“My life is governed by only one thing; journalism.”

This Thursday the Frontline Club welcomes Colombia’s leading reporter, María Jimena Duzán, in conversation with freelance journalist and author Ed Vulliamy, to count the costs. The cost of 30 years spent reporting civil war, of facing drug cartels armed with just a pen – and the cost Colombia is paying to protect the fragility of peace.

2 years into the historic agreement between Colombia’s government and the leaders of the main Marxist rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the country faces serious obstacles in the path of realising a lasting peace. Conservative President Ivan Duque makes no secret of his lack of faith in the Havana accord. Murder rates are on the rise, again. New and increasingly bloody narcoparamilitary groups fight each other for control of cocaine production that continues to feed north America’s seemingly insatiable desire for the drug. As Venezuela sinks further into crisis, and the second term of President Maduro shows little light for hope, Colombia is host to over one million refugees and rising.

Join Maria and Ed Vulliamy as they discuss how – and if – Colombia can keep paying the price of peace.

Speakers:

María Jimena Duzán is an internationally renowned and award-winning journalist and author; in 2005, she won the Premio de Periodismo Simón Bolivar, has been honored by the Alliance des Femmes International, and is a recipient of a Nieman fellowship. By age 30, she had already worked as foreign editor, columnist, and chief investigator for El Espectador, the Bogotá daily, covering the Colombian drug trade. Her writing has appeared internationally in El Tiempo, The Wall Street Journal, Newsday, Marie Claire, and Revista Semana. After her sister was gunned down while reporting on a story about drug trafficking and paramilitary squads, Duzán went into exile; she told this story in her book Mi viaje al infierno. She continues to write and appear on radio programs, as well as teaching journalism in Bogotá, where she founded and directed the country’s first post-graduate degree in journalism.

Ed Vulliamy is a journalist and author who has worked for more than 30 years as a staff international reporter with the Guardian and Observer newspapers of London. He won all major awards in British journalism for his coverage of the Balkan wars between 1991-5, and discovered the gulag of concentration camps operated by the Bosnian Serbs in the Northwest Krajina region of Bosnia. As a result, he became the first reporter to testify at a war crimes tribunal since those at Nuremberg, testifying in nine trials at the ICTY, including those of Radovan Karadžić and General Ratko Mladić. His most recent publications include ‘When Words Fail: A Life With Music, War and Peace’.

photograph by kind permission of freelance photojournalist Camilo Rozo @rozomilo

BOOK TICKETS HERE

  Watch the video stream of The Price of Peace: An Evening With María Jimena Duzán

Winner of the 2016 Peabody Award, Don’t Tell Anyone (No Le Digas A Nadie) follows a young woman’s remarkable journey from poverty and civil war in rural Colombia to the front page of The New York Times.

Angy Rivera has lived in the U.S. with a dangerous secret: she is undocumented. Now 24, after years of living in the shadows, battling a complex and inequitable immigration system, and facing an uncertain future, Angy joins pro-immigration rallies and proclaims she is “undocumented and proud” – her compelling journey places a human face on the current national immigration debate.

Directed by: Mikaela Shwer
Country: United States
Year: 2015
Runtime: 75′

DOC:Supper is a media project created to bring communities together around meaningful documentary screenings, debates and food. We connect filmmakers , storytellers and field experts with community venues to stimulate social change and greater empathy.

Vulliamy spoke with Néstor Osorio Londoño, Colombia’s Ambassador to the United Kingdom and Charlotte Gill, the director of the Caravana charity which promotes and protects human rights in the country. The audience all had the same question in mind – why did 50.2% of voters choose to reject the offer of peace?

In a war that has killed 250,000 and displaced more than 6 million, Gill thinks that “victims’ voices were lost” as the peace deal was debated in the build up to the referendum. Colombia’s largest cities largely rejected the deal offered by the government.

“It’s not just putting down your gun, it is looking at the systemic reasons why that violence occurs, why impunity exists for that violence, and really tackling those.” For the victims peace means truth, justice and guarantees of no repetition. “It’s not necessarily about retribution,” Gill said.

Londoño is optimistic that the negotiations have opened the doors to peace, and to an understanding of the conflict.

“One of the biggest revelations of this process has been to witness the personalities of the Farc leaders and for them to discover the personalities of our negotiators. They are very articulate, intelligent people that have been genuinely fighting for a cause but with the wrong methods. I think that this [peace] process has allowed them to become closer to society.”

Yet, Londoño is the first to admit the process had its flaws, as – he reminds us in the wake of the British vote on the EU – referendums do. “Many of the people who vote No just vote against the government, and wake up thinking ‘Oh my goodness, I voted No but I didn’t know we were going to win’,” he said, “It’s like the Brexit feeling.”

Gill agrees, “If you feel totally isolated, vulnerable and attacked by the state then engaging in a process that’s driven by the state may not be something you want to be part of.” She believes this could also explain the extremely low turnout of 38% – along with complacency as polls pointed to support for the peace treaty. With Hurricane Matthew tearing through the country on the same day people may have been reluctant to go out and vote.

Nor did all people understand the terms of the vote. They were given very little warning, Gill said. Especially in such a polarised and dispersed society, six weeks was not enough time to reach the people.

“People were not sufficiently educated and informed about what was going on,” Londoño agrees. He wonders how many people read the 297-page peace accord, and accepts the government should have done more: “If you are thinking about consulting your people you have to educate, inform. This vote wasn’t very well informed. It was a reactive passion.”

Yet, Londoño does not regret putting the decision to the public, when it could have easily been passed through Congress with a majority. “It is important to give the people the last word on a matter of crucial importance to the country,” he said. After all, “peace belongs to the country and to the people of Colombia.”

The result must not lead to another dragging peace negotiation, Londoño insists. Nor can it be solved through minor changes. “There must be real and concrete modifications to political participation and justice,” he said.

After four years of negotiations, the Colombian government and the largest rebel group in the country have reached a deal to end more than 50 years of civil conflict, paving the way for an end to the longest running war in the Americas. The asymmetrical Colombian Conflict lasted 52 years, claimed over 220,000 lives and displaced more than five million people.

The peace agreement outlines a timetable for the rebels, known as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, to abandon their arms. It also sets out a pathway through which former fighters will enter civilian life, and in some cases, run for office. Thousands of rebel fighters were raised since childhood to carry out armed struggle and re-integration into civilian life remains an uncertain process. While the deal has been met with praise from many international leaders, critics of the agreement have said that the government’s deal with the FARC would allow perpetrators of atrocities, among the rebels and on the government side, to be dealt minimal punishment.

Can Colombia become a symbol of hope in a world wracked with conflict? We will be joined by a panel of journalists and experts to discuss this historic peace agreement and what it means for the people of Colombia.

Speakers:

Ed Vulliamy is a writer for The Guardian and The Observer. In 2013, he won the award for literary reporting named after the Polish writer Ryszard Kapuściński for his book Amexica: War Along the Borderline, a vivid dissection of the violent US-Mexico ‘war on drugs’.

Charlotte Gill has been involved in the Colombian Caravana since 2010 and has been a director since 2012. The Colombian Caravana UK Lawyers Group is a charity which works to promote and protect human rights and access to justice in Colombia through working in collaboration with Colombian human rights lawyers and recently organised its fifth biennial international delegation of lawyers to the county. Charlotte has an MSc in Human Rights from the London School of Economics and wrote her dissertation on the Peace Community of San José de Apartadó. Additionally, Charlotte currently works on campaigns and advocacy at ARTICLE 19, a human rights organisation dedicated to the defence of freedom of expression globally.

HE MR Néstor Osorio Londoño is a Colombian diplomat. He became Colombia’s Ambassador to the United Kingdom in February 2014. He was the 27th Permanent Representative of Colombia to the United Nations.

On Wednesday 4 December the Frontline Club welcomed Jineth Bedoya Lima, a journalist with Colombian national newspaper El Tiempo and recipient of the 2012 International Women of Courage Award, to discuss her prolific journalistic career and work in combatting violence against women. The discussion, chaired by The Guardian’s Ed Vulliamy, largely focused on the “habitual, extensive, and systematic violation” of women in Colombia, the record levels of impunity for crimes of sexual violence, and Colombia’s peace process.

Whilst on assignment for the daily newspaper El Espectador in her native Colombia, Jineth Bedoya Lima was abducted, tortured and raped by members of the AUC, a right-wing paramilitary group. She was kidnapped again in 2003 by left-wing FARC guerrillas whilst investigating a FARC-held town forced into cocaine production. Vulliamy introduced Bedoya Lima with the statement that “in terms of courage and endurance and experience, there’s nobody…who knows what Jineth knows.”

L-R: Ed Vulliamy, Jineth Bedoya Lima, James Lupton

When questioned by Vulliamy as to how she was able to return to work just 15 days after her first abduction, Bedoya Lima responded (with the help of translator James Lupton):

“I believe as a journalist I fell in love with the profession from the first day that I started it – and they say that love conquers all… But also I had a need to know what had happened… and why.”

Vulliamy raised the issue of the proliferation of conflict-related sexual violence:

“This is not some byproduct of warfare, this is the quintessence of what is happening, it is at the core of what is happening. Great hidden, unspoken crime and horror that appears to an ubiquitous experience.”

Bedoya Lima offered examples specific to Colombia:

“There are dramatic cases in rural areas in Colombia where women have been beaten, where their breasts have been cut off, where they’ve been amputated, where  – and this is especially a practice of the paramilitaries – they’ve been abused and beaten in order to serve as a warning.”

She later added that “the bodies of women are weapons in all wars”.

The question of impunity for crimes of violence against women was explored, with Bedoya Lima highlighting striking statistics:

“In Colombia, the levels of impunity for crimes of sexual violence have reached 98%…Of the 150,000 rapes of women that had been recognised by the paramilitary groups, only 2 have resulted in guilty verdicts. The levels of impunity are just terrifying.”

An audience member enquired as to whether recent attempts to publicise Colombia as a tourist destination – and the optimistic terms in which the country is currently being discussed – were beneficial to Colombia’s future, or if they were in fact distracting the focus away from the scale of systematic violence. Bedoya Lima responded:

“I want to hear people speak well of my country. I love Colombia…But we can’t allow that to happen behind a smokescreen that tries to cover up…the bad things that are happening… Medellin has just been named the ‘Innovation City of the World’…and that’s true for the people who have got the money to enjoy it…but just 15 minutes away from the beautiful, innovative centre of Medellin there are 10 year old children…who are packing a pistol!”

Another audience member asked whether it was realistic to hope for the active involvement of the International Criminal Court (ICC) given the level of impunity for crimes of sexual violence in Colombia. Bedoya Lima:

“In Colombia, there is only one case of sexual violence that has been recognised as a crime against humanity – and that’s my case. But even in that case, there has been no will shown by the government, or by the state to punish the perpetrators…. So it is our hope, as survivors of sexual violence, that with the pressures and the actions of the ICC, that something might be done about sexual violence in Colombia.”

A member of the audience asked Bedoya Lima whether her trip to Europe had been successful in drumming up international support for an end to conflict-related crimes of sexual violence in Colombia. She responded:

“For me, this has been a very positive trip… I do think that we are going to be able to exert a certain amount of influence over the negotiations in Havana (the site of recent peace talks between the Colombian government and FARC rebels), and also on the Colombian government and the state, in order for them to act against sexual violence.”

Bedoya Lima closed the discussion with mention of her recent victory in drawing up an agreement with the Colombian Football Federation, in partnership with the UN, forcing footballers to publicly denounce crimes of violence against women, in order to raise awareness amongst Colombia’s male population.

The ABColumbia report, entitled Colombia: Women, Conflict-related Sexual Violence and the Peace Process, is available for download here.

A video of the event is available to watch below:

https://soundcloud.com/frontlineclub/insight-with-jineth-bedoya

Despite the constant threat, she continues to work tirelessly to investigate armed conflict, drug trafficking, organised crime and issues around women and violence. Currently working for the national newspaper El Tiempo, in 2012 she was one of 10 women awarded the International Women of Courage Award and in October this year she was named as one of the 100 most influential journalists covering armed violence and conflict around the world, by Action on Armed Violence (AOAV).

We are honoured to welcome Jineth Bedoya Lima to the Frontline Club, she will be talking to Ed Vulliamy, a writer for The Guardian and Observer, about her prolific career as a journalist in Colombia, the work she does on conflict-related sexual violence and the ongoing peace process.

By Nicole Hunt

This week begins and ends with big trials, with German businessman Gerhard Gribkowsky’s high-profile corruption trial kicking things off in Munich on Monday. The former BayernLB risk manager is accused of accepting a £28m bribe during the 2006 sale of the bank’s shares in Formula One holding company SLEC. The shares were sold to CVC Capital Partners; Bernie Ecclestone, who runs F1 on behalf of CVC, is expected to testify on Gribkowsky’s behalf during the trial.

In other big testimony news, British lawyer David Mills is scheduled to testify at Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s bribery trial in Milan, where Berlusconi is accused of paying Mills £350,000 in exchange for favourable testimony in court cases in 1997 and 1998.

On Tuesday, a Paris court is expected to rule on whether former News of the World reporter Neville Thurlbeck and his employers, News Group Newspapers, breached French privacy and defamation laws by publishing his 2008 article about former FIA president Max Mosley’s sex life.

Moving away from the courts for the mid-week, the annual EU-China Summit takes place in Tianjin, with EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs Catherine Ashton leading the EU delegation and human rights and trade expected to dominate the agenda.

The UN Population Fund (UNFPA) releases its State of the World Population 2011 report on Wednesday, five days before the world’s population is set to hit seven billion.

Wednesday is also the first of two interesting days at the European Parliament, as MEPs vote on the EU’s 2012 draft budget in Strasbourg. The budget controversially includes a 4.9 per cent spending increase while the euro zone debt problems increase and member states are paring back domestic spending.

On Thursday, the Parliament’s Conference of Presidents unveils the winner of this year’s Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought, which last year went to Cuban dissident Guillermo Harinas Hernandez, who was unable to collect his prize in December because he was not allowed to leave Cuba. This year’s nominees include five Arab Spring activists (nominated jointly), including: Tunisian Mohamed Bouazizi, whose self-immolation on 17 December 2010 was the catalyst for the region’s pro-democracy protests; Egyptian youth activist Asmaa Mahfouz; Libya’s longest-serving prisoner of conscience, 77-year-old Ahmed al Zubair Ahmed al Sanusi ; Syrian activist Razan Zeitouneh; and Syrian cartoonist Ali Farzat.

Irish voters go to the polls to elect their President for a seven-year term, as well as to have their say in two referendums on constitutional amendments, one of which would allow a reduction in judicial salaries while the country tries to cut costs. A by-election also takes place in Dublin West, following the death of former Finance Minister Brian Lenihan on 10 June.

The three-day Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting begins in Perth, Australia on Friday. The Queen, who is wrapping up an 11 day visit to the country, official opens proceedings.

Italy holds the last of three bond auctions this week, hoping this month’s offering of three and 10 year bonds will garner more interest than previous auctions, which have received a lukewarm response as the country’s debt rating has been downgraded.

In Iran, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad celebrates his 55th birthday.

Israel’s social justice movement, which held sporadic protests in the summer and set up a tent city on Tel Aviv’s Rothschild Boulevard, has called for mass demonstrations on Saturday to protest rising living costs in the country.

Kyrgyzstan’s long-awaited presidential election takes place on Sunday. Following widespread rioting in April 2010, President Kyrmanbek Bakiyev’s leadership collapsed, and Rosa Otunbayeva’s interim government took over. Elections were initially scheduled for October 2010, but were later put off for a year as Otunbayeva officially took over as President; she is not permitted to run in this election.

Local elections also take place in Colombia, where the mayoral race in the capital of Bogota where former Mayor and Green Party candidate Enrique Peñalosa leads polls. Unsuccessful Presidential candidate Antanas Mockus, who abandoned his own mayoral bid, has thrown his support behind Independent candidate Gina Parody, but it remains to be seen whether his backing will be enough to put her ahead of Peñalosa.

Bahrain’s Royal Commission of Inquiry into political unrest earlier this year is due to issue its findings. The Commission includes Egyptian UN war crimes expert Mahmoud Cherif Bassiouni, Canadian ICC judge Philippe Kirsch, British human rights lawyer Nigel Rodley, Iranian lawyer Mahnoush Arsanjani and Kuwaiti law expert Badira al Awadi.

Finally, former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak could return to court in Cairo, depending on the outcome of a 22 October Appeals Court hearing. If the court rules against a motion requesting that Mubarak’s trial venue and judge be changed, his murder trial is scheduled to resume on Sunday. However, if the court approves the motion, the trial is likely to be delayed while a new venue and judge are arranged.

The Frontline Club starts the Narco Wars season on the War on Drugs on June 23rd. The season is packed with films, discussions and events focussed on the topic of drugs from Colombia to Afghanistan and into South East Asia. Here’s what’s coming up,

– June 23 – Photojournalist Jason P. Howe talks drugs in Colombia

– June 24 – Panel discussion about the impact of the Narco Wars in Mexico and around the world

– June 25 – Screening – Dancing with the Devil by Jon Blair in Rio de Janeiro

– June 30 – Colombia’s parapolitica

– July 3 – Screening – Mexico – Seven days in hell – Alex Nott and Siobhan Sinnerton

– July 8 – Narco Wars: Afghanistan

– July 15 – Narco Wars: Can the war be won?

If the Narco Wars season is anything as good as the short promo film above, put together by Leona Chaliha at the Frontline Club, this looks like a great month of drug discussion and films. Book your tickes early.

The Frontline Club starts the Narco Wars season on the War on Drugs on June 23rd. The season is packed with films, discussions and events focussed on the topic of drugs from Colombia to Afghanistan and into South East Asia. Here’s what’s coming up,

– June 23 – Photojournalist Jason P. Howe talks drugs in Colombia

– June 24 – Panel discussion about the impact of the Narco Wars in Mexico and around the world

– June 25 – Screening – Dancing with the Devil by Jon Blair in Rio de Janeiro

– June 30 – Colombia’s parapolitica

– July 3 – Screening – Mexico – Seven days in hell – Alex Nott and Siobhan Sinnerton

– July 8 – Narco Wars: Afghanistan

– July 15 – Narco Wars: Can the war be won?

If the Narco Wars season is anything as good as the short promo film above, put together by Leona Chaliha at the Frontline Club, this looks like a great month of drug discussion and films. Book your tickes early.

A total of 130 journalists were killed in Colombia in the past 30 years. The organisation notes that Colombian journalists are still regularly threatened by terrorist organisations. FLIP reports that death threats are still a highly effective way of preventing independent reporting. link

However, 2009 has already got off to a bad start for Colombian journalists. According to the Latin American Herald Tribune, Maria Eugenia Guerrero, a Colombian journalist was found dead on the outskirts of the Ecuadorian city of Tulcannear earlier this month,

[Guerrero] who was working for the Integracion Estereo station in the southern Colombian city of Ipiales, was brutally assaulted and killed and her body was left in a remote area outside Tulcan… The body, according to the forensics report, showed signs of sexual assault and it is presumed the journalist was killed in a violent manner because a portion of her skull was not found and had presumably been detached as a result of a severe blow. link