Death Reigns in Meta
CSN-Madison, April 15, 2003
The National Agrarian Workers United Union - FENSUAGRO - CUT, the "Jose
Alvear Restrepo Lawyers Collective, and the Permanent Committee for
The Defense of Human Rights, on behalf of the communities of Alto Ariari
- the counties of El Castillo and Lejanias (in the state of Meta) bring
the following to light before national and international public opinion:
Background
Starting in the month of May 2002, the month in which the Army's Battalion
21 - Vargas, based in Granada (Meta), began "Operation Conquest", with
participation of the Rapid Response Forces "FUDRA" and with the support
of the National Police based in Castillo (Meta), a long string of human
rights violations have been committed against the peasants who live
in the region, including murders, torture, forced disappearances, illegal
searches, burnings of houses, robberies of household wares and cattle,
and threats ; which has generated the forced displacement of more than
80% percent of the peasants that have traditionally lived in this area
of the country. In addition, this operation has opened the way for the
entrance of AUC paramilitary groups, from the "Centauros", "Cordoba",
and "Uraba" Blocks, who act under cover, meaning that they are the same
because they change their identifying armbands, or at other times they
are different individuals that work together.
This began during the electoral campaign carried out by the current
President of the Republic, Doctor Alvaro Uribe Velez, and once elected,
exercising his presidential authority, occurs in the context of the
National Government's Democratic Security program, which is carried
out by high ranking military officers and administrative authorities,
in addition to county and state security bodies.
In light of the human rights violations that have been being committed
in a systematic fashion, the authorities have not had a positive attitude,
actually, to the contrary, they have taken an intimidating and threatening
stance against the victims and the families of those affected by these
crimes and barbarous acts. Consequently, they have an attitude of complicity.
Not withstanding a few officials officials of those counties, two of
whom have been assassinated, the last under the auspices of "Operation
Conquest."
In addition, a complacent attitude exists on the part of the Castillo
county parish, whose priest, Carlos Ernesto Jaramillo, has offended
and mistreated various citizens who were detained, which also makes
suggestions to the paramilitaries to treat those deprived of their freedom
in an arbitrary and illegal fashion. There is also the Supervisor of
Castillo County, Laura Gilman Moreno Urrea, proud recipient of the National
Peace Prize given to the AMA - Alto Ariari County Association - in November
2002, which resulted from the work of the communities themselves, who
today uses this to her own personal benefit and that of her associates
in the county; she also has been complicit in the silence and barbarity
that has befallen this region of the country.
Account of Recent Events In Castillo County
The following presents a report of events occurred in recent times,
with the disclaimer that information exists which we have not been able
to obtain due to the fear that reigns over the region, which prevents
people from letting the authorities know of the systematic violation
of human rights which the region is suffering.
- First Week of June 2002: Three unidentified bodies appear
on the shores of the Cumaral river, exhibiting signs of torture, bullet
wounds, one of whom was decapitated, up to today there has been no
indication of a judicial investigation to determine who they were
and where they were found and buried.
- Thursday, July 11, 2002: around one hundred paramilitaries,
who participate covertly in this military strategy ("Operation Conquest"),
wearing camouflage and armbands with the three letters of the AUC,
arrived in the rural areas of Cano Embarrado and El Jardin, in the
unincorporated town of Medellin del Ariari, in the county of Castillo,
forcing peasants to relocate to El Dorado county, 1,000 heads of cattle
were taken from the various residents of these rural areas.
- Saturday, July 13, 2002: The thievery of cattle stopped,
but the paramilitaries continued on in the rural areas of El Jardin
and Cano Embarrado, meanwhile the military stayed in Medellin del
Ariari, 30 minutes away from this area.
- Monday, July 15, 2002: The army appears in the unincorporated
town of Medellin del Ariari with approximately 200 heads of cattle,
which after being identified, were returned to their owners.
- Thursday, August 1, 2002: Again as part of the military's
strategy, the paramilitaries bring together the people of the communities
of El Jardin and La Macarena to "pacify" them. There were one hundred
paramilitaries there. Again the army was located in the unincorporated
town of Medellin del Ariari, 30 minutes away on foot.
In carrying out this military strategy the paramilitaries established
themselves in the heights of the mountains to be able to easily arrive
at the locations where the civilian population is located. When this
occurred, information was received about possible confrontations near
these places between combined military and paramilitary units and
a front of the FARC. At the same time, up until today, in the deployment
of this military strategy, the covert armed advance has taken possession
of the rural areas of El Jardin, Cano Embarrado, and el Encanto. Due
to this, the civilian residents of Puerto Esperanza find themselves
completely surrounded, while units that take part in this military
strategy also block the roads to Lejanias County.
- Friday, August 9, 2002: An airborne military operation was
carried out with flyovers, indiscriminate machine gun fire, as well
as ground actions by regular military units and members of the paramilitaries
in places where peasants were located. Some peasants fled as refugees
and houses were damaged, even the school was as well, and the electricity
and water infrastructure was affected also.
- Tuesday, August 13, 2002: Again, over flights and machine
gun strafing runs by Colombian Air Force planes occurred around the
unincorporated towns of Puerto Esperanza. In the afternoon hours,
the entrance of members of the paramilitaries is seen, without them
ever having made any contact with army units.
- Monday, August 19, 2002: At midnight, units of Battalion
21- Vargas, carried out police actions in some houses of the urban
areas through a census and house searches.
- Monday, August 26, 2002: at 5:30 in the morning a command
unit of the Army, belonging to Battalion 21 - Vargas, lead by Captain
Wilson Lazaro and Lieutenant Nino, arrive firing at the house of Mrs.
Silvia Bernal's, where they arrest her three sons, Hector, Eder, and
Evangelista Carvajal Bernal, take them to a mountain, beat them, and
tell them that they are going to kill them "for being guerrillas."
At 11 in the morning they murder Eder Carvajal (young agricultural
worker) who was barely 16, let Hector free, and take Evangelista (recognized
regional agrarian youth leader) away, who is arrested and taken afterwards
to the Villavencio prison, where he remained approximately 5 months
until they revoked his sentence due to the fact that the army had
no proof for their accusations.
In the same fashion, they arrive at the home of an elderly woman,
Blanca Maria Jaramillo, 61 years old, and detain Edilberto Rico Jaramillo
(son) and Carlos Manuel Hoyos (worker), both peasants and heads of
households, who in this occasion were arrested along with Evangelista
and put into Villavencio prison charged with rebellion. These men,
after remaining in prison for five months and being victim of a frame
up as "captured in combat", and after having no proof brought against
them, were set free on January 28, 2003.
- Tuesday, August 27, 2002: In the location known as the Y,
located between Puerto Union and El Jardin, 30 minutes from Puerto
Esperanza and Medellin del Ariari, various residents saw three dead
bodies, whose identity is unknown. The bodies later disappeared while
a military operation was carried out.
That same afternoon, while military units from Battalion 21 - Vargas,
were found near Puerto Esperanza maintaining a security cordon in
the direction of the rural area of La Cima, paramilitaries in accordance
with military strategy, wearing the name "Peasant Self Defense Forces
of Cordoba and Uraba" on their camouflage fatigues, entered in 4x4
trucks, looted people's house wares and destroyed various houses.
One of the trucks that the paramilitaries used was seen the day before
in the streets of the unincorporated town of Medellin del Ariari where
the army was located.
- Tuesday, September 3, 2002: In Villavencio, Oswaldo Moreno,
a human rights worker, was assassinated. He had been a refugee for
years in this region and was working to help the displaced families
of the zone.
- At the beginning of the month of September: Mr. Lusardo Ramirez,
a Medellin del Araiari resident, was detained and disappeared by paramilitary
groups, and his location is today still unknown.
- Saturday, September 14, 2002: Mr. Jhon Gabriel Lizcano, who
was a businessman in the urban center of Castillo, was disappeared.
He was detained and disappeared in the rural area of El Jardin (where
he had cattle) and on September 20, his body appeared in the county
of El Dorado with visible signs of torture.
- Thursday, September 26, 2002: Mr. Hernando Leon was taken
by force by a group of paramilitaries, three of whom wore masks, from
his residence located in the rural area of Cano Claro, and disappeared.
His location is still unknown today.
- In mid-September: Some masked paramilitaries disappeared
Jersey Arlein Ramirez, a young man form the rural area of Reflejo,
and we still have had no indication as to his whereabouts.
- Friday, October 18, 2002: two assassins went on a motorcycle
from Lejanias county to the unincorporated town of Miravalle, Castillo
County, there in the presence of the residents they murdered Manuel
(No Last name), an elderly man, with multiple shots from a short range
firearm. These assassins entered and left Lejanias county over the
bridge over the Guape River, where a permanent military roadblock
exists, which controls the entrance and exit of the residents, searching
anyone who passes over the bridge.
- Friday, November 1, 2002: On the bus which leaves Castillo
for Villavencio, in the unincorporated town of Pueblo Sanchez, in
El Dorado County, the lawyer Mario Castro Bueno, who worked as Castillo's
city clerk, was taken out of the vehicle by paramilitaries, who took
him to Tres Esquinas, only 2 kilometers from El Castillo, passing
through the unicorporated town of Medellin de Ariari where there exists
a permanent military checkpoint of Battalion 21 - Vargas. At Tres
Esquinas he is found dead with clear signs of torture, stabbed and
slit at the throat.
- Thursday, November 14, 2002: Paramilitaries seize cattle
from the lands of the peasants of the rural areas of La Cima, el Retiro,
and La Esmeralda. This cattle is then taken towards the rural area
of La Meseta, in El Dorado county, location in which the paramilitaries
have had a camp for years.
- Sunday, December 15, 2002: In the urban center of El Castillo
a young agricultural worker by the name of Libardo Gallego Echeverry
was seized by paramilitaries and put in a 4x4 truck. Trying to save
his life, the young man escaped from his would be murderers, but is
wounded in the process and hides in a house where he is finished off
by one of the 200 police that arrived two days before to provide security
for the festival that took place from December 13-16. That same day
three young men are arrested, Jose Esein Robayo, Didier Cardenas (a
minor), and another whose name is unknown (although we do not have
his name, we do know that the is the grandson of a peasant in Castillo,
Mr. German Palacios). These individuals are accused of being guerrillas
and responsible for detonating a grenade in the aforementioned festival.
The young men are taken to the local police headquarters, where detectives
and paramilitaries torture them. Inside the same police station the
arrested men are visited by the County Supervisor, Mrs. Laura Gilma
Morena Urrea, and by the parish priest Carlos Ernesto Jaramillo. The
priest actually enters the police torture chamber accompanied by eight
paramilitaries, hits Jose Estein Robayo, and tells the paramilitaries
that this young man is a guerilla and that they should kill him.
- Friday, December 20, 2002: In the urban center of El Castillo,
the paramilitaries detain a young man who supposedly was traveling
without documents, and he is taken towards the rural area of El Cable
where two days later his body appeared, with clear signs of torture.
This young man was in route from Bogot to the rural area of Cano
Brasil, where his mother Ofelia lived, to spend the holidays with
her.
- Sunday, January 5, 2003: In the unincorporated town of Puerto
Esperanza, an older man, Adelaido Velasco, of approximately 83 years
of age, is accused by paramilitaries of being a guerrilla and taken
towards the mountains, Hours later the few peasants who remain in
the zone - who are obligated by the army to live side by side with
the paramilitaries - go to the paramilitary headquarters to ask that
the elderly man be freed, and are met with the unfortunate reply of
the paramilitary commander that the man had already been killed, but
was body was not returned, nor is the place where his body rests known.
- Tuesday, January 7, 2003: At 2:30 pm, two paramilitaries
take Luis Eduardo Serna, 25 years of age, off the bus, and murder
him in La Bodega, on the road to El Dorado County. The paramilitaries
had threatened this young man with death and had given him an ultimatum
to leave the region. Luis Eduardo, inhabitant of the rural area El
Jardin, was fleeing when they killed him.
This same day three other young men were murdered in the La Cabana
rural area of El Castillo County, and their bodies were left in the
central plaza of the urban center of the El Castillo, where their
bodies laid for hours without any authority coming to carry out their
removal and autopsy.
- Thursday, January 9, 2003: Around 2 pm, two paramilitaries
arrive in the rural area Cano Claro, and murder a peasant, Luis Sanchez,
42 years of age. The shot him in the legs and then stabbed him in
the heart and in the neck. In the night of his wake, an unknown person
enters his home and searches his body without taking anything.
- Sunday, January 12, 2003: In the afternoon a group of paramilitaries
enters the farm of Mr. Hector Pulido, located in the Cano Claro rural
area, and Mr. Pulido is tied up and taken off to the mountains, later
his decomposed body is found, showing clear signs of torture - he
was murdered by garrote and machete blows. Hector was a recognized
community leader of the area.
- Wednesday, January 29, 2003: Luis Miguel Gutierrez - farmer
and community leader - of the rural area of Cano Claro (Castillo County),
was assassinated by paramilitary groups, who arrived, took him out
of his house and murdered him by shooting him several times.
- Saturday, February 1, 2003: The paramilitaries take the farmer
Jesus Antonio Romero (whom everyone called Smooth Chucho) from his
home. The kill him and the body was found Sunday February 2, in a
decomposed state, twenty meters from where his mother lived, a ninety
year old disabled woman named Enelis Romero.
- First week of February: In a farm located in the "La Cal"
rural area, (barely a kilometer and a half from the urban center of
Castillo), the (small holding) rancher Rodrigo Gutierrez, approximately
70 years old, was also taken from his home. The paramilitaries arrived
at night, they took him away, and a day later his dismembered and
horribly tortured body appears in the rural area of El Cable.
- Monday, February 24, 2003: Mr. Polidoro Real Bustos was stopped,
tortured and murdered by paramilitary groups and found nine days later
cut into pieces.
- Tuesday, March 4, 2003: Mr. Wilson Puertas and Mr. Alfonso
Cruz, were killed in the rural area of Yucape, in Castillo County.
- In addition, it is known but information is lacking on the extra-judicial
murders of Mr. Nelson Moreno, agrarian leader (Cano Dulce rural area),
Mr. Arsenio Quina (La Esmeralda rural area), Guillermo Clavijo (Cano
Lindo rural area), by paramilitary groups of the AUC.
It is well known by those who have been detained and the families of
the victims that the parish priest insults and beats detainees, offends
their families, and refuses to have funerals for these cases, and when
he does perform this ceremony, he insults the families of the victims
and the victims themselves in his funerary remarks. The international
community and the hierarchy of the Catholic Church must know of this
complacent and complicit attitude that he has towards the paramilitaries
and members of government security forces.
In spite of the fact that only a few families still remain in Castillo
County, the economic blockade of the zone continues, and public security
forces and paramilitaries keep carrying out searches of everyone and
have control over everything they buy and bring for their subsistence.
No one knows who takes or destroys what they consider is not needed
or above the authorized quantity at the roadblocks that are set up throughout
the zone.
There is no exact statistic on the number of families exiled from the
area, but the best estimate is around 300 families, who have had to
flee to different places, in their majority, Bogota and Villavencio.
These refugees are completely abandoned and uncared for by the government.
Many of these peasants have had their houses ransacked and burned.
We have knowledge that the paramilitaries are beginning to give away
unoccupied homes, in complicity with the armed forces, to families that
they have brought from other parts of the country.
It is calculated that since the beginning of "Operation Conquest",
4000 cows have been stolen, including all cows, from newborns to full
grown bulls, and likewise, horses, hens, ducks and anything else they
find on the farms has been robbed, in which case each family will have
to somehow prove what they had on their farm.
The paramilitaries pass their days in the urban area of Castillo County,
they get around in 4x4 trucks, they spend some of their time at the
police and army headquarters; they eat in the "La Fonda Paisa" restaurant,
and they stay in the home of Nesar Urrea. Police and members of the
Attorney General's office searched said dwelling in December, but at
that time the paramilitaries were not there. It seems that they were
warned before hand of the search.
Account of Recent Events in Lejanias County
The following are events that occurred in Lejanias County, in the same
time period:
- Wednesday, September 18, 2002: They killed Mrs. Zoraida Nunez
with 18 stab wounds. Mrs. Nunez was the sister of Carlos Manuel Hoyos,
who was arrested in El Castillo (previously mentioned). When Mr. Jose
Henao, Zoraida's husband, was returning from her wake, he too was
intercepted by the paramilitaries and murdered.
- In September, 2002: An elderly man, approximately 70 years
old, is found dead, who had been taken from his home in the urban
center of Lejanias, and we are unaware as of yet to any investigation
as to his identity. There is also talk of eight members of the AUC,
who rented a house in the center of town and act as "if they were
best buddies" with public authorities. The person in charge of the
group gets around on a Yamaha motorcycle, with a 094 license plate.
It is rumored that he has a list of 40 people, of which 9 will be
the first to be killed, as proof that it exists, they have already
killed some of those designated people.
- Saturday, February 8, 2003: Bernabe Trujillo Rico was seized
at his house in the urban center of Lejanias and taken in a red truck
towards Granada road, where his dead body was found a few hours later.
- Saturday, March 1, 2003: Mr. Pedro Bernal was murdered under
the same circumstances as Mr. Bernabe Trujillo.
- Sunday, March 9, 2003: In the La Albania rural area, Evangelista
Hernandez, an elderly man, was murdered and his body was found later.
- Wednesday, March 12, 2003: Mr. Alirio Rondon was taken from
his house in the urban center of El Castillo County, and his body
was later found.
The Colombian army has carried out censuses in the urban center of
Lejanias, at the same time that they are assembling their "informant
network." Restricting in the same fashion the supply of food to the
population with the argument that they are "cutting off supplies for
the guerillas" and in some cases they even prohibit the exportation
of the regions products to other areas.
In light of this critical situation the residents of the Alto Ariari
region demand that the Colombian government comply with the National
Constitution of 1991 and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights,
that the government guarantee the people's right to life, liberty, property,
fair trial, protests, freedom of conscience, honor, their goods, etc.
and that the international community of nations make the duty to guarantee
all human rights effective and investigate human rights violators in
whatever country they may be residing.
We also ask that the Colombian government guarantee the continued presence
of the communities and peasants on their land, and also that they make
the necessary guarantees so that those who are now displaced can return
to their lands. In the same way, the Colombian government must guarantee
the property and possessions of those exiled, which those paramilitaries
now possess.
We also call on the Colombian Bishops Conference to determine the responsibility
of the parish priest of Castillo County, and that they proceed on to
the demotion of the priest as soon as possible.
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