The life and freedom of participants of electoral processes have come under threat for more than a decade. During the presidential campaign of 1990, three presidential candidates were murdered: Luis Carlos Galan Sarmiento of the Liberal party, Bernardo Jaramillo Ossa of the Patriotic Union and Carlos Pizarro of the M-19, an organization that had arisen from the demobilisation of the guerrilla group. Besides those previously mentioned, other two former presidential candidates were murdered outside the electoral season. The 1987 murder of Jaime Pardo Leal, representative of the Patriotic Union, and the 1997 assassination of Alvaro Gómez Hurtado, Conservative candidate on several occasions and victim of a previous political kidnapping. The recent abduction of presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt, failed assassination attempts against candidates Alvaro Uribe Velez and Luis Eduardo Garzon, and obstacles placed on Horacio Serpa´s campaign including the march to the demilitarized zone reflect the degree of difficulty experienced in the present time.

Towards the end of the 1980´s, the security situation was particularly serious for leaders and members of the Patriotic Union and the Colombian Communist Party. No less than 1.500 members or sympathizers of these two parties were murdered. Besides, scores of militants of the Hope, Peace and Liberty Movement (Esperanza, Paz y Libertad Movement, or EPL) were murdered or threatened after their demobilisation as a guerrilla group in the early 1990´s.

In the course of the present electoral process there have been frequent attacks to the life and freedom of members of the Congress of the Republic. Data collected by the Observatory for the Oversight of the Electoral Process at the Ministry of the Interior show 28 cases of attacks to members, former member and candidates to the Congress of the Republic. Several members of the present Congress have been kidnapped for political or extortive ends. During the last four years, the FARC, the ELN, the EPL and the AUC have abducted 21 members of Congress.

Source: Ministry of the Interior, Observatory for Oversight of the Electoral Process.

Between 1988 and 2001, 1.798, political leaders, activists and electoral officials were killed, according to figures from DAS. This data includes the homicide of four presidential candidates, eleven congressional candidates, 72 mayoral candidates and 92 candidates to the municipality councils.

The guerrillas have great responsibility in the deaths and abductions of leading politicians. The FARC have been responsible for the deaths of national leaders while the ELN has employed kidnapping more frequently. Regarding local level candidates, both insurgent groups and especially the ELN have been authors of a fair share of registered homicides. The FARC increased their attacks against political figures in 1993, a pre-electoral year, during which they committed 22% of the homicides against leading politicians at all levels. In 1996, they were responsible for 40% of these. In more recent times, actions of this type on the part of the FARC have surpassed in number those committed by the ELN.

Also, a significant part of these attacks to political leaders and activists, many of them related to the electoral process and to historical differences, are attributed to illegal self-defense groups or to unkown actors, in spite of the difficulties in establishing cathegories and authors for these actions. The periods showing the biggest incidence of illegal self-defense groups and unknown authors in the responsibility for these crimes, coincides with periods of booming drug cartels, and more recently, to the period of consolidation of illegal self-defense groups.

During the current electoral process, acts of violence have affected candidates to the Congress and the Presidency, as well as mayors, local council members, governors and members of provincial assemblies, and members of local neighborhood associations. Their families have also been victims of violent acts by the illegal armed groups. The Observatory for the Oversight of the Electoral Process at the Ministry of the Interior has documented 138 cases of attacks against mayors, and present and former candidates to the various elected bodies. From January 2001 to February 24 2002, 47 murders and 53 kidnappings were recorded, besides frequent threaths to candidates and political leaders. Data from the Association of Municipalities reports that between January 2001 and February 20, 2002, nine acting mayors were murdered and eleven kidnapped, while 13 former mayors were killed between the year 2001 and February 20 2002.

To these difficulties one must add the intimidation of candidates and voters, affecting human and political rights during the current electoral process. According to some sources, the illegal armed groups are exerting pressure on voters and have forcefully impeded political campaign acts. Under these circunstances, appearances by candidates in the media has replaced public presentations. Moreover some Congress´candidates have been forced to share their public meetings with rivals for security reasons.

The difficulty in the organisation of local elections in many places of Colombia due to pressure by illegal armed groups, was especially notorious in the 1997 polls, when elections were postponed in 43 places of the country. The frail nature of human rights in the electoral process as a consequence of armed conflict was evidenced through the ocurrence of electoral intimidation by the guerrilla in 110 municipalities, and the abduction, death or forced resignation of various candidates. The 2000 local and regional election were similarly characterised by events such as the murder of 19 mayoral candidates and 15 candidates, as well as violent acts ocurring in 264 municipalities. To this scene, one must add the conflict´s impact on political rights, participation and political pluralism as a result of limitations on free elections in the midst of voter fear.