Who are the political prisoners in Colombia?

Who are the political prisoners in Colombia?
by: Liliany Obando
October 22 2015

Political prisoners do exist in Colombia. In the current context of peace negotiations between the government and the FARC-EP guerrillas, and prior to the eventual beginning of talks with the National Liberation Army (ELN), recognition of such is absolutely necessary. It would be incomprehensible if an agreement to end the conflict does take place while thousands of political prisoners still remain behind bars, not to speak of those who were convicted unjustly - the convicted innocent - and who did not have the possibility of their cases being reviewed and, in this way, to be remedied, late though it may be.

Data on the extreme violence of Colombia's long, internal armed conflict suggest that the condition of those imprisoned today as political prisoners is becoming more and more complex. It's not a matter exclusively of those men and women who joined the insurgencies as combatants and who are defined as prisoners of war under international law, but rather of the great majority of Colombian political prisoners who are drawn from the non-combatant majority population. They are political prisoners of conscience and political prisoners in connection with the internal armed conflict. The latter belong to the unarmed political opposition.

They are defenders of human rights, critical thinkers, or take part in social movements, labor unions, the student movement, small farmer organizations, and groups representing indigenous or African- descended Colombians.

This tragic reality, among others, is quite understandable as the result of a politics that distorts the idea of political crime and converts the universal right of rebellion into a crime. And the latter is used as a weapon for persecuting those in the opposition, whether they are under arms or are legal. In this way thousands of political prisoners are not even being tried or sentenced for political crimes as strictly defined like rebellion, sedition, rioting, and crimes related to these as established by the Colombian criminal justice system. Instead they face charges that are beyond the realm of political crime and quite separate. We are speaking of common crimes like terrorism, kidnapping, forced displacement, forced recruitment of minors, and narco-trafficking. Additionally, through false allegations of this last crime, that of narco-trafficking, some political prisoners have ended up being extradited to the United States, although the Colombian Constitution prohibits extradition for political crimes.

More:
http://peoplesworld.org/who-are-the-political-prisoners-in-colombia/