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In a landmark ruling for elementary freedoms in Colombia, the Inter-American Court docket of Human Rights discovered that for over twenty years the state authorities harassed, surveilled, and persecuted members of a lawyer’s group that defends human rights defenders, activists, and indigenous individuals, placing the attorneys’ lives in danger.
The ruling is a significant victory for civil rights in Colombia, which has a protracted historical past of abuse and violence towards human rights defenders, together with murders and dying threats. The case concerned the illegal and arbitrary surveillance of members of the Jose Alvear Restrepo Attorneys Collective (CAJAR), a Colombian human rights group defending victims of political persecution and neighborhood activists for over 40 years.
The court docket discovered that since not less than 1999, Colombian authorities carried out a continuing marketing campaign of pervasive secret surveillance of CAJAR members and their households. That state violated their rights to life, private integrity, personal life, freedom of expression and affiliation, and extra, the Court docket stated. It famous the actual influence skilled by ladies defenders and people who needed to go away the nation amid menace, assaults, and harassment for representing victims.
The choice is the primary by the Inter-American Court docket to discover a State liable for violating the correct to defend human rights. The court docket is a human rights tribunal that interprets and applies the American Conference on Human Rights, a global treaty ratified by over 20 states in Latin America and the Caribbean.
In 2022, EFF, Article 19, Fundación Karisma, and Privateness Worldwide, represented by Berkeley Legislation’s Worldwide Human Rights Legislation Clinic, filed an amicus temporary within the case. EFF and companions urged the court docket to rule that Colombia’s authorized framework regulating intelligence exercise and the surveillance of CAJAR and their households violated a constellation of human rights and compelled them to restrict their actions, change properties, and go into exile to keep away from violence, threats, and harassment.
Colombia’s intelligence community was behind abusive surveillance practices in violation of the American Conference and didn’t forestall authorities from unlawfully surveilling, harassing, and attacking CAJAR members, EFF informed the court docket. Even after Colombia enacted a brand new intelligence legislation, authorities continued to hold out illegal communications surveillance towards CAJAR members, utilizing an expansive and invasive spying system to focus on and disrupt the work of not simply CAJAR however different human rights defenders and journalists.
In inspecting Colombia’s intelligence legislation and surveillance actions, the court docket elaborated on key Inter-American and different worldwide human rights requirements, and superior vital conclusions for the safety of privateness, freedom of expression, and the correct to defend human rights.
The court docket delved into standards for intelligence gathering powers, limitations, and controls. It highlighted the necessity for unbiased oversight of intelligence actions and efficient cures towards arbitrary actions. It additionally elaborated on requirements for the gathering, administration, and entry to private information held by intelligence companies, and acknowledged the safety of informational self-determination by the American Conference.
For extra particulars see: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/04/historic-victory-human-rights-colombia-inter-american-court-finds-state-agencies
This entry was posted on April 10, 2024 at 17:33 and is filed below Human Rights Defenders.
Tags: CAJAR, Colombia, truthful trial, human rights, Human Rights Defenders, human rights attorneys, Inter-American Court docket of Human Rights, Jose Alvear Restrepo Attorneys Collective, information, privateness, Surveillance
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