 On Monday, we have Nicholas Sussman from Bogota, Colombia, to talk to us. He's a legal consultant and a lawyer for the Project Expedite Justice, which is based here in Honolulu. And that's a very interesting discussion. The way of remarks to introduce this, you know, we've been talking to Carlos Juarez and he's an international relations teacher at the University of the Americas in Puebla, Mexico. And he's painted a picture of Mexico for us over the past few years. So we know a little about Mexico, but in general, I think Americans don't know too much about what goes south of the border, what is happening in Central America, South America, so forth. So it's a real treat to be able to talk to Nicholas about this. And to talk about human rights issues in Colombia, you know, we all came away with the notion that Colombia was rife with drugs and cartels and all the early violence and what have you. And indeed, it's been through a difficult history. But today, we're going to learn much more about it. We're going to learn about its relevance to not only, you know, the rest of the Americas, but also what we can learn from it in terms of its successes. So Nicholas, welcome to the show. It's so nice to have you here. Thank you, Jay. Very happy to be with you. My greetings to the audience as well. Good. So you have been around. You have studied law. You have lived and worked in the EU. And you speak, I was counting them before. I think I heard four languages, Spanish, English, French, German, three languages, three. Forget French. You don't need French because you were in Amsterdam. Anyway, so now you're associated with Project Expedited Justice, which is very important and wherever they go, there's a problem. And I read up on this a little bit today. I found that since 2005, Colombia has been doing better than its violent and corrupt past. But I wonder if you can bring us current on how it's doing these days and why Project Expedited Justice is interested in Colombia these days. Right, Jay. So what do you say is true since early 2000s? There's been a lot of peace attempts. We've experienced an armed conflict since at least the 1950s. But if you count, you can take our history of violence, sadly, way, way back even to our colonial past. But since 2005, with the strengthening of institutions of the government, also since the 1990s with a new constitution that has a very strong Bill of Rights. And we have approached the issue of peace and developed a series of peace process with the different armed groups in our country. The most relevant one was the one that we conducted and signed by 2016 with the FARC, which was the biggest guerrilla at the time, who, as you said, had some issues with drug dealing to finance itself and also was a sort of side business. But it has been really good since then. We signed a peace agreement. The majority of the forces demobilized and they are trying to comply. So we're in the challenge of implementation, but things are getting better and leaving the conflict aside, we could also focus in other issues as well. Nevertheless, not everything is happy. And I must also be honest with the audience and tell that we have serious human rights issues that require the attention of the government and the support of the international community. The first one is the implementation of the process. And the second one, the challenges that come with that, such as the killing of social leaders and former combatants, who are trying to reintegrate into society, but are being killed by what some people believe are far-right paramilitary groups that do not support the process or that are seeing their privileges threatened because of the peace process, because there's an economic underlying component to the origins of conflict and therefore to the solutions of the peace agreement, mainly with the land. Well, looking back at that peace agreement, I remember how important that was. It was the end of a period of violence and disruption and fragmentation of the country. Maybe that's part of the fact that you have multiple cultures, you have multiple languages, you have 60-some-odd languages in Colombia. It's not just Spanish. And that's probably because it's at the neck of Central America there, looking north into Panama, looking east into Venezuela and so forth. There's a lot of contiguous countries around you, a lot of, what do you say, border issues from way back when. And I guess that does create a difficult environment. And so the country had violence from after the World War II, that was ubiquitous. It was the period that was called the violence, because there was violence everywhere for a long time. And so all of a sudden we have an agreement and we have an enlightenment in Colombia. Who was responsible for that? Why did that happen? What were the forces that brought all those warring factions together? Well, you have several issues going on. As I was saying, this builds up for a long time. First it comes with the change in the constitution. I would say we had before the one we have nowadays that was approved in 1991, a very conservative institution focused in the Central State that was excluant of diversity of different groups, of acknowledging different cultures, origins and so on. In 1991 you get a new constitution with a white bill of rights that opens to diversity that understands the existence of indigenous peoples, of black people that looks for representation, and that is also thinking in the peace of the country. And it's very interesting because it even states that human right to peace, that I would say that is something very interesting and very different, but responds to our needs. So when they drafted they were thinking in that, and that provides for all legal structures that allow the government to do that. Then during the 1990s you have a very hard time with drug dealing and the other type of violence. And you need to, there comes a military response that strengthens the government. We must say that the US played an important part providing us with support and that allows the government in some way to meet forces with the rebel groups. We must accept that the rebel groups at some time were more or less winning the battle, but then in the 1990s and the 2000s you have a military offensive that allows the government to start winning the battle. But then you come to a point where no one's winning because our geography is complicated, we have jungles, we have mountains. So actually exercising control over the land is very hard, and the rebel groups go there and hide there. So it's very difficult to exercise governmental authority. So then after I would say 2010 we get a new president. He was a brilliant secretary of defense for the former government. He was elected and endorsed by that government, and he decides that that is the moment for peace. So he starts trying to talk with the rebel leaders. They do some conversations that were concealed from the population to explore the agenda, and he gathers a lot of expertise, both national and international, and decides to conduct peace talks with us to find a agenda that actually aims for the root causes of the conflict and tries to establish a plan to solve them. It was only with the biggest group, but it's a roadmap that you could follow to achieve peace. So that is how you come there. It was a very long peace talks, you could say like three, four years, and then in 2016 you sign it. We have a vote to see if we approve it, and those who were in favor lost the vote, which is very, very surprising for a lot of people, and they lost it just for 1%. So that was very, very surprising because you have a group ready to disarm itself, you have several years of conversations, and then the population does not agree with with the peace process of what are you going to do. So they had to renegotiate some points, taking into consideration the opposition, and now we're in the phase of implementation. So that is how it comes. It's a better complaint now, yeah? Yeah, yeah, we're implementing it, but you signed it already. Okay, so why did they oppose it? I mean, what was the problem that they saw? Why would they take those steps in the face of what appeared to be a very good deal? Well, there's a lot of issues going on. The first one is that there's a very strong sense of rejection to the former rebel group. If you ask any Colombian, in some way they were affected by the conflict, either because they were directly victims of the conflict or because they had to adjust their lifestyle to the dynamics of conflict, and that takes a toll on how you see these things. And for some people, mostly in the cities, getting the transitional justice process where you get lenient penalties for these people who committed the worst crimes was an no deal. They thought that they should just go to jail and pay for what they did and pay harshly for it. Coming with that, we must accept that there was a lot of fake news from parties that opposed to the agreement and that also took a toll on the approval of the agreement and fake news came from different sectors and aiming to different interests. For example, you had them saying that elder people who were getting the retirement fund would be damaged by the process because the funds from the retirement funds would go to finance the process. That was not true, but that makes you get scared and vote against it. Also, we are very conservative Catholic country and there were discussions about the inclusion of sexual diversity issues in the school plan and things like that that were not true. But in the midst of this information, people start doubting that that was one part because they oppose it. And I think those who agreed with the process took it for granted and didn't vote as much as they should have because the polls even nowadays say that it has a significant amount of approval, the majority approvals. But when you get the vote and they didn't vote, then they lost, not only but they lost. So what are things like in Colombia now? I mean, I'm specifically thinking about the continuing existence of the cartel of drugs, of violence, of corruption. Have you put all that behind you? Are you clear of that? And what about that new constitution? Do you have a First Amendment where you can speak to me freely? Is there any threat to you? How do you feel about living there? No, I feel really safe and I've always felt very safe living here. This conflict is not a conflict that always hits you in the city. Actually, if you're in the cities, you're very safe. It is a conflict that happens in the countryside and takes a lot of damage on the people who live in the countryside and far from the city. So always it's been very safe, even in the worst times of the conflict and now even more. Regarding the liberties and civil liberties, you can exercise them very much. As I told you, we have a very wide bill of rights, a very good constitution and a very good legal structure to defend that constitution. We have good courts, independent courts, strong courts that have defended it. The governments, even the ones that are more restrictive, understand that there is a limit in the constitution and we have a very active civil society that does not fear going to the streets to defend their rights when they have issues. But you can pretty much say whatever you want and there's no problem and express your opinions. Where you have problems, as I say, is in the countryside, not everywhere, but in the countryside where the state is not present, where there are a lot of armed groups fighting for the land, there you will have a problem. There you will have a problem, but not only speaking, but trying to exercise your human rights overall, because these groups take advantage of the state absence to push their interests and violate the human rights of other people to obtain profit from violence. Well, let's go to that. You're a lawyer and you're associated with Project Expedite Justice, which operates in a variety of continents. I'm happy to hear that it has a presence that is doing positive things in Colombia. But what are the problems that you address as a member associated with a group that is interested in human rights and war crimes and the like? What is happening that you need to address? Right, so there first I should make a correction. We currently as Project Expedite Justice do not work in Colombia, but there are a whole other group of NGOs that are doing it both national and international. And I can speak a bit about that because they're very important and they do a lot of good work here. So the things that they're addressing are the most present matters such as the killing of social leaders that I just mentioned. I think that is one of the most urgent matters or some issues of excessive use of force by police and corruption issues, or trying to go against legislation that can be restricted. That is one part of what they do. The other part that is going on are the grassroots organizations in the regions that are trying to get control again over the land they were dispossessed of, that they were driven out by violence and they're trying to go back and set up institutionality to teach people about their human rights, to create social cohesion so the community itself can protect themselves from violence. And there are very interesting case studies about that. There's a town called San Jose de Apartadol. Their project is new. They're doing it at least I believe since the 1980s, but they decided that they would remain neutral in the conflict and they're right in the middle of one of the most violent zones in Colombia and then decided that they're not going to accept conflict or violence in their region and they declared their city as a neutral zone and they drove out all of the of the armed actors, not with violence, just stating that they would not accept that and opposing even the army, the government from being there because they understand that the government brings some sort of violence. So that is a very important thing that is also going on and we should pay attention and the other countries should pay attention to those grassroots groups because they're more vulnerable for violence because they don't have outreach, they don't have a platform, so them they should be protected, but the international community has paid attention to that and that is very important and good. That's really very interesting. When you say the international community, what do you mean? I mean this is from Europe, from Asia, from the US. Who is paying attention? Well, I think we have a very strong support from the US way back through the state itself, from USAID, from the Secretary of State, they have always supported Colombia as we've been strong allies in the region, but with the peace agreement the EU has been very important and they have financed parts of the process, they have gone to the communities, the ambassadors go and speak with the social leaders, even when they are threatened, they go on public with the social leaders stating like this man or these women should be protected and so on and that is very important, you know, Jay, because as I told the government, these governments in particular, is not supported of the peace agreement, it does not believe that the peace agreement should be done as it was done, so the implementation can be challenged, but when the international community is behind, is supporting it, is calling for the implementation, they have a harder time not doing what they have to do. Also the international criminal court is supporting Colombia, they have examined their situation for a very long time to see if we can do it right or we cannot, so far we have done it, but without their support it would be more difficult for the opposers of the peace process not to implement it and so on. One thing you mentioned, I want to just dwell on for a moment, is the notion that there is a right-wing movement in Colombia, can you describe what that is and how it plays into these processes you're talking about? Yeah, of course, so we think similar to the things that we see in many places of the world, nowadays even in the US, we have a deeply divided society and our division in this case came from the peace process, but even from way behind and you could draw these distinctions between the left, the center and the right, you know, and the right was against of the peace process because they considered it as impunity, they believe in a notion of order and security through the use of force, they believe in strong justice, strong criminal justice with strong penalties in the military defeat of the armed groups and so on, and those were the people behind the opposition to the peace process and they are the ones who take care of the government nowadays, we have some leftist groups and they're very diverse, they go from any possible position from democratic liberals with a left tendency to very far right people, but you can see the division and the conversations in Colombia are held between the right and the left and our last elections have been have been that way and that is not productive to advance an implementation of the peace process, to leave behind corruption, to actually look for the best candidate for the problems of the country because people tend to identify themselves with one of the two positions without going beyond in their proposals and also with this division, people get very afraid from the other side, you know, also the ones in the right are afraid that if a leftist or left-tended candidate wins, then they're going to take their property away and increase taxes and all of that and on the other side, the right-wing people believe that the right-wing government is going to take over the institution and it's going to eliminate the courts and so on, but all what it's in the center, even moderate positions become invisible and I believe those positions are very important to achieve consensus, to push the country forward, to achieve unity and to move on with the life of the country to make it better for everyone, which I believe is the objective. Yeah and so how are you doing in that objective? I mean, are you optimistic Nicholas? Are you optimistic about the future? Is this the thing where Colombia is doing better every time you look or is it under stress sort of the way the US is? How do you feel about the future in Colombia for the country, for the various factions and for yourself? I feel optimistic Jay, sadly not because of the government necessarily, as I told you, they have very very strong positions in some aspects that take a toll on human rights and that's what I care for and that take a toll on the peace process and that will lead to violence as it is growing more and more and more every time they don't implement as they should the peace process, but I am optimistic because we have strong institutions, we have strong courts and we can rely on the courts to save that part of the country and I trust in the Colombian society as well. We are pushing society, a vibrant society, a society that when it has come the moment to make decisions, to request rights, to mobilize, we have done it and that I can trust with a vibrant civil society and strong institutions, it does not matter how the government is being handled because you can counterbalance those policies coming from what they come, not right, not left, you could just try to focus on the people if you have institutions and society to care for that. It sounds like there are a lot of people that feel the way you do, in other words what the idea I get from this discussion is that a lot of people in Bogota and also in Colombia in general are, they're engaged with the country, they care about the country, they're educated about the country and they're, you know, part of the, what do you want to call it, the national fabric, they're not complacent, am I right? Yeah that is right, that is right, well everything is very, is very varied, but yes you have a lot of people that care for that right now and they're trying to work for that and that go outside and study and try to come back, wow, now it is the time for new politics to come in and for new public servants to come in to change a bit the culture and we think that's also one thing that the peace process allowed you to do because before you were either with the rebels or against the rebels and no one was going to be against the rebels, for the rebels, you know, everyone wanted to be against the rebels, but once you take out that big enemy you can start focusing on the other problems of the country such as inequality, corruption, mismanagement of government funds and things like that and that is very good and very important, there's a lot of people wanting to work on that, I think that's one of the biggest advantages of the peace process, not only no more violence were not in that scale, but also drawing our attention to other very important problems that may be were the causes of violence. So here we're at that time of our discussion, Nicholas, where I want to ask you, you know, you follow of course what's happening in the US, I'm sure everybody in the world follows, I mean you have good broadband, I'm sure you get lots of news from the US and I suppose there's a substantial American community in Bogota also, you know, who talk about this, so my question to you is, you know, you've been through a hard time, sound like you've learned a lot, you mean in the country, learned a lot, you know, the literati and the people in general, you know, have found a good way to deal with these problems and they are basically succeeding and the question I put to you is, you know, what can the United States learn, you're aware of the difficulties we've had, you're aware of the Trump administration, and what he has done and not done, you're aware of certainly of COVID and our economic problems and our divisiveness, it's a sad story in the past few years and I can see that you look north, you look to the US and you have what one Irish reporter said was a kind of pity to the giant who used to be a giant and isn't so much a giant anymore. And Quiri, what lessons have you learned that you could offer to the United States? All right, so yeah, I see a lot of resemblances in the situation that we experienced nowadays and that we experienced before and what you have in the US. You have long-standing conflicts and issues that you should address, I think that's the first recommendation. You cannot move on without having accountability and without acknowledging the people that has been harmed. That's the first thing and you have to acknowledge that the institutions played a role in that because groups they control the institutions to push their interests, it's just natural. So you need to address that at first and you need to sit down with the affected communities and listen to them and construct a process that acknowledged to that. You need to acknowledge the phenomenon. You need to go deep down into the roots of the problem and listen to them and let them speak because they have been silent for, I don't know, a hundred years or more even. So you need to listen to them and see what they have to say and how they want to solve this. That's the first one. The second one is that you need to be open to hear all sides of the story, even the radicals. And hearing to them does not mean that you need to tell them that they are right and that that's not the terms of the conversation, but you need to take their claims seriously because radicals have the capacity of convincing moderates that things are much worse than they actually are. And I think that was the problem that we had with the vote in the peace agreement. And the ones who were in favor of the agreement thought that it was granted and that being against the agreement was just nonsense and it's not like that. There are people that have concerns about this. There are people that have lived all their lives in a certain way and now things change and they are truly afraid of change or truly afraid of some communities based on prejudice but still their fear is real. So you need to listen to all sides and to bring all concerns together and focus in the moderates to construct consensus around that. If you exclude them, even if those excluded can be radical or can say a bit of controversial statements, you're not moving together as a society. You need to listen to them to reconcile first and also because they're fellow citizens that need to be included in the final country you need. And the final thing is keep strong institutions. That's the most important thing. I think that what we can learn from the U.S. last week and I think my colleague said it the last time you spoke to him is that democracy is fragile but also democracy has a lot of tools to protect itself. So defend the courts and allow grassroots movements in the civil society to be vibrant and move the society. And I think the U.S. has a lot of potential for that only seeing what happened in Georgia is a good example of what you can achieve. And now you need to engage with the communities to move forward. If you do that, I think you can move forward a society and you commend a lot of mistakes from the past. I don't think that what happened on the beginning of this year was the result of four years of American history. I think there was a lot of things moving from behind and they just exploded in some way and some people were allowed to bring that violence until that point because no one stopped them before. So now it is the time to reconcile and to see what is going on there to avoid those things from happening again. That would be my suggestion. Yeah, but who is that suggestion addressed to? I mean, you've mentioned that government may not be as important as we think in working these problems out. What is the role of government? And how do you reach people and change? I'm talking about in the United States now. How do you reach people and show them to listen, show them to try to reach consensus? You have at least 70 million people who would like nothing more than a good fight. So how do you change the way they think and the way they see it? And how do you bring in government when there's a lot of people in this country who have no confidence in government? I think precisely the role of the government is not that it is not important, but it should change the way in which it traditionally behaves. Usually the government dictates what should be done and how things are, even to the point where you had a president that wanted even to shape reality through government. I think the government should change that approach and be a government that listens and that acknowledges what it has done. I think one of the best ways to solve issues, and this is not only happening at the government level, but in personal level, is that when you're in a fight with someone and you have been in bad terms with that person for some time and then someone comes up and says like, you know, I did wrong. I did it because of these reasons. And I apologize. And the other side is confident and comes and says, okay, let's work things together and see if we can solve it. I think the government can do that. And that is the only way to find trust in the communities that are distrustful of the government because we have to accept that minorities see the government as an enemy, not as someone that takes care for them. So I think that is the first point. The government should acknowledge and approach them and take the best step. Like, you know, there are the things that go wrong. We know that institutions have played a big role in this. And now let's open a conversation to dialogue about this. And I think grassroots movements are organized. They have their leaders. They know exactly what has been wrong. They have in mind what reforms are needed. And that could be a very good starting point if the government listens and try to convey all voices from that part. That doesn't mean giving the way to everyone to do whatever they want. But the government can be a moderator of that conversation starting from the acceptance of its own responsibility in what's going on. You mentioned that Columbia has had issues around fake news in the past. And surely we have experienced that and we still are. There are people who get fake news and act on it and believe it to the core of their existence. And I suppose part of what your experience in the country and your advice to this country is that we have to exercise fake news. We have to agree on the facts. But how do you do that when there are so many, I don't want to call them institutions. I'll call them media or people who play the media who would love nothing more than to spread fake news in order to advance their own interests. How do you solve that problem? How have you solved it in Columbia? And how should the United States solve it? Well, there's a lot of issues going there. And how to handle this is complicated because it goes right against freedom of expression or at least it rises consensus like concerns about that, right? Because everyone in principle should be allowed to speak freely about what we believe. But again, we must remember that freedom of expression is not absolute. And it comes with another right that is very important, that is the right to have information. People to act and to live in society need to have information. And information needs to be real for people to make decisions, right? And that goes together with freedom of expression. And sometimes they go together, sometimes they are in tension. And I think the solution should come from harmonizing those two things, right? So the first one is that big media have a responsibility on content control. The government controlling media and what is said and done, that's not okay because today you have a president that believes in human rights and he's not going to censor, but tomorrow you don't. And you have the same power in the office, right? So you think there's a responsibility for media to control the content that's first and see which voices they give space to, right? You know there nowadays the amount of views, likes and so on that you have create profit. And there's a business that medias are, they want profit, but they also have a responsibility on this access to information. And they need to make the right choice every time to see who they give voices, voice to, because if they get voice to someone that's gonna bring a lot of clicks and so on, but is gonna use their platform to disseminate bad ideas, all you could end in another January 6th or even worse. So that's the first issue. The second one is empowering different media outlets. The more content you have, the more views you have, then the more resources people have to get information from different sources and have their own opinion. And the third one is to also help society to do this. So you can do fake news checking, you can do capacity building, you can do as a government interactive and didactic programs, I don't know ads or things like that to identify fake news. The media already done has done it, but if it comes from the government level, not saying this is fake, this is true, but saying like, you know, these are the things you can use to avoid fake news, look for the source, look if it makes sense, look for the time, look for who comes from, then that also there's a lot of citizen control in the media and as clients and content consumers, they can also decide which media gets more space or not. I think that those could be ways to do it and they think this has been very important in Colombia because alternative media are getting are getting strength and they provide really good information that counterbalances fake news for advice. But you know, it sounds like you've already talked to Joe Biden and you advise him accordingly and that he is taking your advice. I mean, how do you think he's doing, Nicholas? Well, I think he's doing really good. I am impressed about the executive orders he has signed. I think Biden was chosen as candidate because he was a candidate that was safe for right-wing moderates that didn't want another Trump administration, but then he comes into office and does really progressive things in his first day, so I think it's good. I think those are things that are aligned with human rights and that is good. That is my standard for evaluating a government. It's not if I like it or not, but it advances or not human rights and we think he's doing it. So we think he has done good so far. We remain to see the implementation of these measures. We remain to see how society and other stakeholders are going to react to it and also there are still things to be done as addressing the needs of minorities or, for example, removing and lifting the sanctions that were imposed on the International Criminal Court. The U.S. shouldn't be afraid of the International Criminal Court. Keeping the International Criminal Court at stake is more or less really easy for a government that is willing to comply with its obligation. It's conducting investigations that the court otherwise would conduct. So if you don't want foreign judges, judging American citizens, judge them yourself and that's the solution. But so far I think it's been a really good government. He has been more progressive that you could have imagined and we remain to see how this moves on, but his first days have been really, I don't know, they bring some hope to all his faults that care about human rights. Thank you, Nicholas. Nicholas Sussman, thank you very much for joining us from Bogota, Colombia. I hope we can get to talk again. I have many more questions for you. In the meantime, have a happier new year and stay safe. Thank you very much, Jay. Thank you for having me and always glad to talk to you.