https://www.facebook.com/Cdp.S.J.A/
July 8, 2024
(Translated by Eunice Gibson, CSN Volunteer Translator)
This Monday, July 8, 2024, we all gathered to remember our friends who were murdered at the hands of criminals, both military and paramilitary, on July 8 of 2000 in the town (vereda) of La Unión. Twenty-four years have passed and still there has been no justice. On the days of 8th, 10th, and 14th of July in 2000, certified letters were filed in the Office of the President of Colombia, in the Vice President’s Office, in the Attorney General’s Office, in the Office of the Inspector General, in the Ombudsman’s Office, and in the offices of other high officials of Colombia, as well as with intergovernmental and nongovernmental agencies both national and international, and the Inter-Congregation on Peace and Justice, which stated that:
“On July 8, 2000, the land around the Peace Community of San José de Apartadó was very intensely militarized, not just the road that leads from Apartadó to the urban part of San José de Apartadó, but also in several of the towns where there are groups of residents that are part of our Peace Community’s way of life. In one of those, the Community of La Unión, where people had returned from the urban part of San José several months ago, twenty men wearing hoods came from a place near where some soldiers were camped, and they went into La Uníon. The hooded men destroyed the Community telephone, dragged the people out of their houses, and made them all get together in the center of the town. They asked for the leaders, but the people told them they were all leaders. A nun there was explaining that our Community was neutral, but they shoved her aside. Then they selected six campesinos who were members of the Community, and they just murdered them. They were: ROBERTO GUZMAN, ELODINO RIVERA, DIOFANOR DIAS CORREA, HUMBERTO SEPULVEDA, PEDRO ZAPATA, and JAIME GUZMAN.
While they were being slaughtered, a Colombian Army helicopter was flying over the settlement. On the next day, July 9, one of the paramilitaries that we recognized during the massacre, alias “Alfredo”, was seen with Army troops in the town of La Union, in the District (corregimiento) of San José de Apartadó.”