Message from the Peace Community of San José de Apartadó, September 11, 2024
(Translated by Eunice Gibson, CSN Volunteer Translator)
Once more our Peace Community is turning to the country and to the world to make a record of the actions that are continuing to attack the population of our Community, and also the people we live with.
For many years, we have been denouncing the presence of the paramilitaries in our region, a situation of which the general public is very well aware. The horror that they sow in the areas where they are present is a phenomenon that is clearly tied closely to Colombia’s Armed Forces, beside whom they began their operations, who trained them, who furnished them with weaponry and uniforms, and with whom they were patrolling jointly for many years until the clamor of the international community forced them to be more clandestine with their relationship. They made inconspicuous mutual support agreements, while continuing with the task they had been assigned to carry out from the beginning: take over the violence that was forbidden to the Armed Forces by law, generating a climate of fear, silence, and death, and preventing the civilian population from exercising their basic rights and freedoms.
This difficult situation continues, and it’s forcibly displacing people who have had to abandon their homes and, often, sell their land for fear they will be murdered if they don’t accept being forced to submit and be controlled. In this last year, several families of our Peace Community and other families living around here have had to flee from their properties to save their lives, leaving behind their belongings, their animals, and their means of subsistence.
Besides that, impunity and the failure of the justice system have characterized the Colombian government’s response to these events. The murders of Nallely Sepúlveda and Edinson David took place last March 19, more than five months ago, and there has been no explanation of what happened and no punishment of those responsible. The investigation by the Attorney General’s Office has not gone forward, allowing those responsible for the killings to walk free, subjecting and controlling the people that live here, while the actual Armed Forces go about spreading the criminal story that the murderers themselves cooked up on the day of the crime: that it was the family itself and the Peace Community that committed the homicides.
The prevailing impunity and complete absence of any justice have created a feeling of frustration and desperation among the people that live here. They feel abandoned by the government and without protection from the violence. On the contrary, the judicial apparatus makes it evident that they only intend to incriminate the victims, which has been the well-known tradition, but never the ones that are really responsible for the crimes.
The latest events of which we are making a record are as follows:
On Wednesday, June 26, 2024, during the daytime, our Community was informed that paramilitaries were attending a series of parties that were going on in the area, and the main entertainment had been the exhibition of pornography.
On Friday, June 28, 2024, a resident of this region came to our Community to let us know that several people living in the town (vereda) La Esperanza: Erien Tuberquia, Benjamin Higuita, Daney Tuberquia, Anibal de Jesús Higuita, and others, had gone to the Attorney General’s local office to file a complaint against our Peace Community. They were claiming that our Peace Community not only planned, but also carried out the murders that took place last March 19, 2024, in the town of La Esperanza. Using lies and deceit, they made up a campaign of hatred, persecution, and murder against our Community. First they kill us and then they call us killers. Their gall and their infamy have no limit.
On Tuesday, July 2, 2024, once again our Community learned that some members of the town of La Esperanza Community Action Board had announced that they planned to carry out legal and media activities against our Community, claiming to have testimony from people that live in the District (Corregimiento) of Nuevo Antioquia accusing Diego Ceballos, Nallely’s husband, and also accusing Germán Graciano, the legal representative of our Peace Community, of the vile murders of our sister Nallely and brother Edinson last March 19, 2024. They’re trying to dismiss the fact that Diego’s father was in the hospital on those days, and that Diego was seen there with him. Those facts would constitute an obvious alibi and would prove the filth and depravity of their calumny. So, they’re going ahead with the lies and defamation by the group of people being led by the FEDECACAO official, CÉSAR JARAMILLO. They have been trying to get other people to join in the slander and deceit about our way of life.
On the days Thursday, July 4, and Monday, July 8, several people came to our Community to denounce a speech that some prosecutors had used against our Community. According to the witnesses, several officials of the Attorney General’s Office in Apartadó had told people whom they were interrogating that the Peace Community was a groomer of children that were later sent to the various guerrilla fronts in the region. Besides just the falsehood and filth of that strategy, we have no doubt that it’s part of the plan to discredit our Peace Community that’s being pushed both by the Colombian military and the paramilitaries.
In that same first week in July, 2024, the paramilitaries tried to recruit three minor boys in one of the towns in the District of San José de Apartadó.
On Tuesday, March 9, 2024, officials of the JEP and former combatants of the FARC were present in the towns of La Linda and in the Mariano region in the District of San José de Apartadó. Their purpose was to exhume human bodies.
On Thursday, July 11, 2024, we received a communication from Prosecutor Freddy Hernán Parra T. He was warning us to provide true statements about actions that took place against the Community in July of 2012 and January of 2014. We had received this same letter last Friday, June 28, 2024.
The Attorney General’s Office and its officials forget that our Community has broken its relations with Colombia’s legal system ever since 2004. Our decision was motivated by the crimes against humanity and systematic violations of the International Declaration of Human Rights, to say nothing of the torturous scenarios that the Community has been suffering to this day and continues to suffer. In 2005 the Community extended its break in relations to the entire Colombian system of government after the horrendous massacre of February 21, 2005, which is well known throughout Colombia. Eight people were killed, including a toddler 18 months old, by Colombian soldiers and paramilitaries, a massacre that has continued in impunity for 19 years. And the Attorney General’s Office has played an essential role in covering up such an atrocity against the Community.
Ever since then, the members of our Peace Community have declared a conscientious objection, a mechanism that is protected by Colombia’s Constitution.
From Thursday, July 18 until Sunday, July 21, our Peace Community, accompanied by communities from this country and by different international organizations, carried out a pilgrimage to the towns of La Esperanza and Mulatos in the District of San José de Apartadó. Our purpose was to observe the four months that have passed since the vicious murder of our comrades Nalleli Sepúlveda and Edinson David. Their memory impels us not to forget them and to demand justice for the actions that took their lives. In that journey, you could see the presence of paramilitaries dressed as civilians at some parts of the path, and at the same time, you could perceive a deadly climate that reproduces the same slogan elaborated by César Jaramillo and the paramilitaries. It reads: “No More Peace Community”. Now four months have passed since that event and no investigations are in operation. On the contrary, they’re proceeding to try to incriminate the victims, which has been the inveterate custom of Attorney General’s Office functionaries in the region. Meanwhile, the guilty parties are walking around free and controlling the people that live here.
On Friday, July 19, 2024, in the afternoon, a young paramilitary, apparently recruited more than a year ago, walked into one of our settlements, and we found out that the young man had been threatened with death by his recruiters. Just like this case, there are a lot of young people in this region, minors that are being recruited by the paramilitaries, without the competent authorities doing anything to prevent it. Some of these young men have even been killed by the same paramilitaries, or by the Army in other parts of the country. On many occasions, our Peace Community has reported this barbarism publicly, but government agencies remain mute and blind to it.
On Saturday, July 20, 2024, in the District of San José de Apartadó, an accusation was spread on social networks that the Peace Community had secretly robbed graves and exhumed human remains in the town of La Linda for the purpose of selling them. There is nothing we can do about this except to reaffirm our principle of respect for human dignity, and specifically, because of that, we would never remove the remains of any person without the presence and consent of their own family, and much less in secret. In the same manner, we reaffirm the courageous posture that our Community has adopted, NOT TO ACCEPT the Justice and Peace Law, or any reparations for victims. Our dead are not merchandise or the subject of bargaining; they will never be the detritus of the merchants of death.
On Monday, July 22, 2024, at 7:00 p.m., an unidentified subject entered suspiciously into the Luis Eduardo Guerra Peace Village. When they tried to identify him, he stealthily tried to hide the FM communications radio he was carrying, and then he just fled.
On Friday, July 26, 2024, by means of local news media, we found out that the Army had captured several paramilitaries at a place near the towns of Arenas Bajas and El Porvenir, in the District of San José de Apartadó, and that the captured paramilitaries were later taken away in a helicopter. According to information from some campesinos, these people were the ones in charge of carrying out the obligatory meetings of campesinos in some of the towns.
On Sunday, July 28, 2024, in the daytime, we received a phone call from a local resident, warning us that we have to be careful because they’re announcing new threats against the Peace Community as payback for the recent arrests of paramilitaries by the Army in the towns of Arenas Bajas and El Porvenir.
On Thursday, August 1, 2024, through regional news media, the Armed Forces released some information about the capture and dismantling of a communication network made up of paramilitaries (Clan del Golfo) that was operating in towns in the District of San José de Apartadó. OK, the Armed Forces can brag about those results, all it is though, is giving public opinion some results that they may have quieted down some of the people that were living off the illegal business, but the alliance is getting worse and worse.
On Sunday, August 4, 2024, while a delegation from our Community was travelling around a place known as Chontalito, a pasture located in the District of San José de Apartadó, they were surprised by two paramilitaries who were carrying weapons and communication radios that were scanning different frequencies.
On Saturday, August 10, in the daytime, our Community learned of a very suspicious action where a number of subjects were traveling in an SUV with no license plates on the road that leads from Apartadó to the urban part of San José and they were inquiring about places where children are playing.
In the third week in August, 2024, there was a meeting called by the paramilitaries at a place in the town of La Unión. Several paramilitaries were there, carrying long guns and wearing military uniforms, and there was a woman coordinating the meeting with the local residents.
On Thursday, August 29, 2024, you could see the strong presence of a group of paramilitaries carrying long guns and wearing military uniforms, and walking around in the town of Mulatos Medio.
On Monday, September 2, 2024, a number of people that live around here came up to let us know that the story being passed around by some of the paramilitaries here is that the killing of Nallely and Edinson last March 19 in the town of La Esperanza had been negotiated and agreed upon between the leaders of the Peace Community and the paramilitary commanders in a meeting that had taken place in Piedras Blancas in the Municipality of Carepa.
In what’s now more than 27 years of our Community’s existence, we have never heard the perpetrators of crimes against the Community admit to having done them. We have had to bury more than 412 of our comrades, and neither the Armed Forces, nor the paramilitaries, nor the guerrillas have ever admitted their responsibility.
On Wednesday, September 4, 2024, we learned of the death threat against a civilian living in this region. It appears that the paramilitaries have brought this up to their commanders, who will decide on this extrajudicial execution of the civilian.
On Thursday, September 5, 2024, our Community learned of threats by paramilitaries against Roviro López, a member of our Community’s Internal Council. The paramilitaries’ announcement was: “that little monkey there that lives on the other side better not give us the chance, because we’re going to kill that sonofabitching snitch.”
On Monday, September 9, 2024, we received complete and sufficient information about a plan to invade the La Roncona farm, which is the private property of the Peace Community. The leader of the plan is Hugo Alberto Molina Torres, who lives in the District of San José de Apartadó, and who is very close to the Board of Directors of the Cacao Vive Cooperative, especially to Freddy Vidal.
To sum it up, the control and the fear never cease to make our region bleed. The Peace Community and the people who live around here struggle for justice and for the memory of our murdered comrades. But we are not listened to. In spite of the innumerable complaints we have filed, impunity and control by big business and paramilitaries continue to reign in this area. Economic interests tied to the paramilitaries are a constant reminder of the danger that defenders of human rights are facing. The failure of the justice system and of investigation make them able to keep on incriminating the victims, which has been their custom and that is an insult to any justice. Our Peace Community continues to be under the microscope, as the threats and the killing continue to be carried out, under the shadow of a government that makes injustice and paramilitary activities legitimate. So if it’s the case that the central government has a different viewpoint, its impotence in the face of a justice system that is totally rotten, while they demand radical change, is truly lamentable.
From the bottom of our hearts, we thank all the people and communities of Colombia and of the world for their manifest commitment to solidarity with us in the face of the difficult situation we’re experiencing. That lifts our morale as we proceed with our way of life. Our immense gratitude to all of them.
Peace Community of San José de Apartadó
July 11, 2024