CPTNET
May 29, 2004
COLOMBIA: CPT delegation witnesses aftermath of an assassination upon
arrival in Barrancabermeja
By Doug Pritchard
We saw our first dead body within thirty minutes of the arrival of our CPT
delegation to the city of Barrancabermeja on May 22, 2004.
The body of thirty-year-old Elmer Arbelaez was face-down on the main road,
surrounded by a crowd of children, adults, and one policeman.
Apparently, he and a woman were on a motorcycle. Two men on another
motorcycle pulled up beside them and ordered the man to accompany them.
The woman shouted at Arbelaez to run. He did. The assailants shot him twice
in the head. He fell in the road twenty feet from his motorcycle.
A ten-year-old girl living near the CPT house related the details to the
team. She had seen the assassination. This child had also seen her own
father and her step-father assassinated in similar ways earlier. All
children of God, made in God's image. After telling this story, she and her
friends ran off to play at shooting each other and falling down dead,
mimicking the fall of this afternoon's victim. I remember playing similar
games with my brothers as a child. Here it is no game. And who are my
brothers and sisters now in this place?
The same day, in Barrancabermeja, another man was shot three times, but
survived. At 9 pm yet another young man was assassinated close to the site
of the afternoon killing.
A Barrancabermeja-based group, the Regional Corporation for the Defence of
Human Rights (CREDHOS), reports that there have been 10,000 assassinations
in the city and its environs in the past twenty years. A further 300,000
people, out of a regional population of one million, have been displaced
from their homes by the ongoing violence. Guerilla and paramilitary groups
have been fighting for control of land and influence, and the civilian
population continues to pay the price. CREDHOS says that CPT's presence has
encouraged them, in the most dangerous times, to remain and keep
working for human rights.
"Then God said, 'Let us make humankind in our image, according to our
likeness''...then the LORD God formed man from the dust of the ground,
and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life...Cain said to his brother
Abel, 'Let us go out to the field.' And when they were in the field, Cain
rose up against his brother Abel and killed him. Then the LORD said to Cain,
'Where is your brother Abel?' He said, 'I do not know; am I my brother's
keeper?'" (Gen 1:26, 2:7, 4:8-9)
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Tue Jun 01 2004 - 09:29:09 EDT