Abstract
The primary argument of this chapter is that criminal justice during a prolonged conflict is by nature authoritarian, and ignores crimes of the powerful while systematically and historically disregarding the fundamental rights of marginalized populations. The chapter takes as a case study the “false positives”, which are one of the most egregious forms of crimes of the powerful in the recent history of Colombia. These crimes consisted of the extrajudicial execution of civilians, mostly male, marginalized citizens who were disguised as guerrilla fighters and presented as legally killed combatants of illegal armed groups by the Colombian military, which were often aided by paramilitaries or organized crime groups (Gordon 2017). Addressing the relationship between these extrajudicial killings of civilians and criminal law in Colombia allows us to revisit a classic theme in the theoretical innards of the criminal law: the political and historical role of the state as a violent actor.
This chapter results from a research project on crimes of the powerful and Transitional Justice conducted by the author within the framework of the doctoral programme Rethinking Globalization: Challenges and interdisciplinary solutions at the University of the Basque Country.
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Notes
- 1.
The notion of crimes of the powerful is a very important analytical tool to understanding Colombia’s long-lasting violence. As the chapter will show, the violence of the conflict in Colombia is intertwined with the rationality of the modern criminal law, which is grounded on state definitions of crime and favours an exclusionary idea of nationhood, which ignores and normalizes the structural violence endured by marginalised Colombians. In a context of prolonged violence, the impunity of crimes of the powerful has dramatic consequences because it normalizes the extermination of marginalized citizens in the name of securitization.
- 2.
The permanent use of the exceptionality criminal policies in Colombia corresponds to the 60-year, ongoing armed conflict. A detailed account of the conflict is beyond the scope of this chapter. However, for my argument, it is important to mention that the conflict has involved various actors, including guerrilla forces, right wing paramilitaries, and the state. According to the National Center for Historical Memory, the number of fatalities of the conflict between 1958 and 2018 account for 262,197, out of which 215,005 have been civilians and 46,813 combatants. Many experts maintain that a major element of the conflict is the inequitable agrarian structure, which has facilitated processed of dispossession and favoured the interests of local and transnational businesses elites (Coleman 2007; Molano 2015).
- 3.
Sala Plena. Sentencia de agosto 13 de 1970. Magistrado ponente: Luis Sarmiento Buitrago, pp. 312–315.
- 4.
The Palace of Justice siege was an attack on the Supreme Court of Colombia in 1985 where members of the leftist M-19 guerrilla group took over the Palace of Justice in the capital of Bogotá. The guerrillas held the Supreme Court hostage with the intent of forcing President Belisario Betancur to trial for his actions in derailing the peace process. More than 100 people were killed including half of the Supreme Court justices. See Higuera Silva (2010).
- 5.
The indiscriminate killing of desechables, or disposable people. Desechables are typically perceived as threats to society, though the group most often targeted is street children. See Human Rights Watch (1994) available at https://www.hrw.org/reports/1994/colombia/gener1.htm.
- 6.
Colombia is divided into 32 political territories called departments and a capital district.
- 7.
Sala Plena. Sentencia de octubre 30 de 1978. Magistrado ponente: Luis Carlos Sáchica.
- 8.
This transformation is also characterized by urban development projects that lead to gentrification processes that causes a displacement of the population and broadens inequality. For an analysis of this in a comparative perspective see Cortes-Nieto and Ansari (2017).
- 9.
As a result of the violence of displacement, which has also been caused by the armed confrontation for territorial control, the Constitutional Court has declared that more than 100 indigenous communities of the country are facing cultural and physical extermination (Constitutional order 04). Forced displacement has a direct link to the impunity of land dispossession which is historical feature of Colombia’s conflict. For a recent analysis on this, see A. Berry (2017).
- 10.
Ana Teresa Yarce was a community leader at Comuna 13. Along with other female leaders of the Comuna, she was arbitrary detained in 2002 after military operation Orion and faced charges of terrorism. In 2004, she was assassinated by paramilitaries.
- 11.
Aerial fumigation has been endorsed by the US prohibitive approach to drug policy. This resulted from a US military aid programme known as Plan Colombia (1999-2015), through which Colombia became the third largest recipient of military aid in the world after Israel and Egypt. For a good analysis of the human and environmental harm of aerial fumigation, see Huezo (2017).
- 12.
The damage caused by aerial fumigation with glyphosate has been documented by several organizations. The pesticide is forbidden in many countries, including the European Union, however, it has been used in Colombia to halt coca cultivation.
- 13.
The spatial configuration of marginalized districts embodies the dynamics of social exclusion that have characterized Colombia’s conflict. In fact, marginalized districts have resulted from forced migration and land dispossession.
- 14.
Within the DSP, incarceration rates increased dramatically. Studies show that the outrageous prison overcrowding resulted from an inappropriate use of preventive detentions, which primarily affected marginalized citizens of the country (Hernández Jiménez 2017).
- 15.
Biko was the founder of the Black consciousness movement during the Apartheid regime in South Africa. He was tortured and died of brain damage in police custody on 12 September 1977. According to the official narrative of the Apartheid regime, Biko had died as a consequence of a hunger strike. In 1997, the TRC stablished that Biko died as a consequence of torture conducted by the police.
- 16.
Soacha is a marginalized municipality of Cundinamarca near Bogotá. Many of the victims of the False Positives were inhabitants of this municipality. Thanks to the denunciations of the mothers of these victims, the heinous crime of False Positives of gained local and international recognition in 2008.
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Rojas-Páez, G. (2023). Between Denial and Memory: A Socio-Legal Reading of Securitization Narratives in Transitional Colombia. In: Radics, G.B., Ciocchini, P. (eds) Criminal Legalities and Minorities in the Global South. Palgrave Socio-Legal Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-17918-1_4
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