Justicia Y Paz letter about San Jose
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Justicia Y Paz letter about San JoseThis Month's News | CSN Home | San José Home Page |
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Santafé de Bogotá, August 23rd 1999
Doctor ANDRES PASTRANA ARANGO, President Cordial greetings: For the sixth time this year we would like to make known new evidence that confirms our concern about possible attempts and irreparable harm against the Peaceful Community of San José of Apartadó. Through a highly respected international human rights organization, with several years' presence in every region of the country, we received information according to which the paramilitary groups confirm that in recent combats between the armed forces and the FARC, beginning August 2nd and lasting two weeks, the Community of Peace of Serranía del Abibe near San José de Apartadó attended injured insurgent combatants. It is well known that part of the strategy of the parastate is to vilify International Human Rights or use them to promote their own interests, to portray the civilian population as collaborators with its adversary and thus justify its militaristic activities. For that reason, the information provided by the human rights organization confirms the existence of a criminal structure of the parastate in the region, which sooner or later, using these "arguments" based on lies, will extend their terror mechanism over the civilian population, thus justifying new assassinations, forced disappearances, or the displacement of families. These assertions based on lies attempt to portray the Community of Peace of San José as "auxiliary of the guerillas." These false statements and accusations are not woven or brought forth solely by paramilitary camps but also by the national army, which expresses before international delegations, the church, and the community its doubts, suspicions and hence its stigma against the families that since the 23rd of April of 1997 declared their neutrality before the armed conflict. It is clear that these doubts, assertions, stigmatizations and false accusations not only set the stage and justify the commission of crimes, making them perfect crimes, as occurred on April 4th of this year with this and other communities of the region, but they also introduce lies in the content value of the State of Rights, with no regard to the discrediting this causes same. The paramilitary assertions about activities of the members of the Community of Peace of San José de Apartadó, merit particular attention not because of who makes them, but because they coincide with statements made by army officials in military operations which they carry out jointly with paramilitary groups. These lies, which become "truth" through the barbaric force of the people that state them , affectingly impose themselves over the Real Truth, that is, over the Truth pronounced by the victims of terror, because these victims can only rely on their testimony and moral strength, while their victimizers reinforce themselves with the strategies of the parastate, which has discovered in impunity its best aid. Now the victimizers not only seek to discredit, stigmatize and criminalize, but through their psychological terror they seek to force a dialogue by promising not to massacre or "seduce" a dialogue, so that the community act in accordance with its projects and thus win the approval of the regional institution; but regardless, sooner or later, they will assassinate, disappear or displace the population, because they have grown within the State, and never, truly never, has the State confronted what was born to act on its behalf. We make a note for history, once again with the certainty that the truth will one day shine from between the lies, and it will be recognized that the experience of this community, which asserts its rights in the midst of the war, is transparent; that to protect this community all efforts were not made to deactivate the criminal machinery that attempts against it. For us believers it is scandalous and admonishable this omissive attitude, if not complicity in action, between military-paramilitary, and their assessments on a communitry, like the Community of Peace of San José, which only justify irreparable damages to these families. We need merely look to the memory of the more than 60 assassinated and disappeared of this Community of Peace since the day of its proclamation; we need only look to the transparency of the 1023 people who have assumed the risk of asserting its rights within the framework of the International Humanitarian Law, women and men who raise their cries and hopes to the skies so that we and many more here in Colombia and in the world, express a profound moral censorship before this eroded State of Rights. With deep concern, The Intercongregational Commission of Justice and Peace. |