IMPUNITY Very few of those suspected of responsibility for conflict-related crimes under international law were brought to justice. However, as part of the peace process, the government and the FARC formally apologized for their role in several emblematic human rights cases. On 30 September, in La Chinita, Apartadó Municipality, Antioquia Department, the FARC apologized for killing 35 people from the village on 23 January 1994. On 15 September, President Santos formally apologized for the state’s role in the killing in the 1980s and 1990s of some 3,000 members of the Patriotic Union party, set up by the Colombian Communist Party and the FARC as part of the failed peace process with the government of Belisario Betancur. In February the Constitutional Court ruled that a 2015 reform (Legislative Act No. 1) giving military courts jurisdiction over cases related to military service and over crimes committed on active service was constitutional. The reform also stipulated that international humanitarian law, rather than international human rights law, would apply when investigating armed forces personnel for conflict-related crimes, even though many such crimes were not committed during combat and the victims were overwhelmingly civilians. However, the Court ruled that international human rights law should also apply during investigations. Nevertheless, there were concerns that the Court’s ruling would do little to overcome impunity given the military justice system’s woeful record in bringing to justice members of the armed forces implicated in human rights violations. HUMAN RIGHTS DEFENDERS Threats against and killings of human rights defenders, especially community leaders, land rights and environmental activists and peace and justice campaigners, continued to be reported in significant numbers. Most of the threats were attributed to paramilitaries, but in most cases it was difficult to identify which groups were responsible for the killings. According to the NGO Somos 126 Defensores (We are Defenders), at least 75 defenders had been killed by 8 December 2016, compared with 63 during the whole of 2015. In general, these attacks did not occur in the context of combat between the warring parties, but were targeted killings. Several human rights organizations also had sensitive information stolen from their offices. By 20 December the NGO National Trade Union School had recorded 17 killings of trade union members. On 29 August, three leaders of the NGO Integration Committee of the Colombian Massif (CIMA), Joel Meneses, Nereo Meneses Guzmán and Ariel Sotelo, were shot dead by a group of armed men in Almaguer Municipality, Cauca Department. In August, Ingrid Vergara, a spokesperson for the National Movement of Victims of State Crimes (Movice) received a threatening phone call after attending a public hearing on human rights in Congress in the capital, Bogotá. Over the years, Ingrid Vergara and other members of Movice have been repeatedly threatened and harassed because of their human rights work. LAND RIGHTS The land restitution process, implemented since 2012, continued to make only slow progress in returning land misappropriated during the conflict to its rightful occupants. According to the state’s Land Restitution Unit, by 5 December, land judges had adjudicated on cases involving some 62,093 hectares claimed by peasant farmers and 131,657 hectares claimed by one Afrodescendant and four Indigenous communities. Land rights activists continued to be threatened and killed.9 On 11 September, Néstor Iván Martínez, an Afro-descendant leader, was shot dead by unidentified assailants in Chiriguaná Municipality, Cesar Department. Néstor Iván Martínez was active in environmental and land rights campaigns and had campaigned against mining activities. On 29 January, Congress approved Law 1776, which would create large agro- Amnesty International Report 2016/17