Colombian Rebels Increase Land Mine Use, Raising Casualties
30 July 2007
U.S. helps international mine-removal program in Colombia
Washington -- The world community is condemning a leftist Colombian guerrilla group whose increased planting of anti-personnel land mines is causing casualties in the South American nation.
The nongovernmental organization Human Rights Watch says in a new report that the increased use of mines in during Colombia’s extended period of civil unrest has caused a dramatic escalation in the number of mine victims in recent years. Colombia is considered to have Latin America’s most severe problem with land mines.
José Miguel Vivanco, Americas director for Human Rights Watch, said in a July 25 statement that “there is simply no excuse” for the guerrilla group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), to use these “indiscriminate weapons.” Vivanco said the mines are leaving Colombian civilians, “who have no part” in the country’s internal conflict, “maimed, blind, deaf or dead.”
Human Rights Watch quoted Colombian government figures showing that 1,107 people were killed or wounded by mines in Colombia in 2006, as compared to 287 people in 2001. Annual casualty figures had hovered below 150 during the 1990s.
The State Department’s James Lawrence told USINFO July 27 that the FARC’s “continued manufacture and use of land mines is in bold defiance of worldwide efforts to clear mined areas and ensure that no civilians are ever harmed by persistent land mines.” Persistent land mines are munitions that remain lethal indefinitely and have the potential to affect civilians long after military action is over.
Lawrence, acting director of State’s Office of Weapons Removal and Abatement, said the United States is aiding the Colombian government with training and equipment to clear mined areas, is supporting assistance programs to victims of mine accidents and is providing mine-risk education.
Lawrence said that in fiscal year 2007, the United States will provide more than $500,000 in mine-action assistance to Colombia and “this engagement will expand once a peace agreement or cease-fire is reached” between the Colombian government and the FARC. (See related article.)
Carl Case, from the Organization of American States (OAS), told USINFO that U.S. funding, working through the OAS, is supporting a 41-member unit from the Colombian military whose mission is to clear guerrilla-planted mines that pose a risk to civilians. The unit operates in the Colombian municipality of San José del Guaviare, said Case, who is senior specialist for the OAS mine action program.
Case added that a second 41-person unit from Colombia’s military is being organized to clear mines in a yet-to-be determined area of the country. The OAS mine-removal work will continue until Colombia’s mine problem is “stopped,” said Case.
Case said the FARC has been using mines in Colombia for at least 10 years in the guerrilla group’s actions against the Colombian government.
The FARC’s recent increase in use of mines has caused the number of casualties in Colombia to rise significantly over the last two years to three years, Case said, affecting three people a day on average.
Case said that “we’re only just now starting to scratch the surface” of solving Colombia’s land mine problem. One obstacle, he said, is the lack of security in some areas of Colombia where mine removal is needed.
“If there is ever a peace agreement in Colombia, Case said, “that would enable us to do more of the work that needs to be done.”
Case said Colombia is the only country in Latin America “where mines are still going into the ground,” as opposed to the region’s other countries affected by land mines, where the explosives are being removed.
The report by Human Rights Watch also describes the FARC’s use of other weapons, such as gas-cylinder bombs, in civilian areas. The bombs are impossible to aim accurately, and regularly hit civilian targets such as houses and churches, injuring or killing civilians, said Human Rights Watch.
Vivanco said FARC commanders could face prosecution by the International Criminal Court if evidence shows that they intentionally are directing attacks against civilian populations with land mines or similar weapons.
ELN-PLANTED LAND MINES
Another left-wing group fighting the Colombian government, the National Liberation Army (ELN), is reported to have planted new mines on a road that links villages in the Colombian department (province) of Bolívar.
"These actions by the ELN are bad news for the country and a step back in the fight against mines in Colombia," the Geneva-based International Campaign to Ban Landmines, a global network of nongovernmental organizations, reported June 15.
Human Rights Watch said the ELN has offered the Colombian government a temporary cease-fire in the context of starting peace negotiations. Presumably, the cease-fire would include a cessation in the use of anti-personnel land mines, said Human Rights Watch.
Vivanco said the “cessation of mine production and use should be unconditional and permanent. The ELN should not be treating the rights of Colombia’s civilian population as a bargaining chip.”
The Human Rights Watch, with a link to the report, is available on Human Rights Watch Web site.
More information about land mines is available on the Web site of the State Department’s Office of Weapons Removal and Abatement.
Additional information about the OAS mine action program is on that organization’s Web site.
(USINFO is produced by the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
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