358. The newly established remedy of tutela enabled any citizen to seek before the courts the protection of his fundamental rights. The tutela system tended to favour the complainant, who was under no obligation to appear with an attorney, to cite norms of the Constitution or to give any juridical foundation to his case. Unless the accused party refuted the allegations within three flays, the substance of the tutela report was deemed to be true and measures necessary to end the violation were ordered. 359. New provisions had also been introduced to deal with states of emergency. The state of siege had previously been used to induce members of armed groups to return to civil society as well as to provide protection from intimidation and threats for judges and witnesses involved in drug-trafficking trials. In 1990, the Supreme Court had found some of the decrees promulgated during the state of siege, in particular those relating to restrictions of trade-union freedoms, to be unconstitutional and a bill had been introduced providing that human rights norms could be limited under exceptional circumstances but never suspended. The new Constitution stipulated that statutory laws could specify what limitations might be placed on rights in a time of upheaval, but those limitations did not apply to the non-derogable rights referred to in article 4, paragraph 2, of the Covenant. 360. Referring to the impact of guerrilla warfare and drug trafficking on the Government's efforts to comply with the provisions of the Covenant, the representative said that guerrilla activities directed against the civilian population posed very complex human rights and public order problems, particularly as they were mainly confined to rural areas in which the State could maintain only a limited presence. Guerrilla warfare had frequently led to retaliation by civilians, who had formerly been entitled by law to form armed groups under military protection for the purpose of self-defence. Beginning in 1989, negotiations with the guerrillas had helped to reduce the direct participation of landowners in drug trafficking and had curbed retaliatory action against those suspected of ties with guerrilla groups. It had also been decided to abolish penalties for those accused of membership in armed self-defence groups declared illegal by the Government, provided that they had not committed other crimes. 361. With respect to politically motivated murders, he noted that the elections to the Constituent Assembly held in 1991 had not been accompanied by general acts of violence or intimidation. Among the guerrilla groups that had participated for the first time in national elections, only the former People's Liberation Army had been affected by violence committed by groups trying to sabotage or obstruct the peace process. Furthermore, cases where members of the armed forces had been involved in paramilitary activities had sharply declined and seemed to involve only low-ranking members of the armed forces corrupted by drug traffickers in the local areas where they were serving. A number of police officers were currently under investigation for alleged participation in so-called "social clean-up vigilante groups". Only two rural massacres had been reported in 1991, compared to dozens in 1988 and 1989, and they were still under investigation. In 1991, a number of paramilitary groups had been disarmed in areas where their activities had been very widespread and efforts had also been made to increase the presence and visibility of the army in areas where there was evidence of large-scale paramilitary activities. -85-