On Monday 21st February members of the Peace Community of San Jose de Apartado were massacred whilst in a hamlet in the countryside surrounding the community. There are multiple witness to these killings. They all state that the perpetrators were members of the Colombian Army.
The eight dead included one leader of the community, his partner and son. The other victims were two adults and two children of the same family and another man.
On Friday 25th February over 100 members of the community went to the sites of the massacres and watched the exhumation of 5 mutilated bodies that had been buried in a shallow grave. At the site of the second massacre were the bodies of Peace Community Leader, Luis Eduardo Guerra, his partner and his son. All three had been horribly mutilated and there were signs of torture.
The bodies were dressed in civilian clothes and were unarmed. And they were not killed in the crossfire of
an attack. They were cold bloodedly tortured and murdered by their own military. As one elderly community member said "the government say that they are fighting terrorism but what terrorism can be worse than this?"
The Peace Community of San Jose de Apartado currently take a neutral stance in the Colombian conflict. They refuse to participate with any armed groups and have managed to maintain a degree of economic independence. Their lives are supposed to be protected under measures sent down by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. In recent months they have begun a project to extend the boundaries of the Peace
Community and incorporate more members from the surrounding hamlets. The people killed in these massacres were heavily involved in this process and the community believes that their killings were the government's way to warn them not to go ahead with this project.
The sad truth is that the Colombian military act with almost complete impunity in Colombia. There are hundreds of massacres that have been attributed to them and virtually none have been successfully prosecuted. Outside pressure is often needed for any kind of action to be taken. Due to this the community has no faith that perpetrators of this massacre will ever be prosecuted.
In addition to any messages of outrage, the community has asked that the international community pressure the central government of Colombia on two matters. Firstly, to demand that they respect the measures that the Inter-American court have set up to protect the right of these civilians to live and work on this land and secondly to ensure that the project of extending the boundaries of the community be allowed to progress without further atrocities.
The email addresses of the President of Colombia, the Vice President, the Colombian Ministry of Defence and the Colombian Embassy in London are below:
President Alvaro Uribe Velez -
ppdh@presidencia.gov.co Vice President Francisco Santos-
fsantos@presidencia.gov.co Colombian Ministry of Defence-
siden@mindefensa.gov.co Colombian Embassy in London-
mail@colombianembassy.co.uk -Ambassador is Alfonzo Lopez Caballero Furthermore, those of us who are British can do something else. Whilst the US is the biggest contributor of military aid to Colombia, our government still gives a sizeable amount every year. Our taxes are going to train and aid these forces. Last year over 200 MPs signed Early Day Motion 333 to parliament asking that all military aid to Colombia be stopped due to concerns about the human rights record of the military and its links to paramilitary death squads. This motion was blocked by the Foreign Office. It is time to again pressure the Foreign Office to stop using our money to put more and more sophisticated weaponry at the disposal of these forces. The Foreign Office representative to Colombia is Bill Rammell and his email is
rammellb@parliament.uk. The community is calm but determined. Like many poor rural communities there, this is not the first time they have been massacred. They have worked hard in the eight years since they declared themselves neutral in the conflict to carve out a safe space in that ravaged part of the country. This attack shows once again that neutrality is a concept not understood by the Colombian State. If you possibly can please respond to this atrocity in the way you feel most appropriate, so that the people there can at least witness that not everyone in the world values their lives so pitifully as their own government seems to.
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Peace Brigades International statement
03.03.2005 04:01
Public Statement
London, February 28th, 2005
Everyone involved in Peace Brigades International Colombia would like to express their deep concern and sadness at the murder of Luis Eduardo Guerra, well-known leader of the San José de Apartadó Peace Community in Antioquia, Colombia, and seven other people, among them women and children. This shocking massacre took place between the 21st and 22nd of February.
PBI accompanied Luis Eduardo from the time we established our team in Urabá in 1998. He was one of the community leaders we most admired for the clarity and consistency of his ideas and his total commitment to peace and human rights despite systematic death threats against him. These threats forced Luis Eduardo to leave San José de Apartadó, but after being internally displaced for more than two years he returned in 2004. PBI accompanied him in the sadness of his departure and in the joy of his return.
Luis Eduardo Guerra represented the peace community in numerous meetings with the Colombian government and state agencies, the diplomatic corps accredited in Colombia, and national and international organisations. He met politicians, journalists and solidarity committees during his tours in countries such as Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and the United States.
According to statements from the San José de Apartadó Peace Community and the Corporation for Judicial Liberty (both accompanied by Peace Brigades International) eyewitnesses confirm that on February 21, near the Mulatos river, Luis Eduardo Guerra, his son, his partner and another person were detained by armed men in uniform who identified themselves as belonging to the 11th Army Brigade. They were then taken to the farm of Alfonso Bolívar Tuberquia, a member of the Peace Council of the hamlet of Mulatos.
Luis Eduardo Guerra, Alfonso Bolívar and their families were not seen again. Several local people went back the next day to Alfonso Bolívar Tuberquia’s farm and discovered traces of blood and human remains. When the Internal Council of the San José de Apartadó Peace Community received this information, it immediately requested that the relevant state agencies investigate these occurrences.
On February 25, the Peace Community organised a fact-finding commission and invited state agencies and national and international NGOs to take part. This commission, which included about 100 members of the community, walked from San José to the hamlets of Mulatos and La Resbalosa accompanied by the Corporation for Judicial Liberty, Peace Brigades International, Fellowship Of Reconciliation and Concern America. At the same time, officials from the Attorney General’s office and the Internal Affairs Agency arrived in the area by helicopter.
The judicial commission carried out the exhumation of a grave on the farm of Alfonso Bolívar Tuberquia where the mutilated bodies of three adults were found in addition to the bodies of two children aged six and two. Later in the day, near the hamlet of La Resbalosa, three more bodies were found (two adults and a boy of eleven). Members of the community recognised them as those of Luis Eduardo Guerra and his family. The body of Luis Eduardo Guerra bore signs of torture. In both instances members of Peace Brigades International were present.
This massacre joins the list of constant attacks the San José de Apartadó Peace Community has faced since it was founded in 1997, resulting in more than 130 murders for which as yet no one has been convicted.
It is disturbing that a community of such international renown, the recipient of provisional protection from the Interamerican Court of Human Rights, and for which the Colombian Constitutional Court also requested effective protective measures in March 2004, should endure an attack of such cruelty and the loss of one of its historic leaders.
Once again, Peace Brigades International urges protection for the people of the San José de Apartadó Peace Community and the Colombian organisations that support the community. Furthermore, in order to prevent any future attacks we ask that a thorough and exhaustive investigation be carried out in which the facts are established and appropriate steps taken.
Peace Brigades International is bringing out this public statement, which deviates from our usual procedures, because of the seriousness of what has taken place. We reiterate our commitment to the project of the San José de Apartadó Peace Community and accompany them in their grief. We will endeavour to cherish the memory of those whom we have lost as a way of overcoming the profound sadness we all feel at this time.
Peace Brigades International – Colombia
bolivar
Colombia Solidarity Campaign appeal for action
03.03.2005 04:04
EVENTS
On Monday 21 February 2004 in Rio Mulatos, armed and uniformed soldiers who identified themselves as belonging to the XI Brigade of the national Army detained LUIS EDUARDO GUERRA, his 11 year old son DEINER ANDRES GUERRA and DEYANIRA AREIZA and another four as yet unknown people. They took them towards La Resbalosa to a farm owned by ALFONSO BOLIVAR. One of the captives managed to escape from this illegal detention.
The following day, the person who had escaped, set out to look for the other captives. At the farm of Alfonso Bolivar, he found blood stains and what looked like a grave. He removed some of the earth and found the mutilated body of DEINER ANDRES GUERRA. He went immediately to the town of San Jose de Apartado where he informed the Peace Community Internal Council of what had happened. Other campesinos from the area also informed the Council that they had found a grave.
The whereabouts of the other captives remains unknown. Initial information points to a mass killing by the army of members of the Peace Community of San Jose de Apartado.
LUIS EDUARDO GUERRA is a well known leader from the Peace Community Internal Council, and since October 2000 had been acting as one of the negotiators with the government over the implementation of the special security measures that had been ordered by the OAS Inter-American Court of Human Rights. On 3 occasions he had met with Vice President Francisco Santos who had personally assured him that the security measures would be implemented.
BACKGROUND
On 20 February at about 4pm. The army arrived in the village of Nieves near San Jose de Apartado. Two hours later they entered the house of GLADYS GUZMAN PALACIOS and her four year old daughter, and started shooting. They killed the childís father who the army later claimed was a guerrilla from the FARC. They also shot the young girl who is currently in hospital. The 33 Counter-Guerrilla unit of the XVII Brigade of the Colombian Army operate in the area.
On 22 February in the rural areas surrounding San Jose de Apartado, army helicopters carried out a heavy indiscriminate bombing of various villages, putting the lives of 200 villagers at risk. The communities had already been forcibly displaced in December 2004 and again in January 2005 by atrocities committed by the army.
WE ASK THAT YOU IMMEDIATELY REQUEST
1. That the Colombian government immediately send officials form the National Unit for Human Rights, the Attorney Generalís Office and specialists in forensic medicine to properly investigate these events.
2. That no member of the XI Brigade be allowed to participate in the investigations, so that they cannot manipulate the evidence and the investigation itself.
3. That the Colombian army cease all activities against the civilian population in the area of San Jose de Apartado.
President Alvaro Uribe Velez
Vice President Francisco Santos
Attorney Generalís Office
Ministry of Defence
Colombian Embassy in London
bolivar
Letter from Anne Barr, Atlantis Commune, Colombia
04.03.2005 00:05
The 8 coffins, 3 of them child-sized, are all light and easy to handle, as they contain hardly any flesh, only bones. The people whose remains they contain were killed just a week ago, last Monday the 21st of February, between 9.30 am and lunchtime, but the vultures, pigs and the humid heat made quick work of the corpses. That bit of this story is horrible, not a subject for polite conversation but the real horror lies in who killed them, how, and why. One would not insult the animal kingdom by saying the killers and their methods were brutal or bestial, because animals don't kill like that.
I knew 2 of them, Luis Eduardo Guerra, 35, and his son Deiner Andres who was 11. Luis Eduardo was the target of non-stop death threats from the military/paramilitry forces of the region, a brilliant and eloquent campesino leader who spoke out unceasingly against the persecution (what a weak and overused word to describe decades of brutal killings, 174 to date, and not one of the perpetrators arrested yet, in spite of copious evidence) of his community by the Colombian state and military. He was small and dark, and shone with the strength of his beliefs. I met him only last June when I was invited to take part in the Campesino University of Pacific Resistance that his community, the Peace Community of San José de Apartadó had created. I'd already received an invitation by mail to take part in a compost and garden-making course and was delighted that at last someone had invented a 'University' with no walls, no campus, no fees or pay and no diplomas, whose only pass mark is that the practical methods of self-sufficiency in all the basic areas of life - food, health, education and self determination - be taught and put into practice in the communities and tribes of the participants who are community and tribal leaders from all over Colombia. But even if I hadn't already felt like that, Luis Eduardo and Eduar, another leader, would have had me convinced within minutes, as soon as they began to tell me what the Peace Community really is, a rare patch of light in the dark confusion that is Colombia, a group of campesinos who've decided they won't take up arms, won't ally themselves with any of the armed forces and won't leave their lands no matter what happens, and who don't accept money from any NGO financing sources who try to use charity to control them. They speak out honestly all the time, whether to army generals, vice-presidents, ambassadors or in foreign parliaments. They know that while many admire them and accompany them, they are alone and essentially defenseless, a small island of justice and peace within the huge, violent sea of paramilitary-run Northern Colombia. Often the sea overwhelms them, like it did last week:
It's hard to get myself to stay seated in front of this screen as I write the next bit. Luis Eduardo, his girlfriend, Bellaneira, and his son, Deiner Andrés, went to harvest cacao from his farm about 6 hours up the mountain from the village of San José last Friday. They were on their way home when they saw an army patrol lying in wait further along the path. One of the group, who cannot be named as it would put his life in danger, said, Let's run. No, said Luis, I've nothing to hide and anyway Deiner can't run well (Deiner was seriously hurt in August when a grenade left by the army exploded, killing Deiner's mother and another woman and almost destroying his right leg and genitals).
The other person bolted and is still alive. Luis Eduardo, his son and his girlfriend were surrounded by the army, the 17th Brigade who are based in Apartadó. They were taken a few hundred yards away and murdered. No bullets were used as they were strangled. The wire used, was left, bloody, beside Luis' corpse. They were also tortured and mutilated. Deiner's head was found 30 yards from his body, it was detached from his body by brute force, not by using a machete. 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 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, which only half hid the remains of the second family massacred that day. Around the house were signs of grenade explosions and inside were signs of torture with human hair spread around. He sent word to San José. The Community notified the police and then 120 of them went to find the bodies, to guard them to make sure that the Army did not dress the corpses as guerrillas or otherwise manipulate the evidence to make the innocent look guilty, a very common practice. They found Luis Eduardo, and his son's and girlfriend's bodies by following their noses. There was little left to find, most of the flesh had been eaten by vultures and pigs.
At last on Friday the Fiscalia arrived in helicopters and exhumed the 5 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 chipped and broken from cutting through their bones. One arm was chopped in 4 bits. The adults had also been sliced open and their guts spilled. Only one man was killed by bullet as he had tried to escape. Another person did manage to escape.
The soldiers who massacred these people did not run, they felt secure enough to stay close by the the scene of their heinous crimes. And why wouldn't they? As stated above, they've never had to face justice for any of their previous murders and massacres. Just over the mountains in Cordoba is the protected area of San Ralito, a paramilitary haven where the "peace monologues" are taking place (as the talks between Alvaro Uribe's government and his spawn, the paramilitaries, are bitterly and cynically called by most Colombians, as in reality they are simply an attempt to legalize the paramilitary armies and what they have gained in territory and power by murdering tens of thousands of campesinos and displacing hundreds of thousands more. The other telling nickname for this sham is the "San Reality show"). When confronted by local people about what they had just done, they didn't bother to deny it, and one of them actually said that the locals should be grateful ("agradecidos") that they hadn't killed more.
That they tortured and murdered Luis Eduardo so cruelly is no accidental, one-off incident, likewise the massacre of the three children of eleven, six and eighteen months. It is a clear message that the Peace Community 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" - a.k.a. coca leaf and palm-oil plantations.
Two days after the exhumations we finally managed to wrest the stinking almost-empty coffins from the torturous, pointless, bureaucratic rituals of the local morgue in Apartadó, and had driven them up the dangerous long dark bumpy road to San José. A local jeep driver constantly put his life at risk by taking us up and down through the army and police checkpoints.
I wish we could have chained the killers to the central post in the palm-roofed central meeting place in San José during that night of mourning. Then they'd have been forced to see the pain they've caused, pain that can't be described with words. I wish they'd had to search for a way to comfort the sobbing young woman who clung to me for hours asking me over and over again why the soldiers had killed her sister, her brother-in-law and her nieces. Her brother-in-law had managed to escape together with another man 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 to help them, saying to his companion that he couldn't live anyway if they were killed.
I wish the killers had to be present in the lush green graveyard when earth was being thrown on the coffins. I wish they had to answer the sturdy 3 year old campesino boy I met running down the steep rough jungle paths with his family, helping to carry with all their worldly possessions (mainly chickens, bedding and cooking pots) in a few sacks and baskets to the relative safety of San José. I was on horseback and he willingly took a lift with me. Before falling asleep in the saddle he asked me if it was true that the soldiers had cut the hands off the little children?
Maybe seeing all this would have stirred some deeply buried spark of human feeling in them. Maybe not.
12 members of 3 nearby families are still missing, we fear the worst.
This is an account of just some of the details of this massacre.
If you have the time please write to the following Colombian government offices to express your shock at these inhuman events, with a copy to the Peace communities address.
Any expressions of condolence and solidarity would be gratefully read and shared.
Anne Barr -
Addresses of Colombian authorities:
President Alvaro Uribe Velez:
Vice President Francisco Santos:
Attorney Generalís Office:
Ministry of Defence:
Colombian Embassy in London:
anne barr
e-mail:
atlantisastrology@hotmail.com
MSM picking it up (well, AP is)
05.03.2005 01:07
U.N. Calls for Probe of Colombia Massacre
Friday March 4, 2005 1:01 AM
By ANDREW SELSKY
Associated Press Writer
BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) - A United Nations official called Thursday for an investigation into the massacre of eight civilians following accusations Colombian Army soldiers carried out the killings, in which victims were hacked to pieces.
The attack was one of the most horrific in Colombia's brutal war. The eight victims, including three young children and a teenage girl, were buried on a farm in northwest Colombia. A former mayor and a priest have blamed government troops for the massacre.
``The authorities have the great challenge of finding out what happened,'' Amerigo Incalcaterra, a top member of the United Nations human rights office in Colombia, said in an exclusive interview with The Associated Press. ``Those who are responsible must be brought before the courts, no matter who they are.''
Incalcaterra, an Italian, visited the region where the massacre occurred and said members of a ``peace community'' - whose leader Luis Eduardo Guerra was one of those killed in the Feb. 21 massacre - are terrified that more bloodshed will occur.
Hours after the U.N. official visited the community on Wednesday near the town of Apartado, a convoy of Colombian prosecutors protected by police came under gunfire on the same road, killing one of the policemen and critically wounding another.
Incalcaterra said that attack must also be investigated, adding that the situation ``is very delicate.'' In the interview, he drew no conclusions about who may have been behind the massacre and the attack on the convoy, saying it was up to prosecutors.
``There is a sickness about the people who carried out this horrific crime,'' Incalcaterra said. ``There is no justification for it.''
Colombian Defense Minister Jorge Alberto Uribe earlier denied that army troops carried out the killings, saying no soldiers were in the area at the time. The area is controlled by the army's 17th Brigade. Last month, 19 members of the 17th Brigade were killed in a rebel ambush.
A cleric who has been close with residents of the Peace Community of San Jose de Apartado said Thursday that they believe the army carried out the massacre in retaliation for the rebel ambush, suspecting that the guerrillas had infiltrated the community. The cleric, interviewed by the AP, did not want to be identified by name for security reasons.
The archbishop of Apartado, German Garcia Isaza, condemned the massacre and in a statement called for a rigorous investigation, saying ``this blood that has been spilled screams for justice.''
Also killed in the massacre were Guerra's wife, his son and five other residents of the peace community, which tries to isolate itself from Colombia's 40-year-old conflict by barring armed groups from entering. Colombia's war pits the U.S.-backed government forces against two leftist rebel groups. Outlawed right-wing paramilitary forces have also been battling the rebels.
Gloria Cuartas, the former mayor of Apartado, located 280 miles northwest of the capital Bogota, and Jesuit priest Javier Giraldo have accused army troops of carrying out the massacre.
``The army in Uraba has no moral authority to defend and protect the population,'' Cuartas told the AP in a telephone interview.
^---
Associated Press writer Margarita Martinez contributed to this report from Bogota.
Colombia Massacre Raises Rights Issues
Friday March 4, 2005 11:46 PM
By ANDREW SELSKY
Associated Press Writer
BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) - A Colombian army unit blamed for a massacre denied killing the eight civilians, even as the United States called for a swift investigation Friday. The slayings raise doubts about the military's commitment to human rights and jeopardize part of Washington's huge military aid package to this embattled nation.
The potentially explosive case is undergoing scrutiny days after the State Department reported human rights violations by the Colombian Armed Forces but said the situation has improved. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will certify in the coming weeks whether Colombia's human rights record is good enough to warrant full military aid.
``I don't know how they can possibly certify right now, as long as doubts exist about this massacre,'' said Adam Isacson, a Colombia expert with the Center for International Policy in Washington.
It would be highly unusual for Washington to suspend aid to one of its strongest allies in Latin America.
``If the Army was involved, it would raise real concerns,'' said Tim Rieser, aide to Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., the author of the amendment requiring certification on human rights progress before military aid is released.
Rice ``probably will make the certification - but it needs to be supported by facts that show sufficient progress in protecting human rights,'' Rieser said in a telephone interview from Washington.
If Rice decides that Colombia has fallen far short in human rights, about $35 million in U.S. military aid would be suspended. A similar amount would be at stake in a subsequent certification, but the bulk of aid does not have to go through the certification process.
The Bush administration said last month it was seeking $589.5 million in military aid in 2006 for Colombia, where a 40-year-old conflict pits government forces against the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, and a smaller leftist rebel group. Outlawed right-wing paramilitary forces have also been battling the rebels.
The United States is urging Colombia to investigate thoroughly whether its military was involved in the massacre, a State Department official said Friday.
``We have urged the government to ... swiftly bring to justice those responsible for this crime,'' the official said on condition of anonymity.
The Feb. 21 massacre in the Uraba district of northwest Colombia, a sweltering banana-growing region near the Panamanian border, was particularly brutal even by the standards of Colombia's long-running conflict.
The victims - residents of the ``Peace Community of San Jose de Apartado,'' which tried to isolate itself from the war by barring armed groups - were hacked to death with machetes, chopped into pieces and buried on a farm, according to Amerigo Incalcaterra, a United Nations human rights official who visited the region. Among them were three young children and a 15-year-old girl.
A former mayor, a priest and a human rights lawyer have publicly accused army troops of committing the massacre. Prosecutors are investigating, although no charges have been filed.
Incalcaterra, in an interview late Thursday, said residents are terrified more bloodshed will occur. He also called for a full investigation by independent prosecutors from Bogota, the capital, saying the killers must be tried, ``no matter who they are.''
The Colombian Army's 17th Brigade denied it was responsible and said the FARC appeared to have carried out the massacre.
But a cleric who has been close with residents of the peace community said they believe soldiers, suspecting that the guerrillas have infiltrated the community, carried out the massacre in retaliation for a rebel ambush last month that killed 19 members of the 17th Brigade. The cleric did not want to be identified by name for security reasons.
Even before the massacre, the United States had doubts about the Colombian Armed Forces' respect for human rights. In its annual report released this week, the State Department cited several rights violations in 2004 but added that ``respect for human rights improved in some areas.''
reposter