Civil Society, Headlines, Human Rights, Latin America & the Caribbean

RIGHTS-COLOMBIA: ‘You Can’t Stop Thinking About Their Agony’

Constanza Vieira

BUENAVENTURA, Colombia, Jun 4 2007 (IPS) - “The people who go up there to talk are really brave,” B., a poor 39-year-old black woman, told IPS. She was only able to identify the body of her 20-year-old son, a victim of one of the countless massacres of young men in this Colombian port city, from surgical scars on one of his limbs.

Documentation on around 150 cases, each one more appalling than the last, was delivered to the Senate Human Rights Commission during a public hearing in Buenaventura, the main port on Colombia’s Pacific coast.

Some of the cases were presented personally, from a dais, by the relatives of victims of massacres, selective killings or forced disappearance in the city of Buenaventura or the surrounding rural areas.

Several of the witnesses identified the perpetrators, who included members of the security forces, by name.

IPS approached B. at the end of last Friday’s public hearing. “I can’t talk. I have tried three times to speak in public and I can’t. Something chokes me here,” she said, pointing to her throat.

B.’s name and any other identifying information are withheld for security reasons.

What thoughts crossed her mind as she listened to the hours of testimony on case after case of crimes against humanity committed in this port city in the western Colombia province of Valle del Cauca?

“I thought about everything – about how we found him. His disfigured face. How he had no skin, because they had dumped acid on him, and how his eyes and hair were gone. That, I can tell you, I would not wish on anybody. That was inhuman. There is no need to kill a person that way.”

Her son’s body, like the corpses of so many local young men, appeared in a marsh.

“And these things happen over and over again,” she said. “These are daily occurrences here in Buenaventura. It changed everything in our family, because these things really mark you. And not only in my family, but in the families of all of the victims.”

“You can’t stop thinking about how they were tied up, how they suffered, their agony before they died. It’s sheer torture. Because as a mother, you just keeping remembering it all the time. I remember my son, of how they killed him, every day.”

“Especially when I see his photo, which I keep beside my bed. So every day I see it and I remember. Sometimes I wonder if he screamed, if he thought about me, if he thought about God,” she said.

She hopes the truth about who ordered her son’s death, and why, will come out. She also hopes that “this won’t happen anymore, that the press and people from other countries will help us change Buenaventura and what is happening here. This is horrible, death upon death, massacre upon massacre, every day.”

The massacre in which her son was killed was reportedly committed by the far-right paramilitary militias who control some of the neighbourhoods in this once vibrant port city, where the overwhelming majority of the population of over 300,000 is black.

Control over the city is fiercely disputed by the paramilitaries, the security forces, and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the main leftist rebel group involved in Colombia’s nearly five-decade civil war.

In the last three years, the war has officially claimed the lives of 1,520 people in Buenaventura and the surrounding rural areas and villages, although activists say the number is actually much higher.

Before the start of the hearing, the police reported that the situation had shown some improvement, because “only” two deaths were reported in the prevous five days.

According to the central document read out in the hearing and handed over to the Senate Commission, the war in Buenaventura is aimed on one hand at “exterminating and controlling the population” to seize their land “on behalf of private interests.”

Other parties, meanwhile, are seeking to ensure their own mobility and “the economic circuit for their model of war,” says the report, which was drawn up by around 20 local and regional organisations, including the Catholic Afro-Colombian Pastorate.

The state’s response has been to increase the number of troops in the area, which has led to “the militarisation of life in the port, without any subsequent increase in security and protection for the local population,” says the document.

“On the contrary, in many cases the police and members of the military act in complicity with the paramilitary groups or fail to fulfil their duty to provide protection, allowing these groups to act freely,” it adds.

The report says the security forces have violated human rights and international humanitarian law, carrying out arbitrary detentions and unjustified round-ups of young men, acting alongside the paramilitaries in shantytowns and participating with them in clashes with the guerrillas.

Also mentioned are the activities of paramilitary groups, which officially disbanded last year as a result of negotiations with the government, but which appear to be in full expansion in Buenaventura. So far this year, the right-wing groups have murdered 265 people in the area.

The paramilitary groups are accused of controlling and blocking supplies and prices of basic food products like plantains, chicken, beef and eggs in the city’s main markets. For example, they impose exorbitant price rises, “and whoever does not comply is threatened or killed.”

The guerrillas, meanwhile, “attack efforts by the local communities to organise themselves and undermine day-to-day life by carrying out censuses and controlling the coming and going of people” in rural areas, says the report.

They have also “tried to promote illegal (drug) crops, bringing people from other regions into collectively-governed territories” under their control, it adds.

Both the paramilitaries and the insurgents “recruit young people by force or through economic incentives,” it says.

B. said the paramilitaries and the guerrillas “kill civilians, but we don’t even know what they’re fighting for. We don’t know what their ideals are, and they go and kill your family members because of the war they are waging against each other.”

Although she said she feels she is on her own, she hopes that “through these (Senate) commissions, maybe things will be organised, the violence will be brought to a halt, and sources of jobs will be created so people can keep their minds occupied and stop thinking about killing other people.”

Above all, she hopes for justice, and that when she goes to the public prosecutor’s office they not only treat her well – which they already do – but also show her that some progress has been made in the investigation of her son’s death.

But the justice system, according to the report, “is not fulfilling its role in the search for truth.” Suspects are often arrested, but because no one dares to bring charges or testify against them, they are freed, and continue to commit crimes, says the document.

“No advances are made in the investigations,” and “the material and intellectual authors and those who benefit by the crimes” are walking around out there “for everyone to see,” say the groups that signed the report.