Proposed law leads to concerns about impact on freedom of religion or belief

Religious leaders and human rights defenders in Colombia have expressed concern about a proposed Bill which will remove punishments for several crimes relating to violations of the right to freedom of religion or belief (FoRB).

On 12 April Colombia’s Minister of Justice, Néstor Ozuna, accepted a Senate committee proposal to remove language that addresses crimes against religious sentiment and respect for the dead from legislation designed to make the criminal system more humane and streamlined. The Bill must still be approved by the Colombian Senate and will now be put to debate.

The changes to Article 14 of Bill 335/2023 on the Modernisation and Humanisation of the Prison System, proposed by an Ad Hoc Senate Committee for the Monitoring, Control and Surveillance of the Penitentiary and Prison System, have alarmed religious leaders and human rights defenders, who point out that the changes will leave religious groups in conflict zones, who have long experienced severe FoRB violations at the hands of organised armed groups (OAG), with even less recourse to legal remedy.

Those behind the proposed changes have justified the elimination of these crimes, along with other crimes including incest, slander and the failure to provide food to dependants, as part of an effort to reduce overcrowding in prisons and police stations, which are severely overcrowded, and to free up the justice system to focus on what they call ‘more serious crimes.’

However, FoRB expert and Senator Lorena Ríos Cuellar has said that eliminating these crimes will have a negligible effect overall, as according to the Public Prosecutor’s office, there were only 10 FoRB-related complaints in 2018. According to the National Penitentiary and Prison Institute, no one was detained for these crimes between 2018 and 2022.

Religious leaders in rural areas who have witnessed or experienced acts of violence targeting churches have identified various factors contributing to the low number of complaints linked to FoRB violations. These include low levels of awareness in the population in regard to the criminal code and how to classify such crimes, and high levels of fear and concerns about retaliation by OAGs for reporting such crimes. In some cases, religious leaders told CSW that when complaints have been filed, local officials have reclassified them and removed references to FoRB without informing those affected.

FoRB experts have also expressed concern that the proposed changes would violate Colombian law, including Article 2 of Statutory Law 133/1994, which obliges the state to protect manifestations of religious sentiment, and the Political Constitution of Colombia, which guarantees FoRB in Article 19. It would also conflict with the Declaration of the Organisation of American States General Secretariat on the promotion and protection of FoRB.

CSW’s Head of Advocacy Anna Lee Stangl said: ‘We are perplexed at why, in the name of streamlining and making the criminal system more humane, Colombian Senators are proposing to eliminate crimes that are already severely underreported and rarely investigated. This will put members of religious groups in rural areas and conflict zones who experience a disproportionate percentage of these types of crimes in an even more vulnerable position and will reduce rather than increase their recourse to legal remedy. CSW is concerned that this is part of a larger pattern on the part of the government which, while recognising the important role the religious sector played in Colombia’s peace process, has paid little attention to the way members of religious groups experience serious human rights violations, in many cases linked to FoRB, in its official reports. We call on the Colombian government to strengthen existing protections for FoRB and to ensure that these rights are consistently upheld for all.’