I will make a brief five to ten minutes presentation on the general situation. When we achieved power on 7 August 2002, there were 170 Colombian towns with no authority present. There were 250 mayors who had resigned due to threats from the FARC, the extreme left-wing organisation. There were 3,000 kidnappings a year, 29,000 murders and 320,000 displaced Colombians due to the activities of the illegal groups from the extreme left and extreme right, while most roads were closed. If a person travelled a road, he or she was kidnapped by the extreme left groups which then started asking for money for his or her release. There were 120 trade union leaders killed. Broadly, we had to confront a very difficult situation.
What have we done? In the first week we taxed the 1% richest Colombians - a $1 billion tax - and put all of the money into the army and police. Today we have a police and army presence in every town in Colombia. We have started regaining control of the country. In 2003 there was a 20% reduction in the murder rate. This means 5,800 fewer Colombians were killed last year than the year before. The number of trade union leaders killed fell from 120 to 51. Displacement numbers have fallen from 320,000 to 152,000 a year. The number of kidnappings has fallen from 3,000 to 2,200. All but 14 of the mayors are back in place and there have been elections in many of the towns which had never had elections.
In October last year we held elections in which the democratic left won in many independent areas while the Government was defeated in a referendum. There is, therefore, a vibrant democracy. Sometimes this is forgotten. Colombia is the oldest and most stable democracy in Latin America. We have had uninterrupted power changes via democratic processes for the past 100 years. We have only had one hiatus of four years between 1953 and 1957, but other than that we have had democratic transitions. We have a separation of powers, and what the Government did was to start gaining control of that situation.
Are we happy with the result? Certainly not. We want zero trade union leaders killed. It is impossible to accept 22,000 murders or 2,200 kidnappings. Some 150,000 displaced Colombians is too many, but we are moving in the right direction. Right now Colombians feel their situation has dramatically improved. According to independent surveys, support for the Colombian Government is approximately 80%. We have had two tax increases because Colombians not only feel a lot more secure but are a lot more secure. A human rights policy, the right to life, has been preserved, with 5,800 more Colombians alive today. The right to liberty, a basic fundamental human right, has been preserved more than before, with 800 fewer kidnappings. The right to life and liberty and economic and social rights has been widened, with 170,000 fewer displaced Colombians.
The right to elect and be elected has been increased, with the powers of governability that mayors and governors now have in many areas where they had none before. A basic human rights policy is producing results and the people of Colombia are happy with it. The people understand for the first time that living in a secure country is a possibility.
In regard to peace processes, from day one the Government opened the door for a peace process. We have one condition, namely a ceasefire. At the beginning we had a peace process with the FARC in which the Government wanted to involve a United Nations envoy to see if we could open the door to negotiations. So far nothing has happened, not because the Government does not accept the process but because the FARC, an extreme leftist group that uses drug trafficking and kidnapping as its main source of financing and uses terror as its main presence, did not accept it.
Speaking of terror, Colombia has witnessed 8,000 explosive-induced attacks in the past six years. In 2002 there were 1,645 explosive-induced attacks, 74 instances of destruction of pipelines, 483 instances of destruction of power lines, 63 instances of destruction of communication towers, 100 instances of destruction of bridges, 248 instances of destruction of contained waste, 32 instances of destruction of populations and 12 instances of destruction of operatives. In addition, there were other attacks with car bombs, bicycle bombs, motorcycle bombs, horse bombs, cadaver bombs and all types of bombs to kill Colombians. Such incidents were reduced by 48% in 2003. For example, the number of attacks on populations went down from 32 to five. I will leave the committee a copy of a document containing all the information about what we are doing and what are the results.
The FARC does not want to negotiate. The ELN is another extreme leftist group that uses terrorism and is financed mainly through extortion and kidnappings; it is not financed as much but is getting involved in kidnapping. We started talking with them in Cuba but nothing has happened. They would not accept dialogue or negotiations. The extreme right illegal groups are also involved in drug trafficking and also kill and displace Colombians and commit human rights violations. We entered into a process with the Catholic Church and it has moved along. We have been able to start negotiations. There was a ceasefire, with which those organisations have not complied totally, but we are at the point at which we involve the OAS, the Organisation of American States, to supervise the process. The American Commission of Human Rights will supervise all of the human rights provisions of the process.
We are moving towards the concentration of troops. We want to demobilise and disarm them. Among the extreme right illegal groups there are 15,000 well armed men. On the extreme left there are approximately 20,000 well armed men. This is a threat to Colombian democracy, the oldest and most stable democracy on the continent. It is not a civil war as the country is not divided. These are illegal organisations which have huge amounts of money to finance their organisations but they have no political support and do not control territory. Nevertheless they are very powerful and are a threat to Colombian stability and democracy, and we must contain and defeat them. We must open the door to negotiations but they must want to come in.
We work very closely with the United Nations human rights office in Colombia. We disagreed with the United Nations document and I will leave the committee a copy of our response. We disagree openly and democratically, and we will still engage with the UN and work with it in bettering the situation in Colombia.
The term "humanitarian exchange" is a horrendous description. First, it is not humanitarian because one is putting on the same level somebody who is captured and tried and somebody who is an innocent civilian. There is a difference. Second, the Government has accepted it under two conditions - that they free all kidnapped people and that the people we free from jails will not go back to the organisations that keep killing, kidnapping and using explosives. They have not accepted that. In fact, President Chirac said last week that France would take the prisoners from the FARC that we let go, but the FARC said it would not accept that because it wanted its men back. It wants them to keep kidnapping.
I am a former kidnap victim. How can I look anybody in the face, including the President, whose father was killed during a kidnapping attempt, or look any Colombian in the eye and tell him that we will release a Colombian who has more than 400 kidnappings under his belt so that he can keep kidnapping? How can we look any Colombian in the eye when we release somebody who has planted car bombs all over Colombia? These are the type of people they want released. Our position is that we can have an exchange - which is not humanitarian, it is a diabolical exchange - but they cannot go back to killing people.
Some months ago there was a rescue attempt of the former governor of a province and a former defence Minister who had been taken as political hostages. They were killed. I agree that it was not such a good effort on the part of the army, but the order of a commander was to shoot these people before leaving. They killed the two men and nine other people who were with them. The person who gave the order had been released in an exchange two years ago. Should we follow that path? I do not think so.
Another point made concerned the trial of the three Irishmen. Let me talk about the judicial system in Colombia. As I said in a meeting before, Montesqueu also went to Colombia. We also inherited his ideas so we have a very strict separation of powers. The judiciary has its own budget and makes its own decisions. We cannot influence decisions. There are rules as to how much time can be taken to reach decisions, and we must wait until the judge decides independently in this case. Let us hope that the ruling will satisfy all of us.
We as a Government cannot pressure the judicial system or push it to do something before the time limit constraints contained within the law have been reached. We respect the judicial system. Yes, it could be better, but we have to respect and work with what we have. We are changing it but those changes will become a reality in 2005. We have to respect the institutions of the Colombian judicial system. We have to respect the Attorney General's office, which conducted the investigation, and respect the judge. He is taking too much time but that is his prerogative. He is within the time constraints. As I said, I spoke with the Supreme Judicial Council, which is the only body that can decide what to do with that case, and I was told the judge had told them the ruling would be out in March. Let us hope in the next seven days the judge will comply with that. The independence of judges is also very important in Colombia.
They have had total access to the process. We have been transparent with the information. The process has been subject to a lot of international supervision and there has been a great deal of engagement. It is a democracy. That is what we should do. However, one cannot tell the Government to pressure a judge. That would be outside of the law. Let us wait for the judge to issue the ruling as soon as possible.