He served as a peace negotiator. In December, 2003, Trinidad was in Ecuador preparing to meet with United Nations official James Lemoyne to discuss FARC plans to liberate hostages. On January 2, 2004, he was arrested there – with CIA help – and within two days had been delivered to Colombia. He remained in custody until December 31, 2004, when the Colombian government extradited him to the United States.

Simón Trinidad faced four jury trials between October, 2006 and April, 2008. The first trial ended in a deadlocked jury, the second one yielded a conviction, and the third and fourth trial each ended with juries deadlocked on a drug-trafficking charge. He was convicted of having conspired with other members of the FARC – terrorists in U. S. government eyes – to capture and hold hostage three U.S. drug-war contractors.

Trinidad’s first trial judge was replaced after he had illegally interviewed jurors to secure information potentially useful to the prosecutors in his second trial.

The new judge sentenced Simón Trinidad to 60 years in prison, 20 years for each of the three U.S. contractors being held hostage by the FARC. Trinidad was 57 years old.

He is serving his sentence at a U.S. “supermax” federal prison. Trinidad remained in solitary confinement from the time of his arrival in the United States until 2018. Now he may eat a midday meal in a dining hall. He is not allowed to receive letters, emails, or periodicals. Phone calls are limited. Visitors are rare and very few, apart from his U.S. lawyers.

Peace negotiations between the FARC and Colombian government took place in Havana from 2012 until 2016. The FARC delegation sought Simón Trinidad’s presence there as spokesperson and negotiator. Colombia’s government never requested authorities in Washington to release him for that purpose. There’s no indication that the latter would have done so.

The eventual Peace Agreement provided for a “Special Jurisdiction for Peace.” There, former combatants on both sides of the conflict have the opportunity, if they choose, to speak the truth about crimes they may have committed and have the court decide upon pardon or punishment. Simón Trinidad chose to participate. To do so he needs to be in Colombia.

Making the case

As someone who sought justice for the oppressed and was faithful to his principles, Trinidad now is asking for justice for himself. Some solidarity activists may justify their support for him on the basis of only one or two aspects of his political life. Actually, there’s a full menu of good reasons for demanding that the U.S. government return Simón Trinidad to Colombia.

1. The U.S. government must allow Simón Trinidad to appear before the Special Jurisdiction for Peace. It would thereby show respect for the Peace Agreement between the FARC and Colombian government.

2. The U.S. government has violated Trinidad’s basic legal and human rights. Trinidad was extradited as a drug-trafficker, which he was not. He was guilty of rebellion, which is a political crime. Extradition treaties and international human-rights law prohibit extradition for political crimes. The U.S. government subjected Trinidad to irregular court proceedings. His judge applied a wildly excessive sentence to a crime he didn’t commit. His prison conditions are inhumane.

3. U.S. intervention in Colombia occasioned Simón Trinidad’s mistreatment at U.S. hands. His rescue would have anti-imperialist overtones. The U.S. government has long provided Colombia with military assistance, notably through its Plan Colombia, in effect after 2000. While ostensibly targeting drug-traffickers, Plan Colombia laid siege to the FARC. As a highly visible FARC peace negotiator in talks with the Colombian government in Caguán (1999-2001), Simón Trinidad became a trophy prisoner. Plan Colombia set the stage, having already helped torpedo the peace talks.

On display with Trinidad’s capture and extradition was the top-down nature of imperialist relations with client nations. Perhaps to please its boss, Colombia’s government almost immediately signaled its intention to extradite Trinidad to the United States, doing so even before a criminal charge had been announced. And Colombia’s political opposition regularly claims that national sovereignty is diminished every time prisoners like Simón Trinidad are referred to the United States for prosecution and punishment.

4. Solidarity activists in many countries have long admired those working and marginalized peoples in Colombia who have stood up to a ruling class intent upon plunder and oppression. They did so by joining indigenous and Afro-Colombian resistance movements, labor unions, leftist political parties, the FARC and other insurgencies. Simón Trinidad was in that fight. On that basis too he is worthy of support in his campaign to return to Colombia.

5. Simón Trinidad was and is a revolutionary. The job description of progressives everywhere is to fight oppression and injustice. But now many of them are learning the truth about capitalism. They see climate change on the horizon and pandemic and economic collapse already here. Many of those who now embrace the revolutionary option have good reason to be at Simón Trinidad’s side.

As a member of the FARC, Simón Trinidad saw violence against the Patriotic Union turn into massacre. Many of the estimated 5000 murder victims were former FARC members who were participating in electoral politics. Murderous violence and war between rich and poor are still at the center of Colombian politics. Following the signing of the Peace Agreement, assassins have killed more than 200 ex-FARC combatants and hundreds of community and political leaders, mainly in rural areas. The U.S. government, allied to the partisans of violence in Colombia, is complicit.

That kind of violence helped to put Simón Trinidad on the revolutionary path. One good way to demonstrate abhorrence of U.S. promotion of violence in Colombia, we think, is to join the fight for Simón Trinidad’s return now to Colombia.

For more information about the campaign to return Simón Trinidad to Colombia, go to https://www.libertadsimontrinidad.com/. Contact simontrinidadlibre@gmail.com. with questions or with your offer to join the campaign.