MS. TATE: In Colombia you're talking about refugee populations, people who cross borders into other countries, but you're also talking about a tremendously large internally displaced population. And these people are being forced out of their homes by members - parties in the armed conflict the vast majority by right wing paramilitary groups, but some also by left wing guerilla groups, in order to ensure territorial control by these groups over strategic parts of the country...primarily.

You have them targeting specific individuals and families who they think have leadership roles within the community, people who are trying to organize political opposition, legal or as members of the armed opposition, to get them out of those communities so that they will be unable to develop strong civil society or other kinds of opposition to these groups.

INTERVIEWER: Can you explain a little bit of the background to the conflict in Colombia?

TATE: Colombia is currently experiencing the longest, on-going guerilla war in Latin America. It's a war with very complicated and long entrenched roots in the country. I think people in the United States usually think of Colombia in terms of drugs, but in fact the conflict there has it's roots in a very exclusive political system which hasn't allowed either, hasn't allowed legal opposition groups to form and to voice their opinions through the political electoral system and through a very exclusive economic system in which efforts at land reform and rural development have been continually thwarted.

INTERVIEWER: Can you explain some of the human rights violations that have been occurring?

TATE: Colombia has the worst human rights situation in Latin America right now. And one of the new developments, relatively new developments in Colombia is that the vast majority of human rights violations are not being directly carried out by state agents as they were in the past in Colombia and other parts of Latin America. But they're being carried out by right wing paramilitary groups that have very close ties to the military. But it's an effort by the military to improve their public image and be able to say, look, we are not the ones who are directly killing people the way they had been responsible for these violations in the past. Guerilla groups are also responsible for violations of international humanitarian law in the areas they control. In general, the vast majority of these violations are extrajudicial executions, where people are killed in their homes or their places of work.

Another relatively new phenomenon that has come into prominence in this decade is massacre, where again primarily paramilitary groups will come into a town and kill between five and up to 15,and even 30 in some instances, members of the community. And after these massacre occur, what usually happens is the vast majority of the people in the town will leave because they're fearing for their life.

So one of the by-products of these violations is a huge population of primarily internally displaced people, but also people fleeing over the border into Panama, Ecuador, Venezuela, in an effort to basically save their lives.

INTERVIEWER:When these people are being executed, you said in general this is for territorial control. I guess I want to get into why these refugees are being used as weapons and what are the goals that are supposed to be accomplished.

TATE: Throughout the conflict in Colombia there have been very high levels of human rights violations including internal displacement and refugee populations being created. But what's new in this decade is the massive displacement of people where thousands of people will be forced from their homes and villages at one time as a result of massacre and threats, primarily by right wing paramilitary groups linked to the Colombian military.

So for the first time in Colombia, you have actual internally displaced camps, people often go into the soccer stadium in the nearest larger town, particularly along the Atlantic coast, and now you're seeing increasing examples of this along the border with Venezuela in recent paramilitary attacks which have caused thousands of people to flee their homes in that area. And this is a result of an attempt by paramilitary groups to link to the Colombian military as part of a counter-insurgency strategy which is trying to take territorial control away from areas where the Colombian guerillas have historically been strong. But instead of engaging in actual combat with these groups, what they are doing is targeting the civilian population in an effort to ensure that only people who are sympathetic to their groups and only people who support the paramilitaries are still going to be living in these areas.

INTERVIEWER: When you say they are looking for territorial control, do you mean civilians or natural resources?

TATE: These paramilitary groups are trying to control, not just agricultural land, but economically very profitable land. And one of the things that Colombian human rights groups have long alleged is that if you look at areas within Colombia where these mega-development projects are being carried out, which is dramatically increasing the value of that land, those are areas where paramilitary activity has become very pronounced and many people have been forced of their land.

One example is the Urag dam project on the Atlantic coast which is a huge hydro-electric project, and many of the indigenous communities that live in that area have been targeted by paramilitary violence as well as the peasant population. They've had to flee their lands, basically means that that land is now free for development for anyone who wants to go in there. And there's a lot of land speculation where peasants who are targets of paramilitary violence are forced to sell their land at very low prices and then this land is re-sold at tremendous profit.

And around these development projects, there's also a lot of paramilitary violence around areas where there's mining interests, particularly in the middle part of the country and some areas of the southern part of the country, and there's also a tremendous amount of paramilitary violence in areas where coca production and poppy production for cocaine and heroin trafficking to the United States where - in the areas where these drug trafficking activities are taking place as paramilitary groups have long been linked not only with the Colombian military but also with drug cartels and mid-level drug producers. And these obviously lucrative economic activities are increasingly coming under the control of paramilitary forces.

INTERVIEWER: What was the U.S. role in Colombia?

TATE: U.S. interests in Colombia have long been defined by counter-narcotic objectives. And so the U.S. has been involved in funding Colombian security forces who are involved in counter-narcotic operations and has been funding the pesticide spraying in areas where coca, primarily coca but also poppies, are being grown.

And that's been another source of internal displacement in Colombia as peasant who are involved in growing coca and poppy because they have no other economic alternatives, their crops, as well as their legal food crops are sprayed by these pesticides and they are forced either deeper into the Amazon jungle or into other areas of Colombia.

Now with the escalating attention being paid to the crisis in Colombia, worsening political violence, increasing regional instability, which is most dramatically demonstrated by the flow of refugees over the border into neighboring countries. The U.S. is getting much more deeply involved in Colombia, through funding the Colombian security forces and is now getting directly involved in counter-insurgency operations. These operations are still being carried out under the rubric of counter-narcotics operations because much of the coca that is grown in the southern part of the country is grown in areas that are controlled by the largest Colombian guerilla group, the FARC. And the FARC profits from the coca that's grown in the areas under their control. And they tax coca production as they tax other economic activities in the areas they control.

Because of this, the U.S. is using the excuse of counter-narcotic operations to fund and train battalions of the Colombian army that will be operating in this area. They're sharing intelligence, and they're becoming increasingly directly involved in counter-insurgency operations. Our concern is this will lead to escalating violence in Colombia and as has been the case in this decade, the major casualties of this conflict is the civilian population who are the targets of these massacre and forced to flee their homes and becoming refugees and internally displaced people, that this dynamic is only going to be escalated because of increased U.S. funding for the Colombian security forces. Given their very poor human rights records, on-going links with these paramilitary groups who are responsible for the majority for human rights violations and the lack of reform within the Colombian military in general.

INTERVIEWER: Are the Colombian security forces trying to give the image they have split off from the paramilitary to increase the chances of getting U.S. funding?

TATE: The Colombian military is very consciously engaged in a public relations campaign to convince primarily people within the United States that they have reformed, that they are breaking the links with the paramilitary groups, and that they are improving their human rights record. While it is true that several important steps have been taken, specifically removing several high ranking generals because of their role in paramilitary violence, the fact is that the Colombian military as an institution has not reformed. There continue to be many high ranking officials that are continuing to be promoted through the ranks who have been involved with paramilitary violence. And if you look at the on-going cases of paramilitary violence there is substantial and significant evidence of on-going Colombian security forces participating either through a mission or through active logistical support in the perpetration of this violence.

INTERVIEWER: When you were talking about the pesticide spraying and mentioned the effects on the legal crops as well as the coca, does this affect the crops of people who are not growing coca as well?

TATE: Most of the pesticide spraying that is carried out by the United States in, through counter-narcotics operations, is carried out in areas of the country where simply growing legal crops is not economically viable at this time because of the lack of the economic infrastructure and roads and markets that are available to those farmers. So what most of them do is grow some coca to gain cash in the cash economy and then they grow food crops for the support of their family and the local markets. And those, both those crops, the legal and the illegal crops, are often destroyed through the fumigation programs. There have also been cases in which farmers who have been participating in crop substitution programs where through the church or through the United Nations they have been being taught how to grow rubber and other crops that could be ecomically viable in those areas, those crops as well have been destroyed by the fumigation campaigns.

INTERVIEWER: What action should be taken by the U.S. or other international countries, is there a way we can solve this without getting involved militarily?

TATE:Given the complexity and the history of the Colombian conflict any solutions are not going to be short term solutions and they're going to require a major commitment on the part of the international community. What the international community and in particular the United States should be doing is backing the civilian government's efforts to find a negotiate settlement which they are currently engaged in trying to begin negotiations with the different guerilla factions which is a very long and torturous process but one that desperately needs both the moral support and pressure from the international community to bring these different warring factions to the table, but also the financial commitment that rural development money will be available for the people who have been involved as the rank and file of these guerilla groups because they have no other economic alternatives. What the U.S. is doing instead is backing the security forces which fueling the conflict, increasing human rights violations, furthering the violence, instead of backing those segments within Colombian society that are searching for way - for a negotiated settlement and trying to build peace within the country.

INTERVIEWER: That was the last of my questions, did you have anything you wanted to add?

TATE: I guess just that, the dimension of the crisis, in terms of the amount of internally displaced people in Colombia and the living conditions they are forced to endure is really not very well know in this country. Over the past five years, it's estimated that about a million people have been forced to leave their homes, many of them have gone to urban areas within Colombia anonymously, their living in shanty towns around the big cities at a time - like Colombia is undergoing an economic crisis that's the most severe in this century where there is an urban unemployment rate of over 20%. So these people have literally no means of sustenance. Because they are within Colombia, they haven't received the attention of the International community the other way other refugee crises have because they are very much anonymous and the Colombian government has very much tried to downplay the dimensions of the crisis insisting that it's not as bad as people think and that they are able to address the needs of this population. Really I think it's going to be a very long term problem for Colombia and it requires that both land reform and efforts and urban development projects be created to address the needs of this population.

CAMERAMAN: You said that people aren't really aware of the scope of this. Is there a reference point that you use to give scale?

TATE: Colombia right now has the forth largest internally displaced population in the world, so it's definitely a crisis on par with those in some of the better known situations in Africa and Kosovo for example where the international community has really focused attention and put a lot of resources into dealing with that situation. In Colombia, the U.N. high Commissioner for Refugees opened an office just year ago with a staff of two people and they're beginning to look at ways the international community can help the Colombian government deal with this situation and begin devising strategies and alerting the international community about the dimensions about the crisis. But it's still a very much hidden crisis.