Lawyer Jorge Molano and Swiss volunteer Simone Droz

Simone Droz, volunteer from Switzerland (2009)

Jorge Molano: «You have to renounce the right to freedom in order to defend human rights in Colombia». 

When we ask human rights lawyer Jorge Molano if he has thought about going into exile overseas because of the dangers of his work, he says laughing: «no, because I wouldn’t be able to eat gallina criolla con papas» (creole chicken with potatoes). Jorge has spent half his life working as an independent human rights lawyer and works on landmark cases that involve high-ranking military officers and high level government officials, such as José Obdulio Gaviria, former adviser to President Uribe Vélez1. In spite of the risks, for many years he did not want to make use of the security detail offered by the State. Nevertheless, owing to public exposure in the media, which has revealed the cases that he has and the identities of the people involved, he has been forced to take on a protection scheme. It hurts Jorge that, in a country like Colombia, in order to defend human rights you have to renounce the right to liberty and intimacy. Nevertheless, in spite of these restrictions affecting human rights defenders and the many companions that he has lost on the way, assassinated or in exile, he maintains the conviction that the only option is to fight with dignity.

PBI has accompanied Jorge Molano within the context of his work on Operation Dragon, a plan drawn up at high levels of the national Government, together with the state security forces and private companies, to assassinate human rights defenders, union leaders and members of the opposition in Colombia2. The department of military intelligence of the Third Brigade of the Colombian Army in Cali contracted two private security companies to gather information on 170 human rights defenders. This intelligence work was supported by the unit of the Technical Investigation Corps (CTI) of the Public Prosecutor’s Office in Cali, the police in Cali, and the DAS3. In 2004 Senator Alexander López Maya, of the Democratic Pole party, was alerted to this criminal plan. According to the information received, he was the first in the list, followed by the human rights defender, Berenice Celeyta, President of the Association for Investigation and Social Action (NOMADESC) and the union leader, Luis Antonio Hernández Monroy.

The case of Operation Dragon can be seen as a precedent to the current illegal interceptions by DAS, says Molano. Persecution by the State, illegal monitoring and infiltration of security details leads one to believe that the lives of human rights defenders have been put in the hands of their murderers.

According to Molano, PBI has «made it possible for me to interview witnesses, police commanders and the army; but more than allowing me to enter safely it has enabled me to come out alive».  Nevertheless, for him PBI is not only a physical presence, but also recognition of the human rights situation that legitimises the work of human rights defenders outside the country through their testimonies to the reality of Colombia.

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1  Interview with Jorge Molano, May 2009

2  «Baseless prosecutions of human rights defenders in Colombia: In the dock and under the gun», Human Rights First, February 2009

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