RIGHTS-COLOMBIA: Rural Activists Blame Killings on Army

By Constanza Vieira Reprint | | Print |

Constanza Vieira

BOGOTA, Mar 3 2005 (IPS) - The brutal killings of eight campesinos, including two women and three children, in the northwestern Colombian province of Antioquia was blamed on the army by local residents and human rights groups, although authorities deny that the armed forces were involved.

“Be grateful we didn’t kill any more of you, because the news spread so fast,” a member of the military told 25 villagers who went to the site of the killings on Feb. 24 to look for the bodies and keep the scene of the crime from being tampered with.

In the San José de Apartadó Peace Community, two rural families and a farmer who happened to be passing by were killed on Feb. 21.

The peace community, which was created by 350 campesinos (peasant farmers) in March 1997 with the backing of the Catholic Church, declares itself neutral in Colombia’s armed conflict, banning the presence of any weapons in its territory, and refusing to cooperate with any of the armed factions, whether left-wing guerrillas, right-wing paramilitaries or the army.

Amérigo Incalcaterra, assistant director of the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights office in Colombia, visited the community Wednesday to hear the accounts of villagers and civilian and military authorities.

Witnesses said the murders were committed by the army in the hamlets of Mulatos and La Resbalosa, in the Serranía de Abibe mountains in the northwestern banana-growing region of Urabá, one of the conflict zones in the country’s four-decade civil war.

Colombian Defence Minister Jorge Alberto Uribe denied Monday that the murders were committed by the security forces, who, he said, were fully cooperating with the prosecutors in their efforts to clarify the incidents.

Military authorities also denied that troops of the 17th Brigade were present in that area on Feb. 21.

One of the victims, Luis Eduardo Guerra, 35, was the long-time leader of the peace community, which he frequently represented in contacts with the government and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, which in 2000 ordered that precautionary measures be taken to protect the community.

Uniformed men who identified themselves as members of the army detained, interrogated, tortured and killed Guerra, who was apparently beaten to death, along with his 17-year-old girlfriend and his 11-year-old son, according to a survivor.

The witness said the soldiers then went to the nearby home of Alfonso Bolívar Tuberquia. A Feb. 27 report by a fact-finding “verification commission” set up by the peace community, which began to circulate on Monday, Feb. 28 states that “the army burst into the home shooting”, and injured Tuberquia’s 24-year-old wife.

Two campesinos who were passing by just then were also shot, and although they tried to flee, one was killed.

Tuberquia, 30, who was able to escape from the house with another campesino, returned “when he heard the cries of his wife as she begged the soldiers not to kill her children”, aged 18 months and five years.

The farmer “told his companion that he preferred to die with his family, that he could not abandon them, and he returned to the house,” says the report.

All four of them were killed, and the bodies were dismembered and buried in two graves. They were found by other villagers on Thursday, Feb. 24. The bodies of Guerra, his partner and his son were dumped in a field, which made them more difficult to find.

The group of 25 campesinos who stood guard over the evidence was reinforced on Friday, Feb. 25 by another 100 villagers, who formed part of the community’s verification commission, set up to issue a report on the incident.

On Feb. 26, a soldier approached the place where the bodies were found, picked up a bloody machete, washed it and took it away with him, according to the Corporación Jurídica Libertad (CJL), an association of human rights lawyers who have presented a collective lawsuit before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.

“Battalion 33 of the Cacique Lutaima mobile counterguerrilla unit, belonging to the 17th Brigade, is responsible for this crime,” human rights defender Gloria Cuartas said Monday. Cuartas served as mayor of Apartadó in the second half of the 1990s, when the conflict in the area was escalating.

On Feb. 25, the verification commission hiked seven hours from the town of San José to the hamlets where the murders took place. Officials from the public prosecutor’s office and the attorney-general’s office flew in by helicopter that same day.

The verification commission was accompanied by Cuartas as well as members of the CJL, Peace Brigades International, Fellowship of Reconciliation (an international ecumenical organisation), and Concern America (a U.S. group whose volunteers support development in poor countries).

The troops “were surrounding us the entire time…accusing us of being guerrillas”, said the report by the verification commission.

“To us it is clear that this was an operation by the army, which cordoned off the area before the killings, starting on Feb. 17, as confirmed by the witnesses,” says the document. The troops “are still present in the hamlets,” it adds.

“The compelling nature of the evidence and the visible military presence in the area before, during and after the massacre clearly point to the Colombian army’s responsibility for this new attack on the civilian population,” says the report.

In addition, “troops have threatened several families in the hamlets, and have warned them that if they don’t leave, the same thing will happen to them,” it adds.

Since its creation, the peace community has been frequently attacked by the paramilitary militias grouped in the United Self-Defence Forces of Colombia (AUC) and the army, which act in coordination, according to the rural activists.

It has also been the target of guerrilla violence.

In October 1997, members of FARC (the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia), which has been present in the area for 30 years, killed three campesinos. They had refused to sell food to the rebels, based on the community’s agreement not to provide support to any armed combatants.

Jesuit priest Javier Giraldo, who works closely with the community, confirmed that armed FARC guerrillas occasionally enter the peace community’s territory to carry out violent actions.

The 900-metre high Serranía de Abibe mountains mark the border between the peace community’s farms and Santa Fe del Ralito, where AUC commanders and the right-wing government of Alvaro Uribe are currently negotiating the demobilisation of paramilitary groups, who began to lay down their arms last year.

In December 1997, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, an Organisation of American States (OAS) agency, ordered that provisional measures be taken to protect the community.

Before the latest killings, 47 of the community’s 350 original founding members had already been killed, and a total of 146 members of the community, mainly leaders, have been slain since it was created. Of the 380 human rights violations that have been reported, not one has ever been clarified.

The report by the community’s verification commission states that “the Colombian justice system has gathered testimony from hundreds of people indicating who was responsible (for these crimes). Nevertheless, impunity remains the norm.”

On Mar. 14, representatives of the Colombian state are to appear before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in a hearing that had been scheduled prior to the latest incidents, to explain what measures it has taken to preserve the lives of the members of the peace community.

In April 2004, Colombia’s Constitutional Court requested effective protection for the 1,300 people living in the community at that time.

The Court reported that members of the community have frequently been the victims of massacres and selective killings, forced disappearance, arbitrary detention, rape, torture, death threats and persecution, the burning of homes and shops, bombing, and paramilitary checkpoints where they are robbed of their goods.

“These provisions oblige the Colombian state to take special security measures on behalf of the community and its members,” the Colombian office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights warned Monday.