COLOMBIA: Forced displacement in Cimitarra Valley--a military objective?
May 7th, 2008
in:
CPTnet
7 May 2008
COLOMBIA: Forced displacement in Cimitarra Valley--a military objective?
by Stewart Vriesinga
[Note: The following release has been edited for length. The original article is available at http://www.cpt.org/work/colombia/actions/displacement-prevention).
Deadly threats to the security of campesinos living in the Cimitarra Valley continue. They believe the very entities responsible for their safety and protection are promoting rather than preventing their forced displacement in an effort to expropriate their farms and territory
The untenable situation of the hamlets of San Pedro in south Bolivar –Paraíso, Alto Cañabraval, and surrounding communities—illustrates these threats. Local residents and community leaders described to a visiting human rights commission Colombian military operations in which community members were assassinated and then presented as guerrillas who died in combat. They said demobilized guerrilla and paramilitary informers pointed out their community leaders, whom the Colombian authorities subsequently accused of treason and arrested (See http://colombia.indymedia.org/news/2007/10/72859.php). Currently six are in jail, and fourteen more have arrest warrants against them.
The residents told of how the Colombian authorities sprayed with poison crops that the local people had had planted as an alternative to coca. (See CPT Colombia release “COLOMBIAN ARMED FORCES JUSTIFY DISPLACEMENT," http://groups.yahoo.com/group/cptcolombia/message/184)
Other abuses the residents spoke of included the FARC (a guerilla group) planting landmines, military and paramilitary collaboration, soldiers bribing their children with candy and then trying to pump them for information, and soldiers using local people as human shields. They asked how they could hold soldiers accountable for their actions when the armed men walk around with no insignia, and say, when asked for identification, “We are all the same; it shouldn’t concern you.”
Although local residents doubted that the commission’s presence would prevent further displacements, they remain determined to struggle on as a community. The prospect of separating themselves from their land is for most unthinkable. As one community member put it: “We are all already displaced people. That’s how why we came here in the first place!”
The Colombian government is planning a number of mega-projects for the larger area: new highways along the Magdalena River and to Medellín and the Caribbean coast, huge multinational mining projects, a hydro-electric dam and expansion of African Palm plantations for the bio-fuel industry. (See Times Online Article http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article1875709.ece.)
Whether the commission’s visit to the region will increase the security of residents is uncertain. The world community must act to end indiscriminate aerial spraying of coca regions; act to end Plan Colombia; act to end national and international corporate expropriation of peasant land; act to increase economic community development that will benefit those who live there (as opposed to increasing the value of their land, thus aggravating the expropriation of their lands); act to ensure a clear distinction between civilians and armed combatants; act to end the arrest and extrajudicial killing of civilians in the area; and act to ensure that state security forces protect the lives and homes of the people in these rural conflict zones and provide their communities with all the services to which their citizenship entitles them.
7 May 2008
COLOMBIA: Forced displacement in Cimitarra Valley--a military objective?
by Stewart Vriesinga
[Note: The following release has been edited for length. The original article is available at http://www.cpt.org/work/colombia/actions/displacement-prevention).
Deadly threats to the security of campesinos living in the Cimitarra Valley continue. They believe the very entities responsible for their safety and protection are promoting rather than preventing their forced displacement in an effort to expropriate their farms and territory
The untenable situation of the hamlets of San Pedro in south Bolivar –Paraíso, Alto Cañabraval, and surrounding communities—illustrates these threats. Local residents and community leaders described to a visiting human rights commission Colombian military operations in which community members were assassinated and then presented as guerrillas who died in combat. They said demobilized guerrilla and paramilitary informers pointed out their community leaders, whom the Colombian authorities subsequently accused of treason and arrested (See http://colombia.indymedia.org/news/2007/10/72859.php). Currently six are in jail, and fourteen more have arrest warrants against them.
The residents told of how the Colombian authorities sprayed with poison crops that the local people had had planted as an alternative to coca. (See CPT Colombia release “COLOMBIAN ARMED FORCES JUSTIFY DISPLACEMENT," http://groups.yahoo.com/group/cptcolombia/message/184)
Other abuses the residents spoke of included the FARC (a guerilla group) planting landmines, military and paramilitary collaboration, soldiers bribing their children with candy and then trying to pump them for information, and soldiers using local people as human shields. They asked how they could hold soldiers accountable for their actions when the armed men walk around with no insignia, and say, when asked for identification, “We are all the same; it shouldn’t concern you.”
Although local residents doubted that the commission’s presence would prevent further displacements, they remain determined to struggle on as a community. The prospect of separating themselves from their land is for most unthinkable. As one community member put it: “We are all already displaced people. That’s how why we came here in the first place!”
The Colombian government is planning a number of mega-projects for the larger area: new highways along the Magdalena River and to Medellín and the Caribbean coast, huge multinational mining projects, a hydro-electric dam and expansion of African Palm plantations for the bio-fuel industry. (See Times Online Article http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article1875709.ece.)
Whether the commission’s visit to the region will increase the security of residents is uncertain. The world community must act to end indiscriminate aerial spraying of coca regions; act to end Plan Colombia; act to end national and international corporate expropriation of peasant land; act to increase economic community development that will benefit those who live there (as opposed to increasing the value of their land, thus aggravating the expropriation of their lands); act to ensure a clear distinction between civilians and armed combatants; act to end the arrest and extrajudicial killing of civilians in the area; and act to ensure that state security forces protect the lives and homes of the people in these rural conflict zones and provide their communities with all the services to which their citizenship entitles them.