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Death Reigns in Meta

By Colombia Support Network - 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 Bogoto 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.