The Washington Post - USA (2020-07-27)

A1 6 EZ RE the washington post.monday, july 27 , 2020

tion of anonymity out of fear for

his safety. “If they see you out

[after c urfew], they’ll attack.”

The Duque administration has

said little publicly on the armed

groups’ lockdowns. The Presiden-

tial office for Human rights and

International Affairs said this

month that the government was

moving to counter an attempt by

irregular groups “to gain more

control.”

Emilio Archila, Duque’s special

adviser on the peace accords, in-

sisted the attempts by armed

groups to expand control would

not derail the peace process. He

denied that the government had

pulled b ack from communities.

“There i s no area of t he c ountry

in which the position of the gov-

ernment is just to leave the crimi-

nals to go ahead,” he said. “ That is

definitely not the case.”

A group that calls itself the Uni-

fied Guerrillas of the Pacific says a

harsh curfew i s necessary because

the region has been “forgotten by

the Colombian state.” In a

p amphlet that circulated in a

small community outside Tuma-

co, the group listed rules includ-

ing a prohibition o n boats arriving

from elsewhere, a stay-at-home

order for all but g rocery shopping,

and a ban on any social or recre-

ational activity.

Anyone seen on the streets after

2:3 0 p.m. “will face the conse-

quences,” the group warned. “We

are not playing.”

Armed groups have frequently

changed curfew times with little

notice, and the sheer number of

different groups controlling abut-

ting territories and issuing differ-

ent r ules h as left r esidents danger-

ously confused. Paredes, for in-

stance, thought the curfew in the

zone of Tumaco in which she was

traveling that may evening was

6 p.m. She didn’t know the group

had m oved it up to 4 p.m.

Either way, she was late. She’s

now recovering in a nearby city

with the help of her family. She is

struggling to walk again. Her

friend faces multiple surgeries to

recover vision in one eye and re-

construct his nose, broken by a

bullet.

The Colombian government,

she said, has completely lost con-

trol in Tumaco.

“I'm terrified just thinking

about t he idea of having t o return,”

she said. “A nd when I have to

return, I’ll have to do it on the

same road.”

[email protected]

faiola reported from Miami.

Vermehlo in rio and mS-13 in El

Salvador, among others, have im-

posed their own curfews and, in

some instances, distributed food,

masks and disinfectant in areas

they control.

But the C olombian groups have

distinguished themselves in the

level of violence they’re applying

to enforcement. observers fear

they’re accelerating an already

dangerous drift away from the

2016 peace accord that ended the

52-year conflict between the gov-

ernment and the revolutionary

Armed forces of Colombia, or the

fArC.

Critics blame Duque, who op-

posed the peace accord before he

became president in 2018, for the

slow pace of promised land reform

and f altering e fforts to reintegrate

former fArC fighters into society.

They say his conservative admin-

istration has not done enough to

stop the killings of leftist commu-

nity leaders a nd e x-rebels.

Now, fArC dissidents — guer-

rillas who have taken up arms

again, or never put them down —

are among the groups solidifying

their hold on hot spots that never

completely cooled. Human rights

Watch this month reported that

armed groups had imposed coro-

navirus lockdowns in 11 of Colom-

bia’s 32 states, leading to at least

eight deaths and 10 injuries since

the o utbreak b egan.

“I think they are seriously con-

cerned about their own ranks,”

said Juan Pappier, Human rights

Watch’s Colombia researcher.

“They know the towns they’re op-

erating in don’t have serious

health facilities and are without a

significant number of doctors.

“But they also see this as an

opportunity to show that they are

in charge,” he continued. “They

see these lockdowns as helping

give them some sense of legitima-

cy.”

The penalty for violating the

rules can be death. In t he troubled

western state of Cauca, Human

rights Watch documented six k ill-

ings by armed groups to enforce

coronavirus r estrictions. They in-

cluded the shooting of a local

farmer by the National Liberation

Army after he allegedly violated

lockdown rules by meeting

friends in a nearby town. Another

group targeted four Venezuelan

thought s he m ight get lucky. T hen
she s aw t he roadblock.
Enforcers with shotguns and
automatic weapons opened fire,
piercing the SUV. Paredes felt
stabs of pain as three bullets
struck her leg. Her friend, hit in
the face and arm, nevertheless
managed to pull over, where the
pair begged for their lives. They
were released with a warning, to
seek assistance o n their own.
“A bsolutely no one helped us,”
Paredes, a prosecutor in Tumaco
who handles domestic abuse cas-
es, said from the safety of a neigh-
boring city. “one person ap-
proached us, b ecause I screamed. I
begged for h elp because my f riend
was bleeding out horribly. He
came close to the window of our
car and told us, ‘Hey, quiet, be-
cause here, it is prohibited to
h elp.’ ”
Human rights groups, commu-
nity leaders and government offi-
cials say a toxic slate of leftist
guerrillas, right-wing paramilitar-
ies and drug cartels are using the
outbreak to consolidate control
over parts of a c ountry still r eeling
from the aftermath of five decades
of armed conflict. The increasing-
ly violent competition shows the
power of the pandemic to deepen
preexisting societal challenges
and l oosen the grip o f government
in fragile states.
“for these groups, this isn’t a
health issue,” said Gimena San-
chez-Garzoli, Andes director at
the Washington office on Latin
America. “It’s about exerting so-
cial control on the population.”
While the government of Presi-
dent Iván Duque is focusing on a
worsening coronavirus outbreak
— the country has reported more
than 204,000 infections and near-
ly 7,000 deaths — the draconian
measures imposed by armed
groups are serving at least two
purposes: to expand control over
roads and communities central to
narcotrafficking and illegal min-
ing and to reinforce t heir standing
as the a bsolute r ulers of their terri-
tories.
The conditions here echo a
global trend of armed groups
moving to supplant weak govern-
ments during the pandemic. The
Ta liban in Afghanistan, Comando

COLOmBiA from A

Colombian factions use

curfews to assert control

solidify their grip because police

and soldiers have withdrawn dur-

ing the outbreak. The groups, as

dangerous as they are, have filled

the v oid l eft by the absent state.

“In a way, they do what the

national government has done,

but they’re threatening,” said the

official, who spoke on the condi-

activities, such as shopping for

groceries.

“They've practically taken total

control with coronavirus,” s aid Le-

ticia, who declined to give her last

name out of fear for reprisal.

A senior security official inves-

tigating the Paredes shooting said

armed groups have been able to

migrants for drinking alcohol in

public.

In Tumaco, f ArC dissidents

forced a local family out of their

home because one member tested

positive for the coronavirus. Now

residents are terrified to get tested

themselves. They say they must

seek permission for even basic

fERnAnDO VERgARA/AssOCIAtED PREss

COuRtEsy Of LOREnA PAREDEs

TOP: A soldier guards an area of Bogota, Colombia, with a high number of virus cases. ABOVE: Lorena

Paredes was shot in this SUV by c urfew enforcers. Government control in some states has weakened.

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