COLOMBIA: Las Pavas farmers suffer threats, assaults after small victory

Facebook
Twitter
Email
WhatsApp
Print

CPTnet
10
October 2012
COLOMBIA: Las Pavas
farmers suffer threats, assaults after small victory

Colombia’s rural land agency has announced that the 119 families
intermittently farming and displaced from parts of the Las Pavas estate should
be given titles to portions of the estate.

On 27 September 2012 Miriam
Villegas, Director of the Colombian Institute for Rural Development (INCODER) announced
that eleven of Las Pavas’ over one hundred plots of land belong to the state, and that ten
of these should be titled to families.

 
  Las Pavas Song video

This small victory for the
community comes at a time of many threats. In mid-July 2012, the palm company
Aportes San Isidro, responsible for having illegally evicted the Las Pavas
families in 2009, brought approximately 150 workers to plant palm on lands under
investigation by INCODER. INCODER called the palm planting a violation of the administrative
process. Employees of the company, including its lawyer, Danilo Palacios, threatened
and physically attacks on community members and guests. Firearms are increasingly visible, and a new armed security company also named Aportes San Isidro patrols the land. (See machine translated article.) The Las Pavas community’s
attorney made the following denouncements.

29 September 2012 

Today, 29 September 2012, at 10:30 a.m., Mr. Danilo Palacios
Benitez, Mr. Mario Montero Marble and another heavily armed man of unknown identity,
went where two young members of
ASOCAB were
preparing land for planting and uttered verbal threats and profanity and
demanded they stop working. When the two farmers refused, one of the armed men
rushed towards them, pushed them and threatened to hit them in the face with
the butt of his gun. All the while Mr. Mario Marble kept his gun aimed at them.
Seeing that the young men did not back down, the armed men left, saying they
would not allow anyone to sow again and, if they did there would be consequences.

1 October 2012 

Again the rights of the community of the Peasant
Association of Buenos Aires (ASOCAB), rightful claimants of the Las Pavas farm,
have been threatened by oil palm company Aportes San Isidro, persistent in its
aggressive attacks against the lives and property of this rural community
affected by the conflict.

 
 

One of six farmhouses destroyed days after
a government decision approving land titles.

Sunday morning while going to their plots to work, they
found six homes completely destroyed. These homes were ready to be occupied by
families who are part of the return process of the Las Pavas farm under investigation
by INCODER.

The farming community has no doubt that these attacks
were carried out by palm company personnel, who days earlier had threatened to
destroy everything ASOCAB built, in addition to destroying their crops and fences,
attacking them and threatening them with death.

A ten-day site visit by INCODER starting October 10 will gather information for the adjudication of some of the
remaining plots of land claimed by the families. Pray that justice will prevail
and that, as with the ten adjudicated plots, the remaining plots will be recognized
as state land that should be titled to the families for sustainable use. Pray
also for authorities to prevent further attacks on the community by Aportes San
Isidro employees.

Colombia team blog

Categories

Read More Stories

An aerial view of Oak Flat lands, red stones and mountains under a blue sky with a layer of white clouds

Kill the sacred or stop the mine

At Oak Flat, the capitalist powers of destruction seem to want to play God – but how does one destroy all that sustains life in favour of scars of death?

A compilation of the logos of the undersigned organizations

Sekiz Yıllık Şiddet, Ayrımcılık, Tecrit ve Dışlanma

Mart 2016’da AB-Türkiye Mutabakaı’nın yayınlandığında, devletlerin mültecilerin haklarını koruma konusundaki uluslararası yükümlülüklerini tamamen göz ardı etmesi nedeniyle insan hakları grupları tarafından şiddetle kınanmıştı

A compilation of the logos of the undersigned organizations

Eight years of Violence, Discrimination, Segregation, and Exclusion 

On the eighth anniversary of the EU-Turkey Statement, we denounce Turkey and EU states’ consistent failure to uphold their international obligations with regard to migrants and refugees, and strengthen our joint commitment to challenge all official and unofficial policies that lead to the discrimination, segregation, and ultimately exclusion of migrants.

Skip to content