".we are determined to continue resisting and defending our rights. We don't know for how long because what we have experienced throughout our history shows that though today we may be speaking, tomorrow we could be dead. Today we are in San Jose de Apartado, but tomorrow there could be a massacre and the majority of the people displaced.."
Words spoken by Luis Eduardo Guerra, Leader of San Jose Peace Community, 15th
January 2005, 37 days before being assassinated and his friends and family
massacred.
In view of the importance for the whole of Colombia of recent horrific events in San Jose Peace Community, Northern Colombia, we are once again putting aside local news and events from our own community (Atlantis), and devoting a second Green Letter entirely to the unfolding of this story, through press reports, direct communications from the people of San Jose, and from our colleague, Anne Barr, who works with these people. This Green Letter is the longest yet as we felt the subject matter demands it. It follows on directly from events reported in Issue No. 71. We always welcome correspondence, questions and comments (to the email address above or to our postal address in Belen).
(All documents and articles have been translated from Spanish, except of course Anne's and John Pilger's.)
Dear Friends,
This is the Epilogue to a very sad day. On Friday 25th February towards midday, we found evidence of the massacre: two burial pits containing the mutilated bodies of ALFONSO BOLIVAR TUBERQUIA, SANDRA MILENA MUNOZ and their children NATALIA ANDREA TUBERQUIA, 4 years old, and SANTIAGO TUBERQUIA MUNOZ, 18 months old. We also found the remains of ALEJANDRO PEREZ, 30 years old. This man was nothing to do with the peace process of the Peace Community.
All of these people had been slaughtered by machete, their heads and limbs completely cut off, showing the brutality and incredible cruelty of the killers. According to a witness who survived, the Army came in shooting at the house of Mr. Alfonso Tuberquia and one of the shots injured his partner, Sandra Milenia. 40 metres from the house, Alejandro Perez and another campesino were approaching. Upon hearing the shots, both ran off, but Alejandro Perez fell wounded and no more was known of him until his body was found. Alfonso Tuberquia and a worker of his who was in the house at this time, managed to run off but Alfonso stopped upon hearing the screams of his wife begging the Army not to kill their children. Alfonso told his companion that he preferred to die with his family, that he couldn't abandon them and he returned to his house and was slaughtered.
Recovery of the five corpses was carried out by the Fiscalia (Public Prosecutor's officials) who arrived by helicopter in the afternoon of 25th February. From the moment we arrived in Mulatos and Resbalosa (hamlets where these events took place) we were surrounded by the Army who, as we had previously denounced, ever since 17th February had maintained an operation in the whole area. And ever since this time, the Army has maintained a strong presence in all the villages of the San Jose area.
We wish to clarify the Army-paramilitary strategy for emptying villages of people and taking control of their land: first, indiscriminate bombing and then operations which destroy everything in their path: animals, crops, houses, and, as these recent events show, whole families, little children of only 4 years, babies of only 18 months, all fall victim to an inhuman war, and worse still, at the hands of the forces of the Colombian State, whose constitutional function is supposed to be to protect its citizens.
Sadly, there is no doubt that this strategy works: we have seen that in only two weeks, after these actions in Mulatos and Resbalosa only 10 families remained, and now 9 of them have fled to San Jose. We are worried that three families from the hamlet of Las Nieves are still missing.
The terrible finds did not end with the common graves. With night already falling, we had to go out in search of the bodies of Luis Eduardo Guerra, leader of our community, and his family. We found them beside the River Mulatos, thrown at the side of a road. They had no bullet wounds but showed clearly that they had been fiercely beaten and slashed and finally had their throats cut. Luis Eduardo, Bellanira, 17, and Deiner, 11. Their bodies were still there on Saturday 26th at midday as the Fiscalia first transported the bodies that were in graves and promised to return at first light for the others. But they did not come. Part of our commission remained there waiting for them to keep their word so that we could bury our friends. Finally, today, 27th February, their bodies were removed.
In the middle of all this tragedy, we see how the Army's strategy of spreading terror has not abated. The soldiers who are maintaining a strong presence in all the villages have said to several families that it is a shame that the killings were known of so soon, because if they hadn't been, there would have been more dead. And the troops who were surrounding us the whole time commented: "they smell of dead guerrillas", referring to the eight people massacred. And in spite of the fact that the commander of the troops promised not to take photos or videotape records of us, they did just that.
The whole time, the military harassed our commission, accusing us of being guerrillas; they also called over and questioned several community leaders, calling them by names. The media have attempted to distort reality by reporting that the massacre was carried out by the guerrilla and other versions say it was paramilitaries. For us, it is clear that it is a direct operation of the Colombian army who cordoned off the zone before the massacre, ever since February 17th.
The media also said that Luis Eduardo was involved with the explosion of a bomb last August. The truth is the opposite (as reported in a Green Letter at the time - ed.): Luis Eduardo's family and other people were victims of the explosion of a grenade left by the Army. Deiner himself, son of Luis Eduardo, now dead, was seriously injured and nearly lost one of his legs in the incident.
..We are faced with a fresh humanitarian crisis in our region, and the death of our friends and of Luis Eduardo, leader of our community, is a fierce blow to our project. We know that the whole strategy of terror and impunity will continue. The military have threatened various families in the villages and have warned them that if they don't leave, the same will happen to them. And the surviving witnesses to the massacre live in terror for their lives.
We have now suffered 152 assassinations, without there being a single conviction for any of them. Hundreds of testimonies have been collected pointing to who is responsible, in spite of which the impunity continues and will be maintained as it is vital for the State to protect their assassins.
Tomorrow, Monday 28th February, we hope to hold a collective burial in the
cemetery of San Jose. But the words of Luis Eduardo, his ideas and
philosophies, will remain with us and now with more strength than ever. He
believed that the civilian population had the right to live in dignity and
peace. We also believe this and will continue to defend this principle, even if
it costs us our lives.
It was 9.30 on the morning of 19th February when some peasants reported that men
dressed in camouflage were out looking for them. The armed group had just killed
a labourer in the hamlet of Las Nieves, Uraba. The peasants begged Guerra to
flee, but witnesses report that he refused to run, saying that he had nothing to
hide.
The assassins took hold of him, his wife Bellanira Ariza, and his 11 year old son Deiner, and beat and chopped them to death by the side of a river. Their remains were eaten by vultures.
This is what peasants told the priest Javier Giraldo who has accompanied the Peace Community in its objective of remaining neutral in the face of the armed conflict. The peasants also told the priest that at lunchtime of the same day, the group of assassins arrived at the home of Alfonso Tuberquia in the same area and beat him and his wife Sandra Milena Munoz and their children Natalia, 6 years, and Santiago, 18 months to death. All were mutilated.
This weekend, the bodies of the family Tuberquia Munoz and that of Alejandro Perez were found by a commission of the Fiscalia in a common grave and those of Guerra and his family in the open air.
Another version of the first murders, that of Guerra and his family, was given by the Corporacion Juridica Libertad (Freedom Group of Lawyers) and shows that the Guerra family left their house in San Jose that Saturday and went to their farm in the hamlet of Mulatos, 7 hours away, and that the crime occurred on Monday 21st February, after they were intercepted by armed men at the River Mulatos.
For the Authorities of the region, neither version is necessarily correct. They are making investigations to determine, amongst other things, where the massacre occurred, as they were found in a common grave.
Regarding the authors of the crimes, the Public Defender of the area, Wolmar Perez, said that there are various versions and none is confirmed. For now, he asked the paramilitaries to tell the country if those responsible for these crimes belong to them or not. He also asked Sergio Caramagna, head of the investigating commission of the Organization of American States, to investigate the matter.
In press releases from non-governmental organizations, it is claimed that
those responsible for the crimes are soldiers stationed at Carepa, in spite
of the fact that many military commanders in the region, such as the Commander
of the Army himself, Reinaldo Castellanos, deny any connection of their men
with these events. "These are outrageous accusations", General
Castellanos said last Friday.
Luis Eduardo Guerra was the person who on 23rd March 1997 drew up the internal rules of the Peace Community, the very document which prohibited any kind of arms and any type of violent act and which declared the community neutral towards any of the participants in the armed conflict in Colombia.
Because of his eloquence, Guerra was the negotiator for his Community with the national government and the international community, and he represented them in the Gathering of Peace Communities held in Italy in 2003, and on many occasions he denounced threats from all the armed groups, threats which took the life of his first wife, who died last year through the explosion of a grenade left at her home.
A special unit of the Fiscalia is at this moment in Uraba attempting to gather fresh proof. In a case of this nature, it is particularly delicate for the Colombian State, as the Community of San Jose de Apartado was protected by a provisional measure of the Interamerican Commission on Human Rights (ICHR) of the OAS which obliges the Colombian Government to give them special protection. Last May, the Constitutional Court of Colombia also ordered the State to give protection and special treatment to the community.
The case may be the subject of special discussion in the weekly session of the ICHR which will take place in about two weeks' time.
Padre Giraldo explained that from the moment of its formation on the initiative of the now assassinated Monsenor Isaias Duarte Cancino, this community has been persecuted by the various groups operating in the armed conflict.
"The Community was formed one Palm Sunday and on Holy Thursday there began an attack on the population in which the Army itself participated. There were hideous crimes, whole families were cut into pieces, people's fingers were cut off and their entrails pulled out," Giraldo reports.
According to the reports of the ex-Mayoress of Apartado, Gloria Cuartas, since 1997 there have been 154 men, women and children of the Peace Community murdered.
The People's Defender also said that reports had arrived at his office of five
families displaced from the area where Guerra's body was found, and that three
other families from las Nieves had disappeared.
The eight coffins, three of them child-sized, are easy to handle as they contain hardly any flesh, only bones. The people whose remains are in them were killed just a week ago, but the vultures, pigs and the humid heat made quick work of the corpses.
I knew two of them, Luis Eduardo Guerra, 35, and his son Deiner Andres, 11. Luis Eduardo was for many years the target of non-stop death threats from the military/paramilitary forces of the region, a brilliant and eloquent campesino leader and founder of the Peace Community who spoke out unceasingly against the persecution of his community by the Colombian state and military.
He was small and dark, and shone with the strength of his belief in his community. I met him just last June when I was invited to take part in the Campesino University of Pacifist Resistance that his community had created, to help in a compost and garden-making course. I was delighted to take part in a 'University' with no walls, no fees or salaries and no diplomas, whose only pass mark is that the practical methods of self-sufficiency in all the basic areas of life - food, health and education - be taught and put into practice in the communities and tribes of the participants, who are community leaders from all over Colombia.
Eduardo and Eduar, another leader, were a rare patch of light in the dark confusion that is Colombia, a small group of campesinos who have decided they won't take up arms, won't ally themselves with any of the armed forces and won't leave their land, no matter what happens, and who don't accept money from any 'NGOs' who try to use charity to control their actions. They speak out strongly and honestly all the time, whether to army generals, vice-presidents, ambassadors or foreign parliaments. They know that while many at home and abroad admire them and support them, they are alone and essentially defenseless, a tiny island of peaceful cooperation in the middle of the huge and violent sea of paramilitary-run Northern Colombia. Often that sea overwhelms them as it did last week.
Luis Eduardo, his girlfriend Bellanira and his son Deiner went to harvest cocoa from his farm and were on their way home when they saw an army patrol lying in wait further along the path. One of the group, whose life is now in danger, said, "Let's run!" "No," said Luis, "I've nothing to hide and anyway Deiner can't run well." (He had been seriously hurt when a grenade left by the army exploded last year almost destroying his right leg and genitals).
They were surrounded by the army, taken a few hundred yards away and murdered. No bullets were used. They were strangled. The wire was left, bloody, beside Luis's corpse. They were also tortured and mutilated. Deiner's head was found 30 yards from his body, it had been detached by brute force, not even a machete was used. Luis Eduardo's scalp around the back of his head had been sliced through and then pulled forward so that it covered his face.
The young man who escaped hid in the forest for a few hours and then went looking for them. He didn't find them but when he got to a nearby farm, he found traces of blood that led him to a shallow grave that only half-hid the remains of a second family the army had killed that morning. Around the house were signs of grenade explosions and inside were signs of torture with clumps of human hair everywhere. He sent word to San Jose.
The Community notified the police and then 120 of them went to find the bodies. They had to guard against the Army dressing the corpses as guerrillas or otherwise manipulating the evidence to make the innocent look guilty. This is a very common practice. They finally found the bodies of Luis Eduardo, his son and girlfriend by following their noses. There was little to find, most of the flesh had been eaten by vultures and pigs.
Finally, days later, the Fiscalia (Government Attorney's Office) arrived in helicopters and exhumed the five bodies in the shallow grave. The bodies of the 3 adults came out in bits, as the soldiers had chopped them up using the campesinos' own machetes. The blades were left nearby, chipped and broken from cutting through bones. One arm was chopped into four bits. The adults had been sliced open and their guts spilled. Only one man was killed by bullet as he tried to escape.
The soldiers who massacred these people did not run, they felt secure enough to stay close by the scene of the crimes. And why wouldn't they? They've never had to face prosecution for any of their previous murders and massacres. Just over the mountains in Cordoba is the protected area of Santa Fe de Ralito, a paramilitary haven where the 'peace monologues' are taking place. That's the cynical name people give to the talks between Alvaro Uribe's government and his offspring, the paramilitaries. In reality, the 'talks' are an attempt to legalize the paramilitary armies and all that they have gained in territory and power by murdering tens of thousands of campesinos and displacing hundreds of thousands more.
When confronted by local people about what they had just done, the soldiers didn't bother to deny it. One of them actually said that the locals should be grateful that they hadn't killed more people. It is also no 'accident' that they tortured and murdered Luis and his friends and family so cruelly: it is a clear message to the Peace Community that they must leave their lands or suffer more of the same. The paras are determined to have this beautiful jungle area at any cost for their 'agricultural reinsertion programmes', in other words their coca and palm-oil plantations.
When two days after collection of the bodies, we finally managed to wrest the stinking, almost-empty coffins from the pointless, bureaucratic rituals of the local morgue officials in Apartado, we drove them up the dangerous, long, dark, bumpy road to San Jose. This was thanks to a brave local jeep driver who constantly put his life at risk by taking us up and down the road through the army and police checkpoints.
I wish we could have chained the killers to the central post in the big, palm-roofed, open-sided central meeting place in San Jose during the night of mourning. Then they'd have been forced to see the pain they've caused. I wish they'd had to search for a way to comfort the young woman who clung to me for hours asking me over and over again why the soldiers killed her sister, her brother-in-law and her nieces. Her brother-in-law had managed to escape when the army attacked his family as they were eating lunch, but when he realized that his children and wife hadn't managed to get away, he went back to try and help them..
I wish the killers had to be present in the lush green graveyard when earth was being thrown on to the coffins. I wish they had to answer the sturdy 3 year old campesino boy I met running down the steep muddy jungle path with his family, helping to carry all their wordly possessions (mainly chickens, bedding and cooking pots) in a few sacks and baskets to the relative safety of San Jose. I was on horseback and he accepted a lift with me. Before falling asleep in the saddle, he asked me if it was true that the soldiers had cut the fingers and toes off the little children?
Maybe seeing and hearing all this would have stirred some deeply buried memory of human feeling in them. And perhaps not.
Twelve members of three nearby families are still missing. We fear the worst.
This latest outrage is all the more disturbing for British people as the UK Govt. is continuing to train and fund parts of the Colombian military despite their constant murders of civilians.
Please protest in the strongest possible terms to the Colombian authorities
calling on them to arrest without delay the soldiers responsible and open an
independent investigation into the killing. Please also contact the UK Govt.
calling on them to immediately freeze UK military assistance to the Colombian
Army.
. Yesterday, the Colombian Office of the High Commissioner of the United Nation for Human Rights condemned the massacre ..
The two white coffins of the smallest member of the Tuberquia family headed the ceremony. they were followed by the grey coffins of the other six victims.
". what we know for certain is that all this week's crimes were directly the responsibility of the 17th Brigade," said Padre Giraldo emphatically..
Last night, the Minister of Defence, Jorge Alberto Uribe, discounted any responsibility of the Army. "We are united with all Colombians to reject all assassinations. The Public Forces have a clear conscience as none of them committed this crime." ..
On 13th December last, at a meeting with Vice-President Francisco Santos,
(reported in a Green Letter at the time - ed.) it was proposed to the
inhabitants of San Jose that a group of policemen with training in human rights
would invigilate the entrance to the area. However, until now no action has
been taken in this respect, said Elkin Ramirez of the 'Freedom Lawyers' group
(Corporacion Juridica Libertad) who represent the peasants..
Then followed a much fuller and surprisingly honest report in the Tiempo, generally considered a very rightwing newspaper: it was extremely long and very beautifully written. I have had to select the most important excerpts.
I can no longer keep silence. I spent four days with the Peace Community of San Jose de Apartado. . I had received notice of the tragic occurrences. which blamed members of the Army for the killings and announced that a commission from the Community was leaving for La Resbalosa, nine hours from San Jose, to look for the bodies.
I had known the people of San Jose since 1997 when they declared the setting up of the Peace Community. And I had seen their Memorial Monument grow. it is made of stones they bring from the river and on each one is written the name of a murdered person. There are already more than 150. ..
I met Don Alberto (all names are fictitious to protect the people), a man with big strong hands. "The people murdered were like our own sons and daughters," he said. The long journey up the mountain was made shorter and less tense with his stories, some terrible, some happy, always showing the love the people have for this land. In spite of the pain and fear, these people were full of dignity and hope.
"Look at these beautiful fertile mountains, now so abandoned. My father brought us up here. This is my life. I live here with my wife and children and we manage to survive by growing yucca and cocoa. I'm not considering leaving, we tried that and it is very hard. There have been eight or nine years of persecution and attacks. They're all furious with us, including the Government. All because we won't play the game of anyone who carries arms; they all want to use us."..
..At 7.15 p.m., we heard the sound of helicopters and thought that the exhumation had taken place. But minutes later we met the commission of around 80 people from San Jose Community, on foot and horse, coming down from the farm of Alfonso Bolivar Tuberquia, one of the assassinated leaders of the Peace Community, in whose cocoa plantation graves with the mutilated corpses had been found. An interminable procession of lights and hearts broken with grief was descending rapidly down the mountain. .
Several leaders told us that five bodies had been found, "There were bullet marks in the kitchen, some words written with charcoal and blood stains on the floor . They cut the adults to pieces, only the trunks remained. They cut an arm off the 6 year old girl and opened her stomach, and did the same to the 20 month old baby.."
.Nearly 10.0 p.m. and we are at a tiny wooden house with a straw roof. Just one room and several families. One of the women of the community who was born in the region says, "Until a decade ago, there were 200 families here. There were communal shops, a school, a health centre and now there are only ruins. So many armed incursions and murder of campesinos have forced us to leave our lands. A year ago there were around 90 families but after another incursion of the Army and paramilitaries, there are only about 16. After this, who knows how many will stay."
Other campesinos talk of Nueva Antioquia in Turbo: "It's from there that the paramilitaries organize their attacks and coordinate them with the Army..."
Next day begins at 5 a.m..I go with a group of about 40 people and 40 minutes later, the vultures announce that we have arrived at the place. On the banks of the River Multos.we find what is left of the head of Luis Eduardo's son Deiner, 11 years old: the skull and a few vertebrae. 15 metres further up is the rest of the boy's body, and that of his father. Also that of Bellanira, 17 years old, Luis Eduardo's partner. Their bodies are intertwined, but little remains of them. There are no signs of bullet holes in their heads. The boy's body and that of his father still have their boots on, but not Bellanira. She is barefoot and her body is partly on top of Deiner's and the rest bent towards Luis Eduardo's. Her green trousers are rolled up to knee-level. Five or six metres from the boy's head is a machete thrown into the shrubbery which borders the river. 30 metres further down, in the middle of the river amongst the rocks, is a small black boot belonging to Bellanira and 15 metres further on, almost slit in two, is the other one. Very close by was another machete.
The members of the Peace Community stand and look at the boy's head. Then they climb up to see the bodies. There are no tears. Their eyes stare and glaze over. There are no words. One of the leaders and a lawyer break the silence: "Nobody must touch anything in this area. The evidence must not be disturbed. It is important that the Fiscalia remove them for investigation."
The group returns to the other side of the river. Only now the sobbing of a sister of Luis Eduardo, who remains at his side, cuts through the silence, echoing in the mountains. Tears now fall down many cheeks. Minutes and hours pass, and no helicopters or fiscal commissions...At 4.0 in the afternoon, the sound of helicopters announces the arrival of the Fiscalia. Or so everyone thinks. The group wave white flags where there is an open landing space, trying to get the attention of the pilots. One lands elsewhere, another observes us from the air, then flies off and drops troops in La Resbalosa. This operation they repeat four or five times.. The campesinos wave their shirts, light fires, make all kinds of signals, but the helicopters go off into the clouds every time.
At 5.15 p.m., a group of soldiers and police arrive. They do not come up to us but ask for representatives of the Community and ask to speak alone with them. One of the leaders goes with a lawyer. Later, a police captain calls me and asks me who I work for and if I could photograph the bodies in case the Fiscalia doesn't come.
Upon returning, the peasants tell me that a soldier picked up the machete that was near Bellanira's boots, cleaned it and sharpened it on the rocks. Upon seeing that he was observed, he turned his back. The lawyer and representative of the community were told about this and they went to speak to the captain and asked him to inform an official of the Army "because it is a manipulation of evidence". Upon returning to the group, they found the peasants in an even greater state of upset. "The soldier who took the machete passed close to us and without shame or pity for what we are going through, made signs and said that that machete was the one they'd slit their throats with."
At 6.0 the next morning..our group is stopped on our way to the bodies by three soldiers. They ask the campesinos what they are doing in this place.They ask me who I am and why I am with this group. I explain to them about my work and about the search for several more families of this area who have not been seen or heard of for several days. A little further on, there are three wooden huts.on the first is a message written in charcoal: "Guerrilla out, signed: your worst nightmare, The Boss." In the others are two families who come out and greet us timidly. The oldest woman speaks in a very low voice, asking us how long we have been in the region and if we have come to rescue them. She says thank god that this nightmare can now end. "It began on Monday (it is now Sunday) when They arrived and they haven't let us move. They have X in custody and won't let him go home, his wife and children are alone on the other side of the mountain. They keep interrogating me and threatening me, saying I am the nurse of the guerrilla! With them was Melaza, who is a paramilitary. It's the third time that he has come to my house with the Army, he says he's going to finish off everyone in the Community because they are a bunch of bastard guerrillas and if he has to, he'll do away with the foreigners too (this refers to members of the International Peace Brigades and other foreign observers - ed.), as we are in a region that belongs to them. When my daughters go to the well for water, they threaten to cut their heads off."
One of the members of the Community tells them we are here to collect the bodies of Luis Eduardo, Deiner and Bellanira. The old woman's eyes fill with tears. She takes our hands and speaks even more quietly: "So it's true that they killed them? Why did they do that? I told Luis Eduardo not to go that morning to his cocoa plantation. We knew the army were doing an operation. He didn't take any notice of me because he wasn't afraid, and he needed to harvest his crops to make money for his boy's medical bills. He went in the morning and said he was coming back, but he never did. These people came after midday and have only made us suffer. We spent all our time praying till you came just now. They would hardly let us pick a bit of maize. About Wednesday, they told us they had killed some guerrilleros by the river, that one of them was with a woman and a boy. I said to them "Wasn't it Luis Eduardo and his son you killed? They are relatives of mine, and Bellanira is his partner. Immediately they changed their story and said, 'the paramilitaries killed them."
I went up to one of the soldiers and said a few words about the suffering of the peasants in Colombia and that this journey has shaken me because of all I have seen. He was visibly affected and said, "It's the peasants who always lose everything. Imagine, this family is going to have to leave even their pigs."
At 10.30 a.m., the families are ready to leave. There is much sadness, but relief as well. The graffiti on the first house has been rubbed out by the soldiers. ..
At 7.0 that evening, exhausted we return to San Jose. 'Where are the other members of the Press?' I ask the inhabitants. There is no answer. None had bothered to come.
..Next day at the mass funeral, I look into the eyes of the young people, men and women whom I accompanied in the search for their families, I look at the new orphans and the many widows. Too much pain. The people I saw striding bravely through the mountains and across streams are now crumpled up weeping in the cemetery of San Jose de Apartado.
By Jesus Abad Colorado, Special report for El Tiempo.
Report from El Mundo newspaper, Colombia, March 1st 2005 (translated excerpts)
(Gloria Cuartas is an extremely brave and wellknown woman who endlessly risks her life in this dangerous area by speaking out on behalf of the campesinos - ed.)
A new commission of the San Jose Peace Community is leaving today for the villages of La Esperanza and Las Nieves to search for another five people who have disappeared and are feared murdered.
The Fiscalia has ordered a legal investigation of the 17th Army Brigade to clarify the massacre of three children and five adults last week in the hamlets of La Resbalosa and Mulatos.
The San Jose Peace Community, the NGO for human rights in Colombia, the ex-mayoress of Apartado, Gloria Cuartas and the priest, Javier Giraldo, amongst others, all accuse the Army of the multiple crime, but yesterday the Ministry of Defence and the Commander of the Armed Forces countered these accusations and denied any responsibility.
A preliminary report from the commission of the Fiscalia sent to the region to investigate the motives and authors of the massacre gives three hypotheses: firstly, according to the Peace Community the massacre was carried out by the Army; secondly, according to the evidence of slogans found written by the paramilitaries, it could be that this group were those guilty; the third theory is that it was the guerrilla, to wreck the peace process.
The report says that graffiti were found on one house signed by the AUC (paramilitaries) which said, "We killed them for being guerrilleros". The investigators also reported that the area was disturbed, that is, that objects and other evidence had been taken or tampered with.
The ex-mayoress of Apartado, Gloria Cuartas, accused the 33rd Batallion of the 17th Brigade of the murders and said that there are now many witnesses, as the people who have been displaced are now daring to talk.
"They were massacred as if it were an operation of King Herod, that is, that every child in the region has to be killed in case they become guerrillas," she said.
She added that today another group is going out to look for more bodies in the hamlet of Las Nieves as there are rumours that there are more graves there...Padre Javier Giraldo said that patrols of the 17th Brigade entered into Las Nieves and captured and cut up a woman in the presence of her family, accusing her of being a member of the FARC militia..
The People's Defender of Uraba, Daniel Sastoque, affirmed that another five families had left their homes and taken refuge in San Jose and that another three families were missing, as well as a member of the Peace Community.
Because of these violent events, the Governor of the region, Jorge Mejia, announced the installation of a police station in San Jose, in spite of the rejection by the Community of the presence of the public forces. He said that the absence of the public forces affected the community as they were 'unprotected and at the mercy of people of violence'.
Meanwhile, General Ospina Ovalle said that just as some people accuse the Army,
there were other versions that pointed to the FARC. He also said that at the
time of the events, there were no Army patrols in the region.
The UK government finds it convenient to blame Colombia's huge murder rate on the drugs trade. The reality is that most of the killings are being done by a regime it supports.
Whilst apologists for Bush and Blair's murderous adventure in Iraq see a 'silver lining' in pseudo-events in the Middle East, real events in Colombia illuminate the universal nature of their 'mission.' The latest tells a horrific story that, had it qualified as news, probably would have been reported as a tragedy in which the 'price of cocaine was paid with blood.' That was how the Observer on 13 February represented the suffering of Colombia. .a Foreign Office minister assuring us the Colombia's woes could all be blamed on drugs and that the 'Oxford-educated' president of Colombia, Alvaro Uribe, was 'trying to rein in rogue elements of the Army.' Moreover, the British government was helping him in his noble cause. As for America's colossal military involvement in Colombia, known as 'Plan Colombia'.this was merely 'controversial' and 'aimed at eradicating the (drugs) trade.'..
On 21 February, according to witnesses, soldiers of the 17th Brigade of the Colombian army entered the Peace Community of San Jose de Apartado in the north-west of the country. The community has no political alliance and is internationally renowned and "protected" by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. According to witness statements, the soldiers abducted and murdered eight civilians, including three young children and a teenage girl, all of whom were hacked to death with machetes..
The United Nations has called for an investigation; the United States has called for an investigation; and so has the Foreign Office. If the past is a guide, the latter two will be confident that this latest horror will blow over and Colombia's facade can be erected again. For just as Bush and Blair are soaked with blood in Iraq, so are they in Colombia.
The Colombian military and police have the worst human rights record in the western hemisphere. That the government of 'Oxford-educated' Uribe is any better than his predecessors' and that drugs alone are the cause of more than 20,000 murders every year is a fiction promoted in Washington and London. No one doubts that the FARC, a peasant-based guerrilla group, has trafficked in cocaine, but the drugs trade and violence in Colombia are overwhelmingly the responsibility of the state, its military and paramilitaries, funded and trained, directly and indirectly by the American and British governments. .. The victims are the likes of Guerra and his family, and trade union activists, teachers, land-reformers and indigenous and peasant leaders who work to promote social and economic justice and human rights.
In his study of British foreign policy 'Unpeople', the historian Mark Curtis wrote:
The war in Colombia is essentially over the control of resources in a deeply unequal society.The basic role of the state is to marginalize the popular forces and ensure that Colombia's resources - notably oil - remain in the correct hands. US and UK strategy is to support this. The 'war on drugs' is a cover.
Death squads linked to Colombian governments have been so successful in driving people off their farms that 76% of the land is now controlled by an elite of less than 3% of the population. Given the close links between the military and the paramilitaries."US military aid is going directly to the major terrorist networks throughout Colombia, who traffic cocaine into US markets to fund their activities."
The Blair government refuses to say exactly where most of British taxpayers' millions of pounds of 'drugs-related assistance' to Colombia ends up. "We do not give details of all the support," says Bill Rammell, "nor of specific units to whom we provide assistance, as to do so could reduce its effectiveness and potentially endanger the UK personnel involved." We get his drift. .. As for (Colombian President) Uribe, the Blair government's propaganda is that he has an "impressive" record of "containing crime and violence". They mean he has allowed the Colombian police, military and paramilitaries to "pacify" the cities and make sections of the middle class feel safer. No-one sees what they do outside the suburbs. In Uribe's first year as president, there were nearly 7,000 political killings and 'disappearances', worse than the average during the four years of (President) Pastrana.
Busy Bill (Pilger's name for Bill Rammell of the British Foreign Office - ed.) has been promoting the Uribe regime.His omissions are many, such as the fact that the chemicals used in turning coca into cocaine all come from the US and Europe, and that significant British oil investments and human rights violations are two sides of the same coin - with BP protected by the Colombian military, and the pipeline company . investigated for its reported links with a notorious army brigade. Such is the state-sponsored menace in Colombia that British non-governmental organizations, together with their Colombian counterparts, are at constant risk. "We regularly urge the Colombian government," says Busy Bill, "to support and protect their work."
The murderers of Luis Eduardo Guerra and the seven others must be quaking.
Police entered with clowns and sweets to break the ice, but the inhabitants received them with hostility. Some left.
Some people who accompanied the police were filming and the already hostile community, which does not accept the Public Forces, replied by saying they would break dialogues with the Government.
.Inhabitants of the Peace Community of San Jose spent the night in 5 communal huts covered in plastic which they built two weeks ago in their new settlement.
Their displacement to the place they call 'Little San Jose', 15 minutes from the town centre of San Jose, was brought about by the arrival of a caravan of police trying to 'break the ice' with the inhabitants of the area.
A bus laden with policemen, clowns, ice-cream and sweets, arrived at the sports place of the Peace Community on Wednesday at 11.30 in the morning, half an hour after the police priest had travelled round the settlement with a megaphone announcing the arrival of the police.
According to the messages broadcast, they were coming to work hand in hand with the people, to accompany them and help them. But as they passed through the settlement, the doors of many houses closed and the people avoided going to the entertainments arranged by the police. According to members of the police, some parents told their children off if they tried to go to watch the activities.
The police not only arrived against the will of the people, as they consider the
Public Force an armed participant like the guerrilla or the paramilitaries, but
they were accompanied by agents filming the people and this increased the
mistrust of the already hostile Peace Community.. who say they will not continue
their dialogue with the Government regarding the provisional measures of
protection requested by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, as they had
done with the Vice-President of Colombia for the past two years.. And they
added: "The government made war on a community that believes in peace and which
lives in peace. Now we will not speak to any agents of the state."
In spite of the terrible treatment meted out to San Jose Peace Community, the Peasant Universities in various parts of Colombia's huge territory, begun on their initiative, continue.
Our colleague Anne Barr has recently returned from the latest in the series, which lasted a month, in the hot disputed lands of Caqueta in southern Colombia, at the other end of the country from the shocking events described above. Whilst the North of Colombia is generally dominated by paramilitaries, the South has generally been under FARC (guerrilla) influence. Here is Anne's report, dated 4th April:
"Remolinos del Caguan is a long way from anywhere in flat, hot, sticky Caqueta. It has possibly the worst reputation of the many notorious regions in this country of ill-repute. Most city people nearly fainted when I said I was going to spend a month there (being a foreigner and therefore definitely kidnap material for the guerrilla according to the city-based view of things, a view formed by the lies of the very right-wing TV channels and newspapers).
To get to Remolinos, you have to go to the river port of Cartagena del Chaira, famous as a guerrilla and coca-trade town. I expected chaos and tension. Instead, I found a pretty, green, ordered, calm town with a very developed civic structure. But there was no shortage of tension as the army and police have checkpoints all along the roads to Cartagena del Chaira and are on every street corner of the town. Local people say they feel as though either they have been invaded by a foreign force or that they are not considered Colombians. This is the epicenter of Plan Patriota, a US-financed anti-'terrorist' campaign, so though the soldiers are Colombian, their orders come from the US. The Plan is to displace the civilian population because the region is rich in oil, nickel and uranium, not to mention coca plantations and processing plants. This takeover plan is disguised as an anti-drug and anti-guerrilla campaign but you only have to take a trip down the river to realize that's not the truth.
First, our boat had to dock at an army checkpoint, whilst being pointed at by several ridiculously over-armed gunboats. After many pointless questions about why we were going down the river - the local organizers had already told the army that we were going to hold the second course of the campesino university in Remolinos - we carried on for another five minutes and were waved ashore by the FARC guerrilla checkpoint, which consisted of a few young men and women, casual, curious and friendly. Then we went another 10 minutes down the river to be ordered ashore by another army checkpoint, with a very rude and unfriendly commander. When I mentioned the oddness of this sequence of checkpoints, a local friend said, "See? It's all a theatre - the army bother us by stealing our shopping and money and arresting innocent people but they almost never seek out the guerrilla."
After a whole day on the Caguan river, we got to Remolinos in the evening. It's one of the quietest, friendliest places I have been in Colombia. No cars, no loud music, no rubbish. But the prices are quite extraordinary, about twice as high as the most expensive parts of Bogota. This is partly because transport costs are enormous as the army won't allow anyone to bring in petrol (with the excuse that it's for the guerrilla or for drug processing) or reasonable quantities of basic foods like rice and oil (for the same excuses).
The first two days of the month-long course were spent in introductions. The participants were from 12 different indigenous and campesino communities and many had travelled three days to get here. Some I knew from the first course we did in Uraba in the North of Colombia. One of the leaders and founders, Luis Eduardo Guerra, was no longer with us..An Indian from the Wiwa tribe was a day late as he'd had to claim from the morgue the bodies of two cousins who'd been killed by the army because they had refused to sign over tribal lands for a hydro-electric dam.
Two newcomers were from the Kogui Indian tribe of the Sierra Nevada in the North of Colombia. They didn't take part much, but listened a lot. When you sit near them, you get a feeling of space and light, they were a happy couple, very in love. They never wear western clothes, only their own handspun white robes. They don't allow anyone to sell white rice or cooking oil on their lands as they say eating so much white rice makes you stupid! They are mainly self-sufficient in food. Their lands are also a famous national park, Parque Tayrona, but they have managed to chase the Ministry of the Environment away as the government tried to take over their ancient, sacred sites and give rights to the multinationals to invade. They rarely have problems with army or guerrilla as they exude such an air of authority and dignity that comes from their strict adherence to their own culture and traditions. All the other participants felt honoured that they were with us and we were all intrigued by the fact that they talked non-stop with great intensity in their own language. No-one dared to ask what they talk about.
A young woman from a campesino community in para-controlled northern Colombia gave us a dark picture of how the coca trade kills all it meets. Her community has been taken over by the paramilitaries who have moved in to grow coca leaf. They pay the young men about 100 dollars a month (a good wage here) plus clothes and food, to guard the crops. Bodies appear daily in the river and no-one dares to ask who killed them or why. The army, to satisfy 'quotas', arrest anyone they find near the crops. She has two cousins in prison, ordinary poor campesinos accused of being narco-paramilitaries.
Two of the courses in the campesino university were taught by university professionals. Interestingly, these were the courses that the peasants criticized most, very courteously but strongly, saying that the language used was not their language and that some of the instructors definitely learnt more from them than they were capable of teaching them. One of the professional courses was taught by some biologists who brought gruesome looking traps and nets to trap jungle animals 'to count them', and upon closer questioning, it turned out that besides torturing them, they were also going to eat some of them. I tried my best to argue that this was not ecology and got nowhere, so I resorted to guerrilla tactics: I borrowed some very highly perfumed deodorant 'to use as mosquito repellent' and quietly rubbed it all over the cages, then impregnated scraps of tissue paper with it and scattered them where they set the traps. I don't know whether this had any effect, but no animals were caught that night. I think it was more likely that 30 noisy Colombians tramping through the jungle scared them all away.
Directly after this 'course', we had some real education from an Indian from the Putumayo, a beautiful 60 year old man, who had spent 25 years studying the forest at night, using the ritual hallucinogenic creeper called yahe, to see deeper into the plants. In each square metre of jungle, he showed us several medicinal plants. We took them home, made ointments and extracts and tried them out on ourselves with good effect. Everyone was properly impressed with him and his classes were a model of silent attention. As most campesinos see the forest as 'just weeds', his classes made a notable difference to these attitudes.
In the midst of all this, we were ordered by the guerrilla to go and see them, partly because they heard there was a 'gringa' (me) in the group. So a boat collected us and took us to another well-organized riverside village. We were directed up the hill to the church to be met by a black commander and several elegant young guerrilla men and women, whose welcoming words were "Don't worry, this is not a kidnap." Whilst army helicopters flew around back and forth overhead, we introduced ourselves and then the commander gave a long and interesting speech about the FARC's political plans, mixing this up with well-explained world history and songs of his own composition. But in spite of his charm and intelligence, this situation brought out the complicated human biodiversity of Colombia. The commander invited questions and comments. As no-one spoke up, I told him of our experience of the FARC, of the several excellently-organized FARC-controlled zones we have lived in, yet were displaced from by the FARC themselves, and about the murder of our two boys by out-of-control FARC militia and how the FARC higher commands did not punish their men for this crime so we had to resort to the inefficient methods of the State to have two of the murderers put in prison.
I said that one appreciates the areas they have maintained and protected, like here in the Caguan where one can walk around at any hour of the day or night, sleep with the doors or windows open, and where the army/paramilitaries don't feel quite so confident as they do in the North to abuse and massacre the civil population. (At the University course in the Peace Community of San Jose, a small area besieged by extensive paramilitary-run areas, we couldn't travel alone and had to have international accompaniment from NGOs all the time.)
The only unusual thing about my story is that it is about foreigners, as any campesino or Indian could a similar or worse story and there is much mistrust of the guerrilla amongst civilians because they have allowed many of their Fronts to get out of control and become little dictatorships, subject to the whims of local commanders with little political ideology.
Then others began to speak up, saying the same things, that the FARC would have to prove that they really are an army that protects the people, as through their frequent maltreatment of campesinos and Indians, they have lost stature in the eyes of most civilians. I think this commander had not realized that he had drawn unto himself a group of strong leaders from communities that have been forced to try and find unarmed ways of living in the midst of the many warring factions. Each community has suffered in different ways, to differing degrees from the various armed forces, for this war has as many faces as the immense variety of Colombian landscapes, climates and cultures.
The communities who have to cohabit their areas with the guerrilla are the most tolerant of them, though they are also deeply critical. The Indian groups consider them arrogant upstarts who have as little right to stick their noses in their affairs as the government or the army have and the Paez tribe have amazing success in protecting their areas with large well-trained groups of young men armed only with sacred talking sticks and radios. The San Jose group protect themselves by being outspoken and making a hell of a fuss via international channels every time the army or the paras try to move in. It works up to a point, but doesn't stop massacres like that of Luis Eduardo and his friends and family.
It has to be admitted that where the guerrilla are least present, there is more
death and destruction, like in the mineral-rich north and east where the
multinationals and their paramilitary protectors are strongest."
Report from San Jose Community, April 14th 2005
The San Jose Peace Community wishes to inform of fresh aggressions against our project, namely the following:
On Saturday, 9th April 2005 at 4.0 p.m., Mr. BERNARDO CEBALLOS was detained at one of the police checkpoints situated at the exit of the town of Apartado on the road to San Jose. Mr. Ceballos was taken to the police station in Apartado and was presented in front of two young men - 'reinserted guerrilleros' according to the police. There the police accused him of being a guerrillero but he denied this completely, saying he had four children and spent his time working. The police told him to give himself up and begin working with them, that they would give him money, land and they would help to get his family out, and all he had to do was accuse certain people in the Peace Community. Mr. Ceballos said there was no reason to 'reinsert' himself and that he certainly would not accuse anyone, least of all people in the community who worked very seriously. For a while, they continued pressing him with the same offers and he insisted on his civil status and on refusing to work with them. Finally he was let free around 9.0 a.m. the following day, Sunday.
On Sunday 10th April, around 7.30 a.m., the army arrived shooting at the house of NUBIA CARDONA situated in the hamlet of La Cristalina. With her were her son, her daughter-in-law and two children. Hearing shots, all of them ran out and fortunately no-one was hurt. But in spite of this, a helicopter arrived around 9.0 a.m. and begun to bomb the house and its surrounds. The army took away her food and various animals. The same day around 8.0 p.m., the army bombed La Cristalina once again, and several families have had to leave because of the indiscriminate bombing.
On Sunday 10th April around 10.0 a.m.: a young man, JUAN CORREA, was detained at the police station on the way out of Apartado on the road to San Jose. They told him that they were arresting him as the community had denounced him as a guerrilla. He told them that the community would do no such thing and that he belonged to no armed group nor was he a guerrilla. Later the police let him go, but they told him to be wary of the community; he answered by saying that that was not how it was at all, that the people we have to guard against are the armed groups.
According to several comments made between 10th and 12th April by the police in San Jose, and according to reports of some functionaries of the local administration, the mobilization of some 50 families in Apartado is being prepared to invade the homes of families of the Peace Community. Likewise, according to the police, they are going to set up a supermarket in the installations of the communal food store belonging to our project.
On Thursday 14th April, at 7.0 a.m., Mrs. DALIDA RODRIGUEZ was travelling with her 12-year-old daughter, bringing a load of avocados and coconuts to sell in San Josesito (where the Community is presently taking refuge). When they passed the army who were in the hamlet of La Linda, the soldiers shot into the air, and Dalida fled with her daughter. But when she realized the shots were into the air, she returned for her merchandise, only to find that the army were eating her coconuts and the avocados had been damaged. When she complained about this, the soldiers told her to make herself scarce or they would cut her head off.
We beg for national and international solidarity to stop the indiscriminate bombing and acts of terror against the civilian population and to respect the Humanitarian Zones, especially La Cristalina and that the persecution, detentions and false accusations against us should stop. We continue firm and clear in our principles and from San Josesito, a place of dignity, we continue in our endeavours to build an area of civil resistance in the middle of the war, by being neutral and not taking sides with any armed participants.
A further communiqué from San Jose Peace Community, April 18th 2005
The San Jose Peace Community wishes to report further aggressions planned against us and the lies behind them. These are the facts for your consideration:
On Saturday 16th April around 9.0 a.m. a large number of vehicles and buses began to go up from Apartado to San Jose. More than 12 of them, full of people, with chickens, machetes and boots to give away. According to the media of the region, the Mayor was there in the middle of a 'civic military event'.
There were no members of the San Jose Peace Community in San Jose, and yet the media thanked us for our participation and boasted of having given us all the items they brought with them. But the most worrying aspect was that some of the media said that the Community was being given 15 days to return to San Jose to collaborate with the police and if we did not go, people from Apartado would be brought to live in our houses.
This declaration is a total cheek and shows how the public forces have only acted as agents of aggression and destruction of our community. Now they are publicly inciting the theft of our homes. We ask: what right has the State to steal our homes? It is undeniable that they are attempting to consolidate the paramilitary strategy to destroy us and in order to do this, the forces of the state join together with the municipal authorities. They seek to take from us the little that we have: they massacre our people, they force us to flee, then they want to take our houses; next it will be the confiscation of our lands.
We urgently ask for national and international solidarity to prevent these
criminal acts against our community, to demand of the Colombian State respect
for the life and property of the members of the Peace Community, and that the
plans to rob and destroy our community cease.