 with Transitional Justice. I'm Jay Fidel. This is TIG Tech on a given Monday afternoon and we're talking today about violence in Colombia with Nicholas Sussman, a regular contributor who lives there in Bogota. So Nicholas, welcome back to the show. Thank you Jay. Good night to all the people who is watching us and it's always a pleasure to be with you. It's great to have you. So a lot of people weren't aware but there has been violence and sort of an unraveling in Colombia which as you reported earlier was doing pretty well but maybe not now. What is happening in Colombia these days? Right. So right now we've been after more than a month of a national strike that has turned very violent. Again as demonstrations against what people consider a very unfair tax reform and it was answered the government responded with disproportionate police violence with lack of dispossession to dialogue and so on. So it then became a national strike against everything that the people think is wrong about the government and it has been met again with more police violence and a lot of situations where not only the police is participating in violence against the demonstrators but also we're seeing a private individual civilians that are arming themselves to attack the demonstrators who have been mostly specific and never as violent as the violence they have received from governmental forces. Gee, so it sounds like the right and the left. The right being the government and the left being the protesters and of course there will be people who are aligned with the right and the government and so you do have two sides in the streets. How did it start? You're talking about a labor movement of some kind and how has it gone since then in terms of the escalation of violence? Right. So originally this was a strike like more than a strike demonstrations called by something that has named itself like the national strike committee. This national strike committee had been created for some years ago and led the previous national strike that took place in 2019. This committee has some labor unions, some labor movements, some educators, students and so on and they called for those demonstrations against a very unfair tax reform. So they are the ones who organized it at first but now it became a whole country, whole population thing. Even there are parts and big parts and important parts of the population who say that this committee does not represent them and they are calling more for popular assemblies and the regions where the people can gather the ideas that they need to take to the government to solve it. So these were the people who organized it at first but it has become bigger and I would say that at this point this national strike committee does not represent the whole of the demonstrations and just the precision even if this national strike committee could be aligned with the left. Nowadays I wouldn't describe the demonstrations or the strike as a right left thing to accept that the government is a far right government but the population at this point is just against some of the measures regardless of their political opinions because some of the measures are just going against the people. Even many of the people that voted for the government or who do not feel aligned to the left and actually that is one of the strategies that government has used to delegitimize the protest saying that it is the left or that they are being used and guided by a left candidate or even by the dissonances of the guerrillas which is not the case. It sounds like chaos Nicholas. You don't know who is for what. This is not a good thing and it sounds like it also started out with one issue and gathered other issues and before you notice everything. Do you agree with that and can you explain it? Yeah, I agree. Originally it was about a tax reform which was very aggressive which was rather unfair that wanted to tax things that should not be taxed because people livelihoods depend on that so food, basic food, public utilities and so on that is the first thing. This was met with unjustified government expenses like the purchase of military equipment which is more fit for state-to-state conflict instead of law enforcement operations which should be what the government is facing right now because our biggest armed conflict ended with a peace agreement. So this became about this and then when the government responded with violence it became about everything else starting with the police violence during the demonstrations but going back to protests in the past and then about everything else because the government where a lot of people hasn't done anything right in a lot of aspects and keeps blaming the previous government even after three years in office. So it's just a lot of disappointment and anger against many of the policies of the government. Oh that sounds like chaos. So how this is happening in various cities, the article I pulled up is reporting that there's violence in Kali, C-A-L-I, but is it happening in Bogota also? Is it happening all over the country? Right so I must say that right now the intensity of the situation has decreased a bit and then you have still some focuses of violence, some places where you have violence, one of them is Kali, Kali has has not decreased at all and some parts in Bogota and some parts in the rest of the country but at the beginning it was everywhere everywhere and right now I would say that Bogota in some places is still an important point but the main point is Kali. Kali is a city in the southwest of Colombia going to the Pacific and it has a lot of social complexities that make it prone to this violence and that makes it prone to division as well. When you say social complexities and division, you mean you know diverse population, do you mean disparity in income? Do you mean racial strife? What do you mean by that? Yeah basically those two things income and racial that are actually intertwined. Kali originally since the beginning of of Colombia even the colonies was a place where a lot of sugar plantations were there, you had a lot of slavery and you also had land owners, landowners were wide coming directly from the Spanish, conquerors and colonizers and you have black people who come from slaves and then you have a mixture of people and this division has gone has gone on and on and on and the other complexities that Kali has also been strongly affected by drug dealing businesses. In the worst time of drug dealing in Colombia you had two cartels, the cartel of Medellin which is the most renowned one and you had the cartel from Kali which was the second one and Kali has been the center of violence because of its closeness to the Pacific which is one of the favorite routes to take out drugs of the country so you have a mixture of race conflicts, class conflicts, drug dealing, violence from all groups because it also had a strong presence of guerrilla so it's has been very complicated and you have a deeply divided society because of all that. Okay so yeah let's talk about COVID and the pandemic, how has that affected this? Has it been an exacerbating factor? Has it launched additional violence somehow directly or indirectly? I said that it added up to the increase in violence and to the dissatisfaction of people. As I was saying in early before COVID there was another strike in 2019 it was a very strong strike where we saw a lot of the things that we are seeing nowadays not as strong, not as long but still you could see like a bit of foreshadowing in those demonstrations in that strike and then you had Christmas 2019 this helped the demonstrations didn't continue, people went to Christmas to the end of the year and so on and then in the beginning of 2020 COVID started and then you had a pandemic but the issues were still there. Actually the plan from the National Strike Committee was to continue the strike in January but then COVID came, lockdowns came, COVID hit everyone differently because remote work is possible for some people but it's not possible for other people who work in factories or who work in services and usually the people who have more challenges doing remote work are people with low income so that was a factor to the satisfaction and the other factor was that there was no strong social support from the government to these people so a lot of people lost their jobs, a lot of people had to start using their savings to survive or to go out even breaking lockdowns and whatever because they needed to eat. So this added to the dissatisfaction also it was the satisfaction that could be expressed during more than a year because people were in lockdowns and also lockdowns helped the government to be more authoritarian because if people cannot go to the streets, the government is using emergency powers or whatever related figure, they do all of things that would have more control, the Congress was not sessioning in person so there's another lack of control you have so of course COVID helped to these and I think that they thought that they were going to get away with their tax reform because of that but it was too much for the people and they didn't care they just went to the streets even in the middle of a COVID peak because we have an outbreak since early year and they just went out. So you're in an outbreak now? Sorry? You're in an outbreak now? We are in an outbreak yeah we are in an outbreak but the people actually what many of the demonstrators said was either we're going to die from COVID or we're going to die from hunger. This is the situation so we have to go to the streets which is very strong but is the reality of a lot of people's health? Well you know there was an article in the paper this morning I think about how some people in the U.S. where they've been locked down for a year and now people were supposed to go back to work in certain jobs and they didn't want to go back and what you know what that tells you is that on the way in COVID disrupts societies and on the way out COVID disrupts societies whatever is wrong will be you know emphasized and exacerbate other effects so I think there's a parallel to be drawn somehow between what has happened in Colombia and what has happened maybe in different ways but nevertheless a process that has happened elsewhere. So how how deep is the violence I mean are people being what weapons are being used are people being injured killed taken to the hospital what level of violence do we have in Colombia? Well during the demonstrations and I must say it mostly by the government without acknowledging that there has been some violence and serious violence from the from some of the demonstrators and I wouldn't speak about the demonstrations as the demonstrators as a whole because that's where there's a key difference that the government is using in their favor not telling the people about that but the people respond individually government responses are collective and the violence is terrible you have people killed you have people tortured you have sexual violence you have injury you have non-conventional weapons or you have crowd control weapons used in an inappropriate manner so it's terrible it's terrible the things that we are seeing are for example live rounds being fired or gas canisters or tear gas canisters being fired but not to the to the sky but rather in a direct way or even used gas canisters which that have already expired so you cannot guarantee the quality and the and the security of their of their of their of the material you're thrown to them they have even found I don't know shrapnel of all sorts being used just regular violence but the beatings have been terrible you have forced disappearances as well of people who are not even in the demonstrations were just walking by and the police just grabbed them because they are around and takes them and no one knows where you have violence against human rights defenders against government officials from from the local level we're trying to to de-escalate the situation so the violence is really really bad right now the numbers are very high there has been reports from Human Rights Watch from Amnesty International the UN has called several times for intervention the Inter-American Commission did a visit like it has been really really bad in the forms of violence that are taking place right now so where does the government stand on this they do they want to quell the violence what position did they take what are what are their options and which options are they are they choosing right so that's been I don't know it's strange because now that you know the government you know that this is their modus operandi but it has not been very coherent right so you have them speaking publicly about they they went wanting to dialogue but also condemning only the vandals no mention about police brutality human rights violations accountability and so on and something very strange that happened is that during today you had dialogues you had peaceful demonstrations uh you had one enforcement mostly compliant with the law and then at night after night full abuses took place in a big scale and all the poor disappearances the key links the paramilitary groups taking uh collaborating with the police everything took place here and there has not been a strong condemnation with the government the government has been evasive to accountability they even denied at first the entrance of the Inter-American Commission but not in a straightforward way because that would put them close to Cuba and Venezuela which is what they tried the most not to be in their speech but they were like we will let you in after this and this happens we will let you in after some months we will let you in under certain conditions which is know how human how human right organs work also that has been the situation there has been some dialogues but the dialogues have not been very fruitful uh they still condemn the vandals and speak about the vandals all the time and that just creates more and more violence and they also buck up all the time the police uh in this place so so it's it's very complicated and that's where they stand right now very very troubling so what I get out of this is that once you you pull the plug on the rule of law once you pull the plug on social order and the social compact if you will where people sort of have an under underlying agreement not to violate the space and and the and the rights of others once you pull the plug on that it's chaos and it goes in any direction it wants it's hard to predict where it'll go do you agree with me and can you predict where this is going to go yeah I totally agree Jay and if we go back to the past two shows that we did you could see things like that coming because you see the police being indoors you saw a whole situation of fragmented and widespread human rights violations taking place and like they were pushing the boundary every time a bit more further and further and further and further and now when when the time bomb blows which is the situation we're facing right now they feel encouraged they feel strong and now the institutions that do not work as efficiently as you as you would consider um as where is it going I don't know I don't know I don't think we will we're heading into a dictatorship or things like that even if that is the opinion of many people I talked to my Venezuelan friends who live abroad now a day and they just feel saddened about what's going on because they say you never think this is going to happen to you and when we saw this in our country we thought that what happened afterwards didn't happen so that that is something we should be careful about this is a pre-election year next year we're going to have president congress elections and I really hope that they're going to go right there's nothing that indicates that they want to stay in power or they're going to subvert the rule of law to that point but something needs to change and and and with needs to change I don't say that they should like the people in Colombia should choose a left government I think they should just choose someone who respects the rule of law and who actually will comply with the constitution if it is right center right even far right you can have far right governments that respect the rule of law but what we need to ensure is that anything that is what is coming the elections and I didn't think that the alternatives are very clear right now there's a lot of division in the opposition and there's a lot of division in the right as well because everyone wants to chip in with the government but doesn't want to be with the government because of this it's not very popular so that is the situation and I don't know where it's going right now well what about you where are you going it strikes me that if you walked out on the street you couldn't be nearly as sure of your own security as you might have been earlier um it strikes me that um you know if you had the opportunity to leave because it got intolerable you wouldn't have a plan and you would leave uh are people leaving right uh so that is a complexity that the Colombian situation has always had that even if you have phases of the country where you have full outbreaks of conflict they don't hit as hard uh those of us who fortunately are privileged so I cannot say that while I was there right now I'm in the States traveling but I just traveling I'll go I'm going back in a couple of weeks but I wouldn't say that my safety was as affected when I when the strike was taking place I just didn't go to the streets because I know that if I was caught in the middle of a demonstration it would be gasped or something like that so I don't to do it but it's not that they're going to come into my house and take me right but that is the thing but the situation is very saddening there's not a lot of future uh I didn't know what will happen after next year but of course it is it is complicated and for me as a human rights lawyer it is also concerning how this is going to go uh after four years but I'm not even close to the to the level of threat and danger that social leaders are or who actual human rights defenders who are on the ground are risky but but but I speak publicly about what we do why I speak about the the human rights abuses and well today I am safe but if they keep uh in the government and if they stay there um and they don't have a lot of pressure of international pressure what really makes them compliant uh it can be dangerous uh so maybe living just in terms of life quality would be an option but if things keep getting worse uh maybe leaving us a necessity just to guarantee and to anticipate uh to the situations might might be an option as it happened to actually the people in Venezuela those who left when they could and are safe and then others couldn't leave or had to leave everything behind in order to to guarantee your safety so so you don't know but it is scary. Nicholas how's the press doing how's freedom of speech doing uh are the press uh free to discuss these things? I think the press is free the press is free uh you have abuses on the ground against some journalists but but not as a as a systematic persecution against the press well just something of the moment right uh and you have a lot of alternative media covering the situation of course they feel afraid of course um they have been subject to some violence uh but I wouldn't say that there is a attack that concerning again freedom of press and that has been one of the good things actually that the whole documentation of of the strike has been done by by alternative press and they have been a very hey they have done a very thorough job that they could hand into the inter-american commission actually so that is good having having freedom of press and having the judiciary safe I think are two things that we can rescue from the situation and that will guarantee in the future that the situation keeps within certain boundaries even if it's escalated as it is right now. Yeah guardrails so to speak so here's a big question we should spend a little time on you know you can you're familiar with the way things go in the United States in general and of course you get the media from the United States and you have some training in the United States so what can the United States learn I mean we we had an insurrection on January 6th and we have people that elected office who deny the fact of that insurrection or who lie about it we have people who refuse to investigate that insurrection I mean we know from project expedite justice that you have to know the true facts if you're going to deal with human rights violations and atrocities and violations of the rule of law you have to know and you can't know without an investigation or a commission anyway so my you must have reactions as to what the United States can learn from how this is devolving how it has devolved in Colombia. Yeah I think the main lesson is that when you're talking about the rule of law there is no threat too small and the timely action is everything right uh when this president that we have nowadays began his his candidacy to the presidency he had like four percent right and no one knew who he was we have discussed this he held some positions of international level and then he was elected to the congress not by his own votes but in a closed list system where the head of the list just gained a lot of votes that he then shared with the rest of the list and and got him some representative so this is how he got to congress and no one thought he was going to be elected because he went so low but then his mentor had a lot of importance it is a former president who was liked by a lot of people they have the media on their side they have corporate groups on their side and they're very good at propaganda including fake news and so on and conspiracy theories and so on and when we noticed that these was a problem because I would say that any policy against rule of law is a problem I think it was too late it was too late there was not enough time to counter the effects of fake news there was no enough time to build a strong coalition and candidacy against this type of project and now three years later we are seeing the consequences so we think there is no threat to small you should take them seriously you should investigate and you should bring accountability because accountability also brings a series of consequences that not only impact the individuals that participated in the crimes but also affects the movements but it is not the same to have a leader who is investigated to have a leader that is convicted and can no longer participate in politics for example so we think that is that is very important and to have strong strong speeches and strong rule of law information going around to the people because if the people receive fake information and they don't have true information to compare it with they are just going to stay with fake confirmation that makes them feel safe or scared with the promise of safety so that is very important I would say that. Now the other thing is you know we have had street scenes we had street scenes last year and you could say it stemmed out of Black Lives Matter but it went beyond that in a number of American cities and it runs a kind of parallel where you start a protest on one issue and before you know it people take that as license to protest against everything and the police take the protest as license to use violence and force including illegal force on the protesters and before you know it you have a melee in the streets and I gather that you know to some extent that's what you've been talking about here in Colombia so it seems to me that we've already had a smattering of that in the United States and we have the elements of what you've been talking about not all exactly the same but nevertheless elements there's parallels that we can draw from a social psychological point of view so my question is you know you you do know both societies and I wonder what your your thought is about whether what has happened in Colombia and happened in the United States? Well I didn't know I didn't know but I I think there are a lot of things one can learn from each other the first one is that the society as a whole anything that is one believe that both societies need to overcome need to understand that peaceful demonstration assemblies and even protests even if they are disruptive because a protest needs to be disruptive to be effective are okay and are part of democracy if we win that battle as a society and start as a society surrounding the protesters and the demonstrations because many of us will not go to the streets because a series of reasons I think we've won that that's the first thing if you protect the demonstrators and the society condemns violence against the demonstration that is the first thing the second thing I need I consider we need to learn is what comes after the demonstrations because you're yelling for the government to listen to you and if you're disruptive or effective enough they will listen to you but when these things get get out of hand is when you come to the table and then you don't know what you're going to say because you know you're not in favor of what's going on but there needs to be complete organization and coordination beforehand or maybe during the demonstrations to bring strong points to this table I think that's that's the second thing that is very important uh and the third one is that you need to teach your law enforcement about human rights and their limits and I know it flows because I know people from the military and as most of the people in the military in my country in the state they're good people people who actually want to serve their country I don't doubt that but what they're being said is not right and they're being put in danger and then when accountability procedures come the ones who end up in jail or convicted or the men and women serve or the institution taught them and told them that some things that should not be done would be done so that this key a strong training human rights proportionality use of force and so on to the law enforcement is a protection to the community to the rule law and also to law enforcement because these people think they do what they can do but but they don't and then there's a problem from for them and the publications are not going to stand behind them when they're convicted actually an easy way to to get out of accountability as a politician is just ordering investigations on the individuals instead of addressing the whole problem with the force that is not a problem of individuals oh yeah that we have that problem I mean we have we have systemic issues that have been brewing a long time and you know you can talk about individuals but you really have to think bigger than that you have to think about fixing it fixing the system but one of the things that I get out of our discussion in your remarks Nicholas is this that if you have an angry protest out there which has the possibility of expanding the issues and expanding their fervor so to speak in their street presence one way to deal with it is to simply say and mean that you are going to listen that you respect their views and you take them seriously and you're going to do something about it rather than just beat them up on the street has this has this been tried has it been tried well or badly do you think it would work if tried correctly I think it would although I believe that also social anger needs to be expressed in some way it's not like okay heard you get out of the streets let's sit on a table that that's not the way of doing it people have the right and societies need the need to express their emotions and anger is a valid emotion and if it doesn't reach to the level of violence it's valid and it's necessary the government and the people need to know and need to be allowed to express their anger but then comes as you say a moment of sitting down and listening I think that was done partially at the local level at Columbia and to some extent it worked and some agreements have come from that but it needs a lot of political will and it needs a lot of follow-up both from the government and from the demonstrators because otherwise you're just going to add another element to the to the insatisfaction that is the lack of compliance with previous agreements so that is key but absolutely dialogue is the way like a demonstration is never a solution of itself it's just I mean to one express anger that social emotions are very important and that are healthy for our society and to to make the government listen but once they listen you need to do something about it you know it strikes me also that at the end of the day in order to maintain the social compact because without the social compact we are we are in Lord of the Flies without the social compact we're in we're in continuing chaos devolving chaos you have to give people some confidence you have to create public real public confidence not not fake public confidence not you know propaganda public confidence so I guess if you're if you are the government you're burdened in a situation like that is to find ways to make people confident not only of the existing administration but the system is this do you think this is doable is it doable in in Colombia is it doable other places I think it's doable the thing is if they want to do it and they're willing to do what is necessary because you need to be transparent you need to integrate a government with people from the other side and and these governments who tend to be very authoritarian they're very closed on themselves they name their friends they name people that think like them and that is no way to have a healthy government and a healthy public administration actually you need people from all sides and you need experts from all sides to tell you what's necessary and even to have people from your from the other side sitting beside you telling you you are not right within differently and there you find a consensus so I think that transparency and inclusion is the solution of course but that is not a point of if it's possible or not but if they're willing to do it or not because that requires a lot of I don't know moral fiber in the first sense and a lot of skills in leadership as well because you have your government plan and you need to to to make it happen but you need to govern for all the population yeah you have to go back to the fundamentals and remember the government is there to serve the people and the people are there to be part of the government it's all it's a two-way street well thank you so much Nicholas it's it's always fabulous to talk to you I so enjoy your comments and your thought and I hope we can do this again soon and I wish you well in all particular thank you Jay thank you for the invitation and we'll keep you updated about what's going on at home please thanks