SUMMARY
The Government of Colombia has been involved in intrastate conflict with different armed groups since the turbulent period known as “La Violencia”. Within this context, it has also committed acts of one-sided violence against civilians. According to human rights organizations, one factor behind this one-sided violence has been the government’s failure to distinguish between civilians and combatants. The Colombian army is said to have stated in the mid-1990s that the majority of the ‘subversives’ against which they were fighting were involved in a ‘political war’ rather than armed combat, and instructed its troops to target civilian ‘support networks’. Furthermore, acts of one-sided violence have reportedly often been overlooked rather than investigated or punished.
The Government of Colombia has also repeatedly been accused of collaborating with paramilitary groups, which were formed to fight the guerrillas and have been responsible for much of the one-sided violence against civilians, both before and after the government declared such groups illegal. Reportedly, the government has been directly implicated in violence against civilians in areas where the paramilitary groups were weak, whereas in areas under paramilitary control the military and police committed fewer acts of one sided violence, but instead passively or actively supported paramilitaries.
According to reports, the targets of the government’s one sided violence against civilians were often left-wing activists or people suspected of belonging to or supporting guerrilla groups. In most cases victims were shot, sometimes after having been interrogated and tortures. Reportedly, military units who had killed civilians often claimed that their targets had been guerrillas, sometimes planting evidence in the forms of guerrilla fatigues or weapons.
The Government of Colombia first became active as a one-sided actor in UCDP data in 1990, when the one-sided violence resulted in over 25 civilian deaths. The threshold was reached in April that year, after an army battalion in collaboration with paramilitaries killed over 60 people in and around Trujillo in Valle del Cauca province.
