Rebels, paramilitary gunmen and even government soldiers have raped women, and in many areas of this embattled nation they have become "trophies of war," Amnesty International USA charged in a blistering report Wednesday.
In the report entitled "Colombia: `Scarred bodies, hidden crimes': Sexual Violence Against Women in the Armed Conflict," Amnesty International USA accused the Colombian government of doing little to punish violators.
The human-rights organization said right-wing paramilitary groups are the main violators and that their crimes against women include rape, mutilation and murder.
"Amnesty International believes the Colombian state has failed to respect or protect people's human rights with regard to sexual violence," said the report.
Moreover, it said Colombian troops themselves are among those who abuse women.
One woman, identified only as Ana Maria, was quoted in the report as saying army soldiers forced her from a bus she was traveling in near the southern city of Neiva, killed her male companion, and then raped her.
"I was raped by eight or nine soldiers," Ana Maria said, adding that later in her journey she was raped by a paramilitary commander in the town of Dabeiba, in northwest Colombia.
"When the army comes, I start thinking that it's going to happen to me all over again," she said. "It's like a nightmare that never ends."
A spokesman for Vice President Francisco Santos, who leads the government's office on human rights, said Santos had no immediate comment on the report but that it was being reviewed.
The report provides testimony of brutal treatment of women and girls by Marxist guerrillas.
Based on testimony from a relative, it describes a young girl who was kidnapped by a front of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, of which her father was a member.
"They subjected her to what they call `self-criticism': she had to keep repeating 'I am a cowardly Colombian woman' while being beaten all over," an unnamed relative said.
Eventually, the girl's mother was also kidnapped by the FARC.
She was taken into the mountains, stripped, tortured and buried in a hole she had to dig herself. Only with the help of a peasant farmer did she survive the ordeal, the relative said.
Colombia's four-decade rebel conflict pits government forces and right-wing paramilitary fighters against two Marxist rebel groups that seek to overthrow the government.
The Amnesty International report said more than 3,000 people were killed due to the conflict last year in non-combat situations, which would include executions and massacres, and that 220 of the victims were women.
RSS