Bogota Colombia – Danelly Estupinan has been threatened for years because of her work as a human rights defender in the Pacific coastal city of Buenaventura.
In November 2015, she received a text message that read, “Danelly, you will reach your end.” The same night she was on the phone with a United Nations official, a second voice was intercepted: “Now we know where you are.”
This year, Estupinan has reported three cases of a group of suspicious men being followed. After her home was broken into, she moved to another city, but the same men reappeared there. She said she had reported the incidents to various authorities to no avail.
Estupinan, a prominent member of the Proceso de Comunidades Negras (PCN), a collective of grassroots organizations devoted to raising awareness among blacks in Colombia, told Al Jazeera that “the risks are getting worse every day”.
She said the hostility she and many of her colleagues face in Colombia is preventing them from doing their job.
“It’s too worrying and exhausting, both physically and mentally,” she said.
A man holds a flag that reads “no more” during the funeral of two people who were massacred by suspected members of an armed group on August 21, 2020 in the rural area of El Tambo in Popayan, Cauca Department, Colombia [File: Luis Robayo/AFP]
“It’s gotten worse”
In a report (PDF) published on Thursday, the global human rights ombudsman Amnesty International highlighted the ongoing threats and killings against rights and environmentalists in the Andean nation.
“Colombia has been one of the most dangerous countries in the world for years for people defending human rights, territory and natural resources,” Amnesty’s America Director Erika Guevara-Rosas said in a statement.
She said the situation has worsened since the 2016 peace agreement between the government and the rebel group of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).
“It’s gotten worse, especially for those who live in geographically strategic and resource-rich areas,” said Guevara-Rosas.
When the FARC rebels were demobilized and moved out of much of the rural, undeveloped land, other groups, including FARC dissidents and drug trafficking gangs, took over the territory to use natural resources for illegal mining, drug cultivation, and trade routes. As a result, violence has increased in many rural areas.
Guevara-Rosas said in the report that defenders will continue to die until the government effectively addresses structural issues such as deep inequality and marginalization of communities, land ownership and control, illegal crop substitution, and justice.
The country has set a number of measures to protect human rights defenders, at least on paper, the report adds. At least 14 of these measures deal directly or indirectly with the issue of collective protection. However, according to Guevara-Rosas, the institutions and their programs are plagued by ineffectiveness.
“Although Colombia theoretically has one of the most comprehensive protection systems in the region, it is ineffective as the authorities fail to take preventive measures to address the structural causes of collective violence against defenders,” said Guevara-Rosas.
“The range of safeguards is so extensive and complex that many defenders say they just don’t know how to use them or they are not what their communities need.”
Unions and student groups called for demonstrations in September to protest police brutality, civil insecurity and the national crisis caused by the pandemic [File: Fernando Vergara/AP Photo]The Amnesty report also says the COVID-19 pandemic has put human rights defenders at even greater risk by masking the violent contexts they face and the lack of protection from the authorities.
During the pandemic, Colombian authorities scaled back existing protections for some defenders and approved activities that put communities at risk, such as natural resource extraction, police operations and the forced extermination of illegal plants.
Al Jazeera contacted the Home Office, which did not provide any immediate comment.
“Lack of Real Action”
Statistics on the dangers right-backs face vary by source.
The Bogota-based think tank of the Institute for Development and Peace Research (INDEPAZ) has recorded the killing of 223 human rights and community activists in 2020. The group has reported that more than 1,000 activists have been killed since 2016. Official government statistics report 415 deaths since 2016.
President Ivan Duque said that in the two years of his administration, the killings of civil society leaders have decreased by 25 percent compared to the previous two years. According to the report, “Figures from reliable sources and verified by Amnesty International suggest otherwise”.
The United Nations Special Rapporteur, Michel Forst, who oversees the situation of human rights defenders, concluded in his 2019 report on Colombia that the vast majority of human rights defenders are “at risk” and that this risk has increased over the past five years.
“Unfortunately, the murder of human rights and environmental defenders has become the norm in Colombia,” Gimena Sanchez-Garzoli, Andean director of the US-based advocacy group for the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), told Al Jazeera.
“For the government, due to their lack of real action, it seems like just another flaw in their public image that they need to clean up. The defense of land from illegal groups, unsustainable environmental practices and the destruction of biodiversity are less important than the economic and political benefits that such security and economic projects bring to the elite, “she said.
After the initial relief from the 2016 peace pact with the FARC, the massacres in Colombia have returned to the country [File: Luis Robayo/AFP]Francia Marquez, 2018 winner of the prestigious Goldman environmental award for her work against illegal mining, describes what she and her colleagues are going through as “terrible”.
Marquez escaped a violent attack in the southwestern Colombian region of Cauca last year when masked men attacked a meeting of right-backs with guns and a grenade. Her two bodyguards were killed.
“The government is tearing apart the possibility of peace … they are not fulfilling their role in protecting their people,” she told Al Jazeera in a telephone interview. “In this country people are being killed for speaking their mind.”
But Estupinan swore that she would not be silenced.
“I continue with the hope that I can lead a decent life. That our children and grandchildren do not have to live through misery and poverty – uneducated and hungry, ”she said.
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