Sister Noemí from the Civic Committee of Meta with two PBI volunteers.

Article published in the special Newsletter '15 years of PBI', October 2009

Soraya Gutiérrez Argüello, José Alvear Restrepo Lawyers’ Collective (CCAJAR)

In 1995, PBI begins to accompany Josué Giraldo, a human rights defender who fought to bring to light the human rights violations committed in Colombia. One year later he is murdered.

Peace Brigades International began to accompany the José Alvear Restrepo Lawyers’ Collective (CCAJAR) in 1995. In this same year, the first contact took place between PBI and the Civic Committee of Meta, a forum of human right organisations, social organisations, doctors, agrarian and trade-union leaders and members of the Patriotic Union political party. The Civic Committee had come together due to the grave human rights situation existing in the department and the murders, threats and harassment faced by social and political leaders in the region.

After being established as a political movement, the Patriotic Union (UP) won many votes in several regions of Colombia, which allowed the party to gain various positions within public institutions. In Meta, the UP had many mayors, council members, and deputies who won seats to represent the nascent political party. Given the Patriotic Union’s impact in the department, the paramilitary structures, which operated with the complicity and acquiescence of the Seventh Brigade of the National Army, implemented a systematic policy of persecution and elimination of UP members 1.

Death, hopelessness and fear smothered the inhabitants of the region; every day UP members were murdered. It is estimated that from 1985 to 1995 36 massacres were committed and 700 persons were murdered 2,  including mayors, deputies and other leaders from the region. All of these actions had the clear objective of annihilating the Patriotic Union in Meta 3.

Faced with this situation, in 1991, the Human Rights Civic Committee was established as a space to counteract the para-State violence and broadly report the abuses committed by paramilitary forces and their ties with Víctor Carranza, an important emerald merchant, and the military forces. Furthermore, the Committee reported the existence of paramilitary training centres supported by British and Israeli mercenaries and former military members from the Magdalena Medio region.

The members of the Committee were not exempt from this campaign of persecution once it came into existence however. As a result, then-President Josué Giraldo Cardona went to Bogotá in order to look for support and solidarity. He met with different organisations, including the Inter-Church Justice and Peace Commission, the Political Prisoners Solidarity Committee, the José Alvear Restrepo Lawyers’ Collective and the Colombian Commission of Jurists, among others.

At this time, Peace Brigades International also began to accompany the Civic Committee. The first human rights defenders to be accompanied were Josué Giraldo and Sister Noemí Palencia. I remember one of the first PBI volunteers. She was young, tall, and had long hair. Her name was Pascale, but I affectionately called her «Pascual», which is a name commonly used by farmers in the Cundinamarca and Boyacá. 

At the beginning of 1995, the Committee was forced to close its doors and the members were forcibly displaced to Bogotá. As a way to support the Committee’s work, we began the campaign Human Rights SOS for Meta and achieved the establishment of a follow-up commission, which included human rights organisations, the Colombian State, and accompaniment by the German Embassy and PBI, who both actively supported the commission’s establishment.

One of the objectives of this campaign was to support legal proceedings relating to several crimes committed in the department. However, the Colombian State’s lack of political will rose like a wall and hindered progress in these cases. Nonetheless, Josué’s work did not cease. As a result of the advocacy carried out as part of the campaign, he was invited to visit the European Parliament in 1995 and attend the hearings of the then United Nations Human Rights Commission. With a suitcase filled with denunciations and with the hope that international solidarity would create pressure to improve the human rights situation, Josué travelled to Europe where he presented the testimony of his experiences, based on his commitment to the victims, based on his relentless fight against impunity and injustice. He uses the only weapon he possessed, his voice, which was the voice of thousands of victims. He denounced what was occurring in Colombia. The humanity expressed in his words was able to awaken the awareness of many sectors and the European Parliament issued a pronouncement on the human rights situation in Colombia and in the department of Meta. Today we still hear his words: 

«The defence of human rights arises in me connected to the problem of violence, because when we started to process the demands for justice before different judicial institutions and disciplinary mechanisms, it was accompanying the widows of murder victims and disappeared persons. […] We have wanted to respond with a central proposal based on life, the importance of life, the constancy of life, and the urgency of defending it to allow democratic confrontation in the civilised game of words and not within in an environment of murder, massacres or war. […] For it to be possible to place life as a central value, we consequently had to demand not only the cessation of human rights violations, but also of the war itself. Our message continues to be the urgency of peace»4.

Josué was a person of integrity, an exemplary father and husband, and a human rights defender willing to defend life with dignity. Despite having suffered an attack on his life in his hometown of Pensilvania that nearly killed him, he did not give in faced with the pain of the victims, he did not abandon his fight for truth and against impunity –this impunity that corrupts the deepest foundations of a State and society, this impunity that has allowed the crimes to be repeated, this impunity that murdered Josué on 13 October 1996 when he was in Villavicencio with his two young daughters, five and seven years old. Because, despite the threats against his life, he wanted to be human, he wanted to be a father, he wanted to be a friend and he visited his family to try to share a weekend with his young girls. However, the reaper of dreams and hopes took the life of this extraordinary human being 5.

Josué used to repeat: «Giving in is worse than death» and in 1997, we published a report with this title in homage to his memory. Thirteen years after the murder of Josué, the Committee has reopened its doors. With PBI’s accompaniment, it continues to support the organisation of victims, the reconstruction of the social fabric, and the defence of the rights of victims to truth, justice and comprehensive reparation, so that more crimes are never again committed.

 1 «Ceder es Más Terrible que la Muerte: 1985-1996; una Década de Violencia en el Meta», Abogados Demócratas, ASCODAS, Justicia y Paz, Bogota: 1997

 2 «Cortarle las alas a la impunidad», Testimonio de vida de Josué Girlado. Testimony gathered by Luís Guillermo Pérez Casas, Centre National de Developpement au Coopération, Brussels, Belgium: 1997, page 25

 3 «Ceder es Más Terrible que la Muerte: 1985-1996; una Década de Violencia en el Meta», Abogados Demócratas, ASCODAS, Justicia y Paz, Bogotá: 1997

 4 «Cortarle las alas a la impunidad» Testimonio de vida de Josué Girlado. Testimony gathered by Luís Guillermo Pérez Casas, Centre National de Developpement au Coopération, Brussels, Belgium: 1997, page 104

 5 «During the 53rd period of sessions of the United Nations Human Rights Commission on 11 March 1997, a moment of silence was observed in the plenary in homage to the memory of Josué Giraldo. [...] In the same sense, in the plenary on 9 April 1997, the Rapporteur against Summary Executions, Mr. Bacre Maly Ndiaye expressed that human right defenders, as in the case of Josué Giraldo, deserve more than a posthumous homage. We, governments, United Nations Bodies, owe them respect and protection». Taken from «Cortarle las alas a la impunidad» (page 114)