The Issue

In 2017, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights reported that at least 105 human rights defenders in Colombia were killed. The organization Somos Defensores noted that the killings in the first half of 2017 represented an increase of 31% compared to the same period in 2016. Both press and government officials routinely conducted smear campaigns against those who worked to bring justice for the victims. They would link human rights organizations to armed groups and accused them of embezzling victims’ compensation to cast doubt on the credibility of human rights work in Colombia and beyond.

One case was particularly challenging for the lawyers collective  Colectivo de Abogados José Alvear Restrepo (CAJAR) and the broader human rights community in Colombia. In July 1997, paramilitaries carried out a massacre in the town of Mapiripan, brutally killing dozens of people and displacing hundreds of others. CAJAR represented many of the families seeking justice. The Inter-American Court on Human Rights ordered the state of Colombia to pay millions of U.S. Dollars in reparations to the families of those affected by the massacre. However, in 2011, one of the plaintiffs retracted her original statement, saying that her son had reappeared and that her husband had actually died prior to the massacre. The state of Colombia then petitioned the Inter-American Court on Human Rights to review their decision and CAJAR faced accusations of fabricating plaintiffs for the sake of compensation. President Juan Manuel Santos labeled CAJAR’s lawyers as “greedy” and “corrupt,” unleashing a media campaign that exposed human rights defenders to a new wave of attacks, harassment and intimidation. In addition to increasing the overall stigma around human rights work in Colombia, this created distrust between CAJAR and clients in other cases, impeding others’ efforts to seek justice.

The Organizations

Colectivo de Abogados José Alvear Restrepo (CAJAR) promotes and protects human rights in Colombia, especially the rights of activists to carry out their work in safety. CAJAR plays a key role in ensuring that victims are represented in Colombia’s ongoing peace process and in subsequent post-conflict transitional justice mechanisms.

The Comisión Intereclesial de Justicia y Paz supports community processes in Afro-descendant, mixed and indigenous communities or organizations who use nonviolent methods in armed conflict areas.

The Corporación Jurídica Yira Castro (CJYC) conducts trainings, provides legal assistance and advocates for justice at the national and international levels around many issues, especially land and internal displacement.

The New Media Advocacy Project (NMAP) combines legal expertise with cutting edge communication tools to strengthen human rights and social justice work. It helps advocates tell their stories in compelling and powerful ways to tip the balance in the toughest cases and campaigns. In 2016, NMAP received a grant to support the work of lawyers in the Bertha Justice Network of which CAJAR is a member. CAJAR then brought onboard the other three Colombian organizations in a joint-effort to change the narrative around human rights defenders.

The Videos

Produced by CAJAR and NMAP, the Words that Kill series is comprised of a short introduction video followed by four 7 minute videos on specific cases that can be stand alone films or be viewed together sequentially. The four videos cover the following cases:
1) CAJAR’s work on the Mapiripan Massacre and how authorities and the media used one retracted testimony to cast doubt on all the other plaintiffs and their lawyers;
2) CAJAR’s work on the case of David Ravelo, who was falsely accused of murder and imprisoned after having denounced several massacres carried out by paramilitaries;
3) Yira Castro’s work on the restitution of land and accusations of the organization reaping economic gains from this work;
4) Justicia y Paz’s work with communities who oppose companies that negatively affect their livelihoods and the need to counter accusations by government and company representatives that Justicia y Paz is linked to armed guerrilla groups.

NMAP filmed and edited these videos over the course of five months. They found government officials to be more responsive to requests to speak on camera for interviews if they came from a foreign organization such as NMAP than a Colombian organization such as CAJAR, further demonstrating how smear campaigns affect Colombian organizations’ ability to access decision-makers. In addition to the series of four videos, NMAP created a few shorter 1 minute spots for Twitter as teasers to persuade viewers to watch the full 7 minute videos on the cases.

Contrary to many advocacy videos, Words that Kill sought to shift an overall narrative around human rights defenders and therefore NMAP and CAJAR made a deliberate decision to refrain from asking the viewer to take a position on a particular case or issue. Instead, the videos only ask the viewer to distribute the content further via social media.