EXECUTIVE REPORT
Bajo Naya - Cajambre - Yurumanguí
Bombings and Shootings
Translated for CSN by Ramon Stern, a volunteer translator
Bogotá, August 28, 2003
The expressions of war continue in the Valle department. Violations of human rights and humanitarian law continue. Little is said and little is done.
The presence of FARC EP guerrillas in the Region of el Valle and Cauca is a secret to no one, but their presence has become a new pretext for indiscriminate attacks and the violation of the rights of the Afro-descendants.
Today, in the midst of deep fear, the Afro-descendants who are victims of indiscriminate bombing, and control operations of hidden armed strategies, have shared their voice speaking of what is trying to be concealed with lies, with defamation and with the strategy of deception.
Wednesday, July 2 in the Buenaventura bay, a boat transporting food to the communities of the Naya River, onto which two armed civilians from the paramilitaries got on board in the place known as El Limón, an estuary that provides communication for all the rivers of the south of the municipality of Buenaventura, took out their weapons and attacked the passengers on board, shooting at them, wounding the owner of the boat, Heicer Angulo and two members of the crew.
The "armed civilians" yelled that the food being transported was for the guerrilla. The paramilitaries forced all of the passengers to get off the boat and left them close to shore. Subsequently, a motor boat arrived with two outboard motors 200, in which four more "civilians" from the paramilitaries mobilized.
Upon taking from the boat food stuffs, some home appliances and fuel, the paramilitaries took Gilberto Sinisterra, an inhabitant of the Santa Cruz community located in the low part of the Naya River, who to this day remains disappeared. The losses are valued between 40 and 45 million pesos.
Tuesday, August 19, a military operation was begun in the low area of the Yurumanguí River - a rural zone of the Buenaventura municipality. Units from the Navy met a small group of guerrillas from the FARC EP at the village of El Barranco.
Saturday, August 23, in the middle of confrontations, a military helicopter let hundreds of cartridges fall over the village of Veneral. According to reports, Jobilia Garcia was wounded and some roofs of homes were affected.
Monday, August 25, around 6:30 a.m., three airliners from the Army, shot and bombarded for two hours the headwaters of the Cajambre River, 15 minutes from the El Barco community between the mountain streams of Villegas and Villeguitas in the Agua Clara River, where close to 20 peasants, children and adults among them, were working.
The airliners flew over the communities of El Barco, El Chorro, San Isidro, Aragón, El Llano, Ordóñez, San Pablo, all belonging to the Greater Council of the Headwaters of the Cajambre River, collective territory entitled under Law 70.
During the air operation several peasants, mostly Afro-descendants, who were in the zone laboring, sowing maize and artisan mining, were forced to run, trying to hide under trees. Others fled the place mobilizing in small wooden boats that they call "potrillos" or "champas." However, the airlines continued to fire shrapnel in bursts around them.
According to witnesses, a peasant and a child tried to flee hiding in the middle of trees in the opposite direction that the airliners took. They fired shrapnel and bombs in the place in which they sought refuge. During the operation, the peasants heard at least 40 detonations, bursts of shrapnel. The machine-gun fire destroyed bread crops and knocked over trees.
INTERECCLESIASTIC COMMISSION OF JUSTICE AND PEACE