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Refugees Fear Paramilitaries

Tim Rogers, Jun 20, 2003

Colombians seek escape route following alleged death threats.

Terrified that the violence and death threats they fled from in their native country have followed them here, a group of Colombian refugees is resorting to desperate measures to convince Costa Rican authorities that paramilitary and guerrilla groups have infiltrated Costa Rica.

The Costa Rican government and local rights groups insist there is no evidence to support the claims, but the refugees are adamant that the threat is real, and say Costa Rica has become a "powder keg."

During the past year, several Colombians have been gunned down by armed men on motorcycles. With the assailants still at large, the refugees fear that paramilitary groups are hunting them down and systematically killing them off.

After two months of clamoring for protection outside the gates of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in San José, a group of 30 Colombian refugees stormed and occupied the court February 2, demanding to be relocated to a third country.

The group, calling itself the Colombian Refugee Human Rights Association (CRHRA) and claiming to have more than 1,000 members, was met with mild resistance from the security guards, who called for police backup. The organizers expected several hundred refugees to show up for the occupation but most stayed at home, fearing deportation by Costa Rican authorities or violent reprisal from paramilitaries.

"I am ready to stay here with my family until we can be offered some protection," a determined 66-year-old mother said. "We continue to have our lives threatened here; my son has been followed and we have had cars sitting outside our house."

"We left Colombia out of fear for our safety; but we found the same situation here," said 40-year-old José Rafael, who claims he was kidnapped by guerrillas two years ago during a road ambush before being released to deliver a message to the other side. "I’ve received three or four telephone death threats."

The testimonies of other Colombian refugees are similar. All spoke of death threats from splinter paramilitary groups or contract killers sent to Costa Rica to eliminate witnesses, former policemen, or relatives of "enemies."

Pablo, a former state intelligence employee who spent several years investigating a paramilitary leader suspected of leading a 1999 massacre of 12 campesinos in Castillo, a rural northwest town, left Colombia with his wife and four children in October 2002 after being attacked. Four of the nine police officers under his command were killed in car-bomb explosions in Colombia, he said.

Pablo was not in Costa Rica more than a month when he saw the same paramilitary leader he had been investigating in Colombia on the downtown street of Jacó, a popular beach town on the Pacific. The telephone death threats started hours later, he said, warning him: "We have found you; you can’t escape from us."

Pablo and his family changed homes three times in the first four months of the year, and now want to get out of Costa Rica. "I came here to send my wife and kids inside the court, where they will be safe," he said at the protest. When the police arrived, however, the Colombians were instructed that they were "disrespecting Costa Rican Law," and told they had three minutes to leave the premises. They left the court grounds reluctantly but peacefully, and the leaders quickly disappeared.

According to The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) there are more than 7,200 Colombian refugees in Costa Rica. Last year alone, some 4,500 Colombians were granted refugee status as they fled escalating violence and persecution in their native country, and the flow is expected to continue.

UNHCR spokesman Giovanni Monge said he knows of the CRHRA and has received numerous relocation requests from its members. Monge said, however, that he had seen no evidence of persecution by hit men or paramilitary groups.

"The UNHCR and the Costa Rican government have not been able to determine the existence of paramilitary or guerrilla-affiliated groups," he said. "There is no evidence that these groups have become institutionalized here." The government’s Immigration Director Marco Badilla agreed, saying there is "no proof that such groups exist here."

The US, however, is currently trying to extradite from Costa Rica two Colombian men identified as United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) paramilitary leaders "Commandante Emilio," and "Commandante Napo." The two suspects were arrested in San José during a joint FBI-Costa Rican sting operation Nov. 5, 2002. The man identified by the US as "Commandante Emilio" claims he has nothing to do with the AUC and that he has been confused with someone else.

Costa Rican authorities claim that many Colombian refugees want to be relocated to developed countries, such as Canada, for economic reasons and are using personal safety as an escape route. The refugees — many of whom are visibly paranoid — tell a different story, however.

One man, who says he used to work for Colombian military intelligence, claimed he had been approached by paramilitaries trying to contract him to eliminate a list of refugees in Costa Rica. He says there are some 30 contract killers in Costa Rica waiting for money and orders. "The hit list is a sign of bad things to come," he said.

Roberto Cuéllar, executive director of the Inter-American Institute of Human Rights, said the refugees must prove the alleged persecution. Cuéllar, himself a former Salvadoran refugee in the 1980s, has worked with Salvadoran refugees in Honduras and Guatemalan refugees in Mexico. Both groups were able to get international help after proving that they were being hunted by paramilitaries in their countries of exile.

The Colombians are frustrated that they have yet to convince the Costa Rican government or rights organizations that they are in imminent danger. "We are getting treated like this is a joke, but it’s not a game!" said one protester. Although many of the Colombians did not show up for the planned takeover of the Court, the group is reportedly planning a similar takeover of a foreign embassy in the near future.