CONFLICT-COLOMBIA: Massacre in Rural Southeast

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Yadira Ferrer

BOGOTA, May 5 1998 (IPS) - Alleged paramilitaries massacred at least 17 people in a rural zone of the municipality of Mapiripan, in Southeast Colombia, razing the town to the ground, reported human rights groups arriving in the area Tuesday.

The attack occured in the Puerto Alvira area Monday, where parish priest, Ernesto Diaz, said nearly 200 armed men killed 17 people and injured many more after destroying the air strip, docks and commercial outlets.

A commission of the Red Cross, and the International Human Rights Committee of Meta (Southeast Colombia) arrived in the town, connected to the outside world by just one public telephone, Tuesday.

Puerto Alvira is two hours up river, and six hours by land, from the municipal capital of Mapirapan, a region where the army claim guerrillas and narcotraffickers are much in evidence.

Rural workers who survived the attack said their aggressors gave them eight days to leave the town if they did not want to die.

Colombian president, Ernesto Samper, condemned the attack against civilians in Puerto Alvira, announcing the transferral of an elite army corps to the region, to round up those responsible for the massacre.

Samper said the government “strongly condemns these events” and will not allow “the dirty war to return to Colombia.”

Human rights organisations warned of the possible worsening of the “dirty war” (attacks on social leaders and left-wing activists) on April 18, following the murders of human rights campaigner and lawyer, Eduardo Umaña, and former Communist Party leader Maria Arango.

In order to prevent the return of the “dirty war,” Samper appealed to “all Colombians to say a emphatic ‘no’ to violence and yes to peace.”

According to the director of the Colombian Red Cross, Walter Cote, the situation in Puerto Alvira “is very serious, 17 bodies have been found so far, there is an indeterminate number of wounded and the population is terrified.”

In order to help the population, the Red Cross sent in a group of doctors and paramedics accompanied by a delegate from its international committee, and the government announced measures would be taken to avoid the town from being attacked again.

This Tuesday, the local people attributed the action to paramilitary groups which fight with the guerrilla for territorial control over the area.

For Libardo Madero, representative of the non governmental Human Rights Committee of Meta, the attack in Puerto Alvira was “an announced massacre.”

Madero said the Committee has been asking the government to dissolve the private self-defence groups of the region since January 17 this year.

“We warned the government there would be imminent massacres if it didn’t order these groups to be dissolved, but we were ignored,” said Madero.

In late July last year, more than 100 armed men appeared in La Cooperative, also in the municipality of Mapiripan, and over a six day period, silently exterminated the civil population.

On this occasion, at least 30 people were killed and around 200 rural people left their homes – more than 50 percent of the local population.

The attack in La Cooperativa was claimed by the Rural Self- Defence group of Cordoba and Uraba (ACCU), led by paramilitary chief, Carlos Castaño.

A source within the non governmental Popular Culture and Research Centre, who asked to remain unnamed, told IPS the ACCU strategy is to try and annihilate the social base of the guerrilla, attacking the rural people, who they believe cooperate with the insurgents.

According to figures of the Permanent Committee for the Defence of Human Rights, there were 185 politically motivated massacres (classed as murders of more than four people together) in 1997.

The denunciations presented to this committee claimed the paramilitaries are responsible for 85 percent of these events, the guerrillas, 14 percent and the army the remaining one.

Similarly, last Tuesday, another 22 rural people were murdered by supposed paramilitaries in Urrao, in the northeast of the country.