Among the most severe attacks against the Nydia Erika Bautista Foundation (FNEB) between 2014 and 2015, the following are worthy of note:

Threats and acts of aggression

• 8 September 2014: An e-mail death threat is sent to 91 human rights defenders. The message said that the defenders “with your stories about peace, you keep screwing up the country. You will have to pay with your blood”. Among the organizations threatened were several PBI-accompanied organizations like the Movement of Victims of State Crimes (MOVICE), FNEB and others.[1]
• 9 September 2014: The Black Eagles sent an e-mail threat to 89 human rights defenders, declaring them all military objectives. Among those defenders threatened were several organizations accompanied by PBI, such as MOVICE, FNEB and the Association of the Families of the Detained and Disappeared (ASFADDES).[2]
• 16 September 2014: The High Commissioner on Victims, Ana Teresa Bernal, received two e-mail threats from the Black Eagles which stated threats against 91 defenders including the Movement of Victims of State Crimes and the Nydia Erika Bautista Foundation.[3]
• 16 April 2015: theft at the offices of FNEB. During a public event a computer was taken and a briefcase containing legal information on victims of forced disappearance who are accompanied by the institution.[4]
• 21 April 2015: threat made against Andrea Torres (FNEB) during a telephone call, received by a relative of a victim of forced disappearance in a case represented by Andrea Torres.[5]
• 22 May 2015: threats against the members and lawyers of FNEB and various witnesses in the cases they represent.[6]
• 24 June 2015: threat of sexual violence and death against lawyer Andrea Torres (FNEB). Four days earlier, the son of a victim of forced disappearance that she represents was attacked with a knife in Tulua, Valle del Cauca.[7]

Slander and defamations

• 18 September 2014: in the context of the September 18th debate in the Colombian Senate about paramilitarism, ex-President and current Senator, Álvaro Uribe Vélez, said that several individuals, organizations and media outlets either were members of, or had ties to the insurgency. One of those mentioned was Janeth Bautista of the PBI-accompanied organization, the Nydia Erika Bautista Foundation. The ex-President called Bautista “an ELN guerrilla member—and not a demobilized one.”[8]

Footnotes:

[1] MOVICE: Denuncia pública: amenazan de muerte a 91 defensores de la paz y de los derechos humanos, September 8, 2014
[2] MOVICE: Águilas Negras envían nueva amenaza a Defensores de Derechos Humanos, 9 September 2014
[3] Protection International: Son 91 personas las amenazadas de muerte por las ‘‘Águilas Negras’, 17 September 2014
[4] Amnesty International: Colombia: Key witness and lawyer harrassed, 27 May 2015
[5] Ibíd.
[6] Ibíd.
[7] Amnesty International: Threatened and attacked for seeking justice, 25 June 2015
[8] Semana: Los trapitos al sol que sacó Uribe, 17 September 2014