 All right, transitional justice. We're gonna do that today. We're gonna talk about demonstrations and state abuse in Columbia. Perhaps a conversation not unlike the conversation we had a few weeks ago on transitional justice with Nicholas Sussman, also in Bogota. Santiago Alberto, I'm messing up your name. Santiago Alberto Vargas Niño joins us from Bogota. He is also associated with transitional justice and the project Expedite Justice out of Honolulu. Welcome to the show, Santiago. Thank you, Jay. It's a pleasure to be here with you tonight and today for you in Hawaii. Right, I take your point. So, okay, so tell us who you are and why this is of interest to you. I'm a lawyer and PA in political science from Columbia. I have worked at the International Criminal Court in various capacities for over two years and I'm currently working as a legal officer of Columbia Special Jurisdiction for Peace. And I'm also a lecturer in international criminal law at Los Angeles University here in Bogota. And this is a topic that has always interested me because I believe that in order to progress towards a more equitable and fair future, we first have to address the wrongs of the past and to provide a response that is comprehensive to the victims of such wrongdoings. Okay, we should all be spending our time making the world a better place like you are. So I wanna sort of get a handle on the transformation of Columbia. You know, there was a time, my understanding, not too long ago, months ago, perhaps, where you could say that Columbia was peaceful relatively speaking. It had made an agreement with the FARC. Everything was popesetic mostly. And you could also say it was a democracy and people were not unhappy with it in large part. And they enjoyed certain civil rights. Okay, and that was only a few months ago. Am I right about that? And can you tell me also how it has changed and why it has changed? Certainly there was a brief moment of hope, not only for Colombians, but for the international community that have supported a transition out of war and toward a peaceful and democratic society for well over a decade. And this came as a consequence of the signature of a peace agreement that you rightly mentioned between the Colombian government, then led by former president Juan Manuel Santos and the Latin America's oldest guerrilla group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia or FARC or its acronym in Spanish. Unfortunately, as a result of, I would say problematic experiments in direct democracy around the world in 2016, the peace agreement was refused or rejected rather by a slight majority of Colombians in a plebiscite that was held at the end of 2016. As a result of that, the right wing, particularly the extreme right in Colombia was given a boost that allowed it to win the presidential election in 2018. And from that moment onwards, the whole rationale around the peace agreement shifted from trying to implement it as best as possible into trying to defend as much of it as could possibly be salvaged because the incoming administration of Iván Duque was elected on a platform of basically tearing it to shred. This is something that was said literally by a former interior minister, Fernando Londoño-Ollos who is a notable figure of the Democratic Center Party. And so this brief expectation or idea that Colombia would transition towards a more open society would further guarantee the civil and political rights recognized in the 91 constitution and would start building peace was put into an indefinite hold, unfortunately. This has caused a bubbling up in civil society that finally expressed itself in the outbreak of massive demonstrations in 2019 and 2021 with the unfortunate state response of widespread and systematic violence against the civilian population. Well, let me go back and ask you some questions about all of that. Why would the right wing want to oppose and shred the peace agreement? Do they not want peace? Do they want to have Colombia at war with itself? What is their reason? Do they have some sort of ideology that supports that? Or are they just looking for trouble? That is a very sensible question. I would say that their platform wasn't a rejection of peace itself, but rather of the terms of the 2016 agreement, in part because they thought that the transitional justice mechanism enshrined in the peace agreement was too lenient with former guerrilla fighters because it issued away from a unitive approach towards a more restorative justice system that prioritized truth-taking and reconciliation over the imposition of harsh penalties, carceral penalties. And so they basically said throughout their campaign, both for the plebiscite in 2016 and the presidential election in 2018 that they didn't want peace with impunity. But ultimately, I do believe, and this is a personal assertion, that it is good politics for them to have an enemy on which to blame everything that's wrong with the country. So for 50 plus years, the FARC gave them that enemy. And it also allowed them to criminalize the opposition to persecute people who participated in demonstrations or political rallies and to keep a stronghold on a very feeble democracy, which certainly was in accordance with a formal definition of democracy because we had regular elections and peaceful transitions of power, but in a more substantive manner was far from being a democracy. Colombia continues to be a very unequal country where 42% of the population live below the poverty line. We have a majority of lands in the country in the hands of less than 5% of the population. And there aren't many opportunities for people to socially advance. The organization for economic cooperation and development has calculated that it would take an average Colombian citizen, 11 generations to move from poverty to a situation of reasonable income or basic wealth. So since the structural causes of social unrest remain unaddressed, it's good for the right to have an enemy and to say this is all the fault of X, Y, or Z, the armed group. And I personally believe that the peace agreement attempted to introduce such profound reforms, such transformative measures that it would actually lead to a more equitable competition for power. And this certainly does not benefit the those who have held it for the longest time. Well, the right side of the right wing tries to make the peace agreement and thus the FARC into a scapegoat. We've seen that before in the world as governments and leaders move to the right. They always look for a scapegoat. It's a way to advance their power, enhance their power. And it seems to me also from what you said that the other part of the scapegoat recipe is you can also scapegoat the left. You can say that the left is soft on the FARC. The left is soft on these people who should be punished more. And therefore you have two scapegoats, not one. Even though those two don't necessarily agree with each other you just create a second one anyway. And now you have more power and so forth. Is it working? Do people buy the scapegoat thing? Unfortunately, to a certain extent they do. We've seen a decline in the popularity of former president Alvaro Río, who is a political figure that still looks large over Colombian politics. And President Duque, current President Duque has the highest disapproval rate anyone has ever reached as a president of Colombia. So there is an awakening, but I do believe that their narrative still holds true for many people who are benefited by the way they tell Colombian history. People who own large plots of land, industrialists, people in commerce, those who suffered also is who bore the brunt of FARC violence. Because it's undeniable that these armed group committed heinous crimes. In fact, the special jurisdiction for peace only a few months ago found that the secretariat of the FARC was responsible for crimes against humanity and war crimes in the context of severe deprivations of physical liberty, which were particularly targeted against the most affluent Colombians in exchange for ransom or for political gain. So of course there is reason for them to be angry and there's more than enough reason for them to demand justice. The question is what do we understand for justice? If we take it to mean putting people in prison, well that doesn't solve anything. That doesn't bring redress to the victims, that doesn't transform society and that doesn't allow us to move past those horrible crimes. When instead as proposed by the peace agreement in 2016, you look at a more restorative approach to justice where victims and perpetrators actually find a place to build a common truth and where those responsible for horrible crimes come forward and acknowledge their responsibility, then there is a chance for transformation. And this is perhaps the guardian knot of the situation in Colombia. You have a group of people who have a lot of political and economic power who are opposed to the mirror idea of opening democratic ways, of redistributing land, of granting people access to basic public services because it's in their interest to have voters who see them as the solution and the savior that they portray themselves to be. But on the other hand, you have a never growing group of Colombians who actually want to bet on peace and who demand more participation, even beyond the let's say institutional ways of a representative democracy. And that's why they've taken to the streets. So I do believe that there is a certain resonance of this escape coating, but it's definitely being eroded. One thing that occurs to me is that there was, there was a peace agreement and if people look to the future for the implementation of that agreement, then it got bashed. And so that opens the question of what happens to the human rights violations proceedings that were going on before. You must be familiar with that. I mean, there were atrocities. There were human rights violations, horrible things going on and there was a certain amount of process to deal with that, to find accountability, find the truth, truth commission, if you will. So, but it strikes me also that what you have described is an environment closer to chaos where those efforts to deal with the atrocities, to find what happened, to hold people accountable as appropriate, must have stopped because of all this trouble. Am I right? Well, there's actually a lot of institutional overlap in that regard because Columbia has tried to transition towards peace through the application of exceptional judicial measures for over a decade. So for instance, we had in 2005 at the Justice and Peace System, which was actually approved by former President Trudeau who is now a very vocal critic of the 2016 peace agreement. And that system basically created a specialized chamber in different tribunals across the country that was responsible for the investigation and prosecution of crimes committed by paramilitary groups that were fighting alongside the army in some cases, independently in others, but that had an anti-subversive agenda in the context of which they committed grievous human rights violations and war crimes. They received a lenient punishment of up to five years, five to eight years of imprisonment if they acknowledged their participation in the crime. You also had an ordinary justice system composed of an office of the Attorney General that exercised punitive action against those who allegedly committed ordinary crimes ranging from assault and battery to genocide. And now you have a comprehensive system that is composed of the Special Jurisdiction for Peace, its judicial arm, a truth commission to which you referred earlier and also a unit for the search of people who are demeaning in the context of the armed conflict. And you also have recurrent human rights violations. In particular, I would like to bring your attention to today's report by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights about the human rights violations that were committed by security forces in the context of the national strides. So you have a situation in which the lack of measures aimed at addressing the core causes of social unrest means that conflict reproduces itself instead of coming to a close through either ordinary or transitional means. And this only highlights the importance, in my opinion, of staying true to the 2016 peace agreement, implementing the measures conceived therein to address those root causes, inequality, political exclusion, the concentration of land property in the hands of very few people and also a profound reform within state institutions, both in the public forces, but also in government of large so that we finally move away from the Cold War notion of the internal enemy through which we have interpreted political debate and division, which is healthy for a democracy in such a way that we've actually turned politics into a sort of cancer where you are liable to being killed if you're perceived as a leftist or a communist or a socialist or an alternative politician because they are usually associated or they have been associated through Colombian history with armed groups. So yeah, I guess what I'm trying to get at is that it's very difficult to speak about transitional justice in Colombia if we don't actually allow for a transition to happen and that requires implementing a bunch of measures that are already agreed upon, that are part of the constitution, that are in law but which have not been applied by the current administration. Well, that sounds like people in the US complain about those who abandoned the rule of law. If you have a law, then you follow the law. That's the rule of law. And that makes for the social compact, it makes for peace and a given sovereignty. But let me ask you though, we need to discuss the situation on the streets. So the first question is, as of a couple of months ago, there was no situation on the streets and something set it off. Was there a trigger event that set it off and how did it go after that and what is it like now on the streets of Bogota or elsewhere in Colombia? So I think the current unrest stems from all these root causes that we've been discussing, but it was initially triggered by the assassination of a civilian called Javier Ordoñez by the Colombian police in Bogota in September 2019. So that led to a number of demonstrations in Bogota alone demanding the cessation of police hostility towards people exercising the right to peaceful assembly. Unfortunately, the response then was equally violent. It led to over a dozen killings in Bogota alone and this then fueled a nationwide movement that demonstrated from October 2019 until early 2020. Then the pandemic came along and it forced people into their homes in a country where we don't have a strong welfare system. So as the months went by and we continued to observe very strict lockdowns to prevent the spread of the virus, those inequalities started to be highlighted. People actually started to starve and they had no money and they had no alternatives to earn a living. And so this kept growing and growing until a brief kind of, let's call it a ceasefire in epidemiological terms allowed for people to start going into the streets and marching and demanding change as a result of a unpopular tax bill that was proposed by President Duque and then Finance Minister Carrasquilla who basically aimed at filling the books with a taxation on consumption rather than income as a way to even the public account because they had been heavily affected by tax exemptions of up to $9 billion that only favored the most wealthy members of Colombian society. So these of course caused a bunch of dissatisfaction because people felt like they were burying the brunt for the favors that industrialists that were close to the government received. These led people to the street. A couple of days after the major demonstrations, the government actually withdrew the bill but you had instances of police killings, of civilians in Cali, in Pereira which is a city about three hours away from Bogota and in Bogota itself. And this only poured gasoline into the fire and it led to more demonstrations and in return, very belligerent Defense Minister Diego Molano only increased police and military presence in the street on the street and these then led to kind of a rehearsal of peaceful demonstrations that are then interrupted by riot control units of the police who break them up in a violent fashion. Then people of course had recourse to thumb throwing and stuff like that, which only led to further violence from the police side. And unfortunately, depending on the source that you consult, there's an estimate of between 45 and 83 people who were killed by police during peaceful demonstrations. The government failed to open an honest dialogue with people around the country, choosing instead to talk to its allies, to strengthen its position abroad. And the crisis remains. The only thing is that people aren't on the streets anymore because the National Strike Committee called for a cessation of demonstrations until the 20th of July, which is our independence day. But then massive demonstrations are expected again. And unfortunately, if the government doesn't apply the recommendations made by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights today with regards to controlling the recourse to force, respecting people's right to peaceful demonstration, making sure that those responsible for grievance human rights violations are brought to justice. And in the end, addressing the core causes of unrest, then the 20th of July might be another instance of widespread violence. How is this violence and demonstrations and police violence on the street? How has it affected the country in general? I mean, is this a substantial part of the population? Who is out on the streets protesting? What's the group? And furthermore, how has it affected the economy? How has it affected national health? I mean, how is COVID doing in the throes of all this violence? Well, people on the streets are a very diverse group of collectives from indigenous movements that have felt discriminated by the government to African Colombian communities who feel that they bear the brunt of inequality and violence. Young people between the ages of 17 and 32 who lack access to the job market or formal education. And even mothers of those who were demonstrating initially and who have become involved in the demonstrations as a way to protect their children. The impact on the economy has been very significant. I think Columbia has lost around 10 billion pesos as a result of the blockades of major highways, harbors, et cetera. There's been a spike in COVID infections, but I'm not entirely sure it's attributable to the demonstrations themselves. There's been a recent study published by scientists from the Industrial University of Santander that claims that there is no clear casual nexus between demonstrations and a spike in COVID infections, but that they might be explained by other factors, such as overpopulation, the excessive use of public transportation, big assemblies in closed spaces. And it actually appears to follow earlier research that was done in the context of BLM demonstrations in 2020 around the world, which found that there wasn't a significant statistical increase in COVID transmission rate in countries where there were BLM demonstrations. In fact, in 40% of those places, there were significantly less infections than in control country. So perhaps the fact that demonstrations take place in the open, that people are still adhering to masking policies, et cetera, has reduced the spread of the virus, or at least hasn't had an effect on its increase. Yeah, one thing that strikes me, and I mentioned this before we began the show, is that it just seems like there's an awful lot of, what I wanna call it, altercation, the confrontation with the right-wing governments in the world today. And what's happening in Colombia sounds so reminiscent of what's happening in Ukraine and Russia, what's happening in other places in South America, say Brazil, for example, and Venezuela. And to some extent, the U.S., the U.S. has every indication of going down the same path somehow, people not agreeing and getting into destructive modes and so forth, I mean, what sort of, what do you take away from that, Santiago, that this is happening in so many places and it has a haunting parallel? That's actually very insightful of you to say, Jay, I agree that there is a rise in strongman politics around the world. I feel there are a lot of people who feel disenfranchised and who feel betrayed by a promise of more justice through globalization, through liberal trade and who are now able to see the inequalities of the world in a way that wasn't possible before, thanks to social media in particular. So a large group of the population are looking for someone to blame and we go back to the scapegoating that you mentioned earlier and it's easier, I think, for people in powerful positions who want to protect the status quo to simply say, well, it's the fault of an immigrant or it's the fault of Latin American communities or it's the fault of African American community. When in fact, since the 70s, since Reaganomics took hold of the market, we've seen how there's been a willful and intentional state intervention to protect strong capital, to protect the banking system in the detriment of the weaker links in the chain. People who have no access to healthcare, to education, to housing, who might very likely be replaced by robots in the future, this is not something that is taken out of a sci-fi movie or anything like that, you've seen how there's an increasing automation in all aspects of industry and so they feel like they need a savior and sometimes politicians who are not as nuanced, who are not as interested in open and honest debate tend to have an allure because they offer simple solutions. They tell you, yeah, it's the Mexicans or it's the Colombians or it's the Palestinians when in fact, the root causes are way more profound than that and have actually been engineered by states themselves over a decade. So I think this, if anything, it calls for a deeper education of the people, not only in terms of basic science and literacy, but also political education so that we can learn to discern right from wrongs, truth from life and make more informed decisions. Well, you talk about education, it's sort of like you mentioned it takes 11 generations or the prediction is takes 11 generations to rise out of poverty in Columbia and other places. It also takes generations to educate a large group of people, your citizenry, so to speak. And that raises the question of exactly how confident you are, how optimistic you are about the future of that educational process and for that matter, more specifically, the future of life in Columbia. You have seen it degrade, you are seeing it degrade, you are right there on the firing line, so to speak. And I wonder how you feel, Santiago, about your country, the future of your country and whether those things that could save it and other countries similarly situated can happen within a reasonable time because we don't have forever to fix these things. After a while, it's unfixable, isn't it? Well, I'm both concerned and cautiously optimistic. I'm concerned because I continue to see signs of democratic backsliding from the people in power. For instance, the fact that the government replied to the Inter-American Commission's report arguing that it should not intervene in the internal affairs of Columbia is very concerning because it's a denunciation of basic human rights treaties and obligations that are binding on Columbia under international law. But at the same time, I'm cautiously optimistic because first, I see a generation of people who are not only my age, but younger people who have a more complete idea of the root causes of civil unrest in Columbia and also have proposals of how to transform the society we live in. But at the same time, there's an international climate that is conducive to peaceful and democratic solutions to all this problem. We have in Joe Biden a very different leader to Mr. Donald Trump, who is actually promoting the implementation of the peace agreement in Columbia, who is in favor of multilateralism, who is a fierce defender of democracy and who will therefore not allow the current administration or whoever is elected in 2022 to just kick human rights down the road. And also, since the European Union has been so vested in the implementation of the peace agreement and the strengthening of democracy in Columbia, I feel that there are avenues for that, you know, burgeoning citizenry to bring about the changes that our country needs. This is unfortunately something that we cannot do alone while I continue to put the primacy of responsibility on the Colombian society. I would also hope for international oversight and support through this process, because for instance, it's only thanks to the International Criminal Court, the Inter-American System of Human Rights, the European Union that the peace agreement continues to be alive today, even if it's in intensive care. And now that we have an administration in Washington that is closer to that than the previous government, I do feel that there are great opportunities for national and international efforts towards bringing about those changes. Well, I think this is really a very important point. We're out of time, but let me just state the point that I get out of that. Human rights is an international phenomenon and it takes more than one country to assure it. You have to have a collaboration of many countries to address and ensure human rights, and for that matter, some sense of democracy. Well, thank you Santiago. Santiago, Alberto, Marcos, Nino, really appreciate you coming on. It was very instructive and I really enjoyed the conversation. Aloha.