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AAAS Human Rights Action Network

Letter of Appeal from the AAAS Committee on Scientific Freedom and Responsibility

30 June 1999

Senor Presidente Andres Pastrana
Presidente de la Republica
Palacio de Narino
Carrera 8 No. 7-26
Santafe de Bogota, Colombia

Dear President Pastrana:

The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is the largest organization of natural and social scientists in the United States, and the world's largest federation of scientific organizations, with 143,000 individual members and 275 affiliated groups. Our AAAS Committee on Scientific Freedom and Responsibility was formed in 1976 to protect the human rights of scientists and to deal with issues relating to scientific freedom worldwide.

On behalf of the Committee, we are writing to express our concern about recent attacks against researchers working on human rights issues in Colombia, most notably the murder of Professor Hernan Henao Delgado on 4 May by presumed paramilitaries and the 30 April "disappearance" of Professor Dario Betancourt Echeverry. Professor Henao was an anthropologist and the director of the Institute of Regional Studies at the University of Antioquia. He had conducted extensive research on human rights, conflict, cultural diversity, and other social justice issues, studying in particular the living conditions of internally displaced populations in Colombia. Professor Betancourt, head of the social sciences department at the National University of Educational Sciences in Bogota, is a well-known specialist on violence who has conducted extensive research on human rights violations in Colombia. His kidnapping may have been politically motivated.

The killing of Professor Henao and the "disappearance" of Professor Betancourt are just two in a series of attacks that have been documented against university professors in Colombia, especially those who investigate social and human rights issues. On 6 May, Professor Argiro Giraldo Quintero, a law professor at the Cooperative University of Colombia, was shot at as he drove away from the University, but he survived the attack. Seven professors have been murdered in the last ten years at the University of Antioquia alone.

Widespread and systematic human rights violations have been documented in Colombia in recent years, including extrajudicial executions, "disappearances," torture, and arbitrary arrest. Kidnapping and hostage taking by armed opposition groups occur frequently, as do serious human rights violations committed with virtual impunity by members of the Colombian security forces and their paramilitary allies. Scholars who study the growing phenomenon of internal refugees in Colombia have recently become popular targets of
threat and attack by paramilitary forces.

The murder of Professor Henao, the "disappearance" of Professor Betancourt, and the attempt on the life of Professor Quintero constitute serious violations of internationally accepted human rights standards as promulgated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (adopted without opposition by the United Nations General Assembly on 10 December 1948), including the right to life, liberty, and security of the person, the right to freedom of thought, conscience, and religion. Under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the American Convention on Human Rights, both of which Colombia is a State Party and which your nation is therefore legally obligated to recognize, such actions constitute violations of the right to life and the right to freedom of expression, thought, and association.

The Committee calls on the Colombian government to undertake full and impartial investigations of these incidents, that the results of such investigations be made public, and that those responsible be brought to justice.

Sincerely,



Irving Lerch
Chair
AAAS Committee on Scientific Freedom and Responsibility

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