The International Association of Democratic Lawyers has been informed that Miguel Angel Gonzalez Reyes, the Secretary General of Colombian democratic lawyers, was obliged to leave his country and to seek refuge in Spain for some months, due to the threats he had received for the important work he had realized in the fields of human rights.
Miguel Angel Gonzalez Reyes decided now to return to Colombia, where he faces risks of various nature, particularly deriving from actvities of covert State services and paramilitary groups, who suppressed a big number of human rights lawyers in the recent years.
The International Association of Democratic Lawyers , seriously concerned and worried about the situation of the Secretary General of its affiliate organization, calls upon the Government of Colombia to guarantee his personal safety and therefore the possibility to continue his work in the interest of peace and human rights.
The International Association of Democratic Lawyers invites all the national associations and the bars to contact the Colombian Government and Colombian embassies all over the world in order to attain such essential objective.
Paris, December, the 14th, 2008