D. REPORT OF THE ATTORNEY GENERAL OF THE NATION

The report of the Attorney General of Colombia, which came out on September 10, 1991, is a serious study and account of how violence in Colombia is affecting the right to life; Chapter III is subtitled "Homicides, massacres, and enforced disappearance".

When discussing the murders that occurred in Colombia in 1991 and that it is presently investigating, the Office of the Attorney General reported that of the 560 persons killed that year, agents of the State were implicated or responsible for 387 cases; the death toll was highest in the departments of Antioquia, Santander and Cundinamarca. As for the victims of these violations, some 13.93% were peasants in rural areas; 13.74% were independent laborers in urban and semi-urban areas, and 6.67% were agents of the State of which 3.99% were members of the armed forces. The Office of the Attorney General attributes responsibility as follows: 46.25% of the cases are the work of the National Police, and 31.60% are the work of the military forces.

According to the Office of the Attorney General, in the last 15 months to which the report refers, there were 68 massacres in 16 different departments. The incidence of massacres was highest in the departments of Antioquia, where there were 22 (32.35% of the total); Cordoba, with 8 massacres (11.76% of the total); and Santander, with 7 massacres (10.29% of the total). Of the victims, 40.23% were peasants; the rest were members of the armed forces, civil servants and M-19 guerrillas, as the figures in the report include the 130 individuals who died at the Palace of Justice.

The incidence of enforced disappearance is highest in the department of El Valle, with 123; Antioquia, with 111; Santander, 65; and Cundinamarca, 64. Most of the victims are workers, students, members of unions, activists and peasants. The chapter on enforced disappearance contains a list of the names of 465 people reported as detained and disappeared within the period covered by that report.

In a recent communique, the Office of the Attorney General states that every day, the Public Prosecutor's Office in Colombia receives a report of another enforced disappearance. Between April 1991 and July 1992, there were 569 complaints of disappearances; of these, 76% have been filed (430 cases), 22% are in the preliminary inquiry or investigation stage (125 cases), and only 2% have been solved (14 cases). Some 63 of the cases are attributed to members of the National Police, 48 to the Army and 3 to the DAS.

The number of victims, the fact that violations continue, the ferocity with which these violations are frequently committed, and the fact that the vast majority of these atrocious acts go unpunished, is all deeply disturbing to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, which sympathizes with the Colombian people's protest and urges the Colombian Government to spare no effort to try to control and conquer this dramatic problem, so painful for Colombia and, because of human solidarity, for all countries of the inter-American system.