Armed Conflicts, Civil Society, Headlines, Human Rights, Indigenous Rights, Latin America & the Caribbean

COLOMBIA: "There Was No Checkpoint" Where Army Shooting Took Place

Constanza Vieira*

BOGOTA, Dec 16 2008 (IPS) - Colombian soldiers killed the husband of a leading indigenous activist Tuesday when they opened fire on the pickup truck he was driving.

Edwin Legarda was the husband of Ayda Quilcué, a leader of the Regional Indigenous Council of Cauca (CRIC), a province in southwestern Colombia. The truck had 15 bullet holes in its sides and two through the windshield.

Legarda often drove the red double-cabin pickup truck, which is well-known in the area, as it was assigned to the top CRIC leadership by the local indigenous authorities.

Quilcué returned Monday from Geneva, Switzerland, where she formed part of a delegation of members of non-governmental organisations who presented a report on human rights violations in Colombia to the United Nations Human Rights Council, for its Universal Periodic Review (UPR) on this civil war-torn country.

On Monday night, Quilcué travelled to Popayán, the capital of Cauca, where she had positive things to say about the results of her trip to Switzerland, and reportedly looked happy.

The activist said the human rights groups’ presentation to the UPR on Colombia was a chance to tell the international community about the National Minga of Indigenous and Popular Resistance ("minga" is a traditional indigenous gathering for the collective good), which has been holding nationwide protests against killings of native people and in defence of indigenous rights since October, led by the CRIC.

In Geneva, she told IPS that indigenous people, blacks and civil society appreciated the importance of the UPR, and that local NGOs would be able to use the recommendations made by members of the Human Rights Council to the Colombian government "as tools for monitoring what is happening in our country."

The CRIC leaders planned to meet Tuesday and Wednesday in the Togoima indigenous reservation, in Cauca. At the meeting, Quilcué was to present her report on the UPR, and the CRIC was going to decide on the next activities to be undertaken by the Minga.

In the early hours of Tuesday morning, when the killing took place, the CRIC leaders were all on their way to Togoima.

The shooting occurred in the village of San Pedro in eastern Cauca. Legarda was making logistic arrangements for the CRIC meeting, and was to pick up Quilcué in the city of Popayán.

When soldiers fired on his pickup truck at 4:25 AM local time (9:25 GMT), he was on his way to the city. A nurse working for the Cauca Indigenous Association health service, who was accompanying Legarda, was injured in the shooting.

The commander of the army Third Division, General Eliseo Peña, admitted that soldiers had opened fire on the truck, and said the incident would be investigated.

He said the CRIC vehicle failed to follow orders to stop at a military checkpoint, although he added that this did not justify the shooting, and much less, the number of shots fired.

But according to Hilario Sánchez, the indigenous mayor of the town of Totoró, where the injured Legarda was first taken, "there is no indication of the existence of a military checkpoint in that area," and the pickup truck "was shot at from all sides."

"There was no checkpoint there," José Domingo Caldón, head of the CRIC’s Indigenous University, which holds mobile classes in Cauca, told IPS by cell-phone from the area where the killing took place.

"When there is a checkpoint, the military always put up red traffic cones and a sign that says ‘Military Checkpoint’. When we drove by there, at 6:00 AM (11:00 GMT) there was no sign of a checkpoint. There was no checkpoint there. There were no signs. We believe it was an ambush," he said.

At around 5:00 AM, "we passed Edwin several kilometres past the spot where he was shot. He was still driving," said Caldón.

"He managed to drive one or two kilometres more. But then he couldn’t go any further," he added. The pickup "came to a halt with its lights still on" along the road, where it was found by a member of CRIC’s political committee, Darío Tote.

According to the National Indigenous Organisation of Colombia (ONIC), Legarda drove 10 kilometres past the site of the shooting. After he was found, he was driven to the hospital in the town of Totoró, and from there was taken to the hospital in Popayán, where he died before doctors could operate.

The soldiers who shot him were surrounded and disarmed by the Indigenous Guard and members of the local community. "We have detained the entire base that is operating in the reserve," said Sánchez.

When IPS spoke with Caldón, at 13:00 local time (18:00 GMT), he was at the San Miguel estate, in the town of Gabriel López, where army troops have been posted.

"Some 30 soldiers were seized. A large number of members of the Indigenous Guard and the local community showed up here, and have them surrounded," said Caldón.

By that time, personnel from the Attorney General’s Office’s CTI (technical investigation unit) had arrived in the area, and were questioning the soldiers. Also present was a Colonel Cantillo, of the José Hilario López battalion, according to the sources who spoke to IPS.

"In the face of the pressure of the roughly 500 local people who are here, the CTI officials had no choice but to disarm the army squadron," said Caldón.

The troops were disarmed by members of the CTI unit and several local indigenous leaders, who according to the constitution are the top authorities in native reservations.

The judicial police were also checking the soldiers’ guns and other equipment.

Local indigenous people speculate that the target of the attack was Quilcué.

"People are furious. But Quilcué and the indigenous authorities have called for calm and prudence. We don’t know what will happen in the coming hours. The CTI says it will take away the soldiers, but people are not pleased with that decision," said Caldón.

"The army’s arrival here has caused a lot of damage," because the soldiers abuse local indigenous people, said Sánchez.

Indigenous residents want the army, as well as the left-wing guerrillas and the far-right paramilitaries, to pull out of their ancestral territories.

In the review of Colombia’s human rights record in Geneva, the government said the paramilitary groups no longer exist. But analysts and local communities say they have regrouped since their partial demobilisation, which was the result of negotiations with the right-wing administration of Álvaro Uribe.

The government refuses to withdraw its troops from indigenous reservations. In fact, that was one of the points over which it refused to vote in favour of the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, when it was approved in September 2007.

Article 30 of the Declaration says "Military activities shall not take place in the lands or territories of indigenous peoples, unless justified by a relevant public interest or otherwise freely agreed with or requested by the indigenous peoples concerned."

Quilcué said in Geneva that in the midst of "a war that is not ours…they stigmatise and kill us in every one of our communities…and those who protest and defend our rights are accused of being terrorists or criminals."

ONIC called for the urgent creation of a U.N.-sponsored committee of human rights defenders, to help investigate the incident in which Legarda was killed.

The 34-year-old Legarda was the father of a 12-year-old girl, the couple’s only child. Quilcué is in the care of a traditional indigenous healer, who said she was devastated.

Tuesday was the 17th anniversary of the Caloto massacre in Cauca, in which 20 Nasa Indians were killed by paramilitaries hired by drug traffickers and landowners, in an operation coordinated by the police.

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) ordered the Colombian state to pay reparations to the victims’ families. The government’s failure to do so has prompted frequent protests.

* With additional reporting by Gustavo Capdevila in Geneva.