December 16, 2004 - (LatinAmerica Press) Women combatants are even sexual victims of their own armen colleagues. Armed groups direct their violence against the civilian population, especially women.

Armed groups direct their violence against the civilian population, especially women.

Sexual and gender violence is not a new phenomenon in Colombia. It has been a constant occurrence in the country’s history and a characteristic of the 40-year-old armed conflict between state forces and far right paramilitary allies and leftist guerrillas groups, in which each side disputes territory and economic resources.

According to a recent report of Amnesty International (AI), sexual abuse is the most generalized practice of violence against the civilian population, particularly against women, followed by executions, mutilation and the cutting up of corpses.

In addition to the domestic violence of which 60,000 women were victims in 2003, 52.3 percent of whom were displaced women — according to figures from the United National High Commission on Refugees (UNHCR) — armed groups are accustomed to converting women into "war trophies" after recruiting or kidnapping them, with the aim of taking revenge, in the case of an adversary, and using them as sexual slaves. Female combatants are forced to use birth control methods and carry out an abortion in the case of pregnancy.

In this framework, rape has been a habitual method of torture or a way of doing harm to the "enemy’s honor."

Human rights defenders say that the cases of rape are much higher than the number reported. In spite of the often visible signs on their bodies, these details rarely show up on the forensic reports. Few perpetrators appear before the courts for human rights violations and even fewer for crimes of sexual violence.

The AI report entitled "Marked bodies, silenced crimes," reveals that in 2003 alone, 220 Colombian women were assassinated and 20 disappeared "outside areas of combat due to socio-political motives."

Security forces were responsible for 5 percent of these deaths, paramilitary 26 percent and the guerrilla 16 percent. In the rest of the cases, those responsible were not identified.

"They have sexually abused or exploited women, civilian as well as their own combatants, trying to control the most intimate spheres of their lives," the report said.

The guerrillas have even demanded that women stop having love relationships with those considered to be direct adversaries or they would be considered "military targets."

Similar threats are carried out by paramilitary fighters. In these cases, they accuse the women of being guerrillas, although they are not. The testimonies give accounts of atrocious crimes, which according to their family members were carried out by these groups.

Forced disappearances, murders of pregnant women, collective rapes, physical mutilations to indigenous girls and other crimes are the common denominator in the accounts gathered by AI in different regions of the country.

The most publicized case this year was that of the bacteriologist Rina Bolaños, who was kidnapped by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and during her captivity became a victim of a rape by a guerrilla commander.

In the last 10 years, there has been an increase in reports of attacks that have included rape against the civilian population as a way of punishing residents accused of collaborating with the guerrillas, generating terror or provoking the flight of entire communities from a determined zone of military or economic interest.

Radhika Coomaraswamy, United Nations Special Rapporteur for Violence, denounced that "often sexual aggression is practiced as a way of humiliating the adversary. It is a battle among men that is carried out in the bodies of women."

According to the UN Development Program (UNDP), since 2000 the number of women murdered in the zones of conflict has increased annually by 20 percent.

According to AI, the fact that the cases are investigated within the system of military justice facilitates the cover-up of cases. It also maintains that the current policy of "democratic security" has increased the dangers.

The Colombian state "has done very little to put basic services in place and emergency procedures within the reach of those who survive sexual violence," the report said.

It details that the main providers of these services are currently non-governmental and private organizations that work with victims of violence in Colombia. Although they acknowledge that that some spheres of government promote programs against sexual violence "such efforts do not form a part of the integral state policy."

In light of this diagnosis, AI demands that the government of President Álvaro Uribe guarantee that all members of the security forces implicated in human rights violations, alone or in complicity with paramilitary fighters, be suspended until their level of responsibility is determined.

In response, the Colombian government acknowledged the need to take urgent measures to keep women from continuing to be the main victims of armed groups active in the country.

Despite the tensions between the Colombian government and human rights groups, Vice President Francisco Santos praised the AI report saying it contains any positive elements on which to take action.

In addition, he promised AI representatives that the government would revise the specific cases denounced in the report implicating members of the armed forces and police.

From: http://www.lapress.org/article.asp?IssCode=&lanCode=1&artCode=4056