Forced Displacement, Land Reclamation, and Corporate Power in Colombia

[Judi Lynn]

Forced Displacement, Land Reclamation, and Corporate Power in Colombia
April 26, 2008 By Eustaquio Polo

Eustaquio Polo Rivera is Vice President of the Major Leadership Council of the Curvaradó River Basin, Chocó, Colombia. He is an active leader in his community's struggle for justice and food security, as they fight to reclaim collectively-titled lands stolen and occupied by oil palm plantations since the 1997 displacement of the region's inhabitants at the hands of the US-funded Colombian military and affiliated paramilitary death squads. Colombia has the second-largest internally displaced population in the world; sixty percent of the roughly four million dispossessed Colombians have been driven from areas of "of mineral, agricultural or other economic importance," according to Amnesty International. For his advocacy and efforts to help his community reclaim what is rightfully theirs, Mr. Polo has received threats of assassination from paramilitaries reformed after the purported "demobilization" process.
(snip)

Thank you for letting me address you tonight. Please receive a warm welcome from the Chocó county of Colombia and from myself, Eustaquio Polo Rivera. I am Vice President of the Major Council of the basin of the Curvaradó River, and legal representative of a smaller council.

I come here with the grace of God and the support of the church of Justicia y Paz and also with help from Molly and Jake. I have been asked to tell you a little bit about the human rights abuses that the people of the Chocó territories are suffering.

These lands are the lands where most of the Africans brought to Colombia as slaves have lived for a long time. Three groups of people share culture here—people of African descent, people of mixed descent, and people of indigenous descent. There has been a shared culture there for many years now.

This is land that is recognized by Law 70 as collectively owned by the three groups of Afro-Colombians, mixed race people, and indigenous people. We used to have farms in this territory. The land supported our families, and we also sold bananas to the United States.

Then, in October of 1996, an operation called Operation Genesis came in, led by the General Commander Rito Alejo Del Rio.

This military operation was in conjunction with a paramilitary group called AUC.

This military group came in and asked the peasants to move out. They said, "Move out, or people will come after us to kill people, to take your heads."

In the same year, 1996, in a place called Brisas, they killed 6 people. They killed them and threw them into the river. That year half of the people who lived in the area left. The other half stayed, and we stayed resisting the displacement. But the incursions from the military and paramilitaries continued. They tied the peasants down. When the paramilitaries or military would get people, they would cut off their fingers, their ears, and their private parts. And they killed them with chainsaws. They would cut right through their chest cavity and take out their internal organs. In our river basin they killed 113 people just that way.

Then in 1997, the incursions from the military and paramilitaries increased. The military and paramilitary alliance came and said to us that we needed to leave, all of us. They threatened saying that if we didn't leave, they could not respond for their actions. They said that the reason we needed to leave is that they would be bombing that territory to take the guerrillas out. A lot of people left then. One part of the peasants left toward the hills, and other people fled to other places in Colombia.

In the year 2000, a group from the police collected signatures from members of paramilitaries and some peasants left in the area. They said they were collecting the signatures to get three military bases in the area, and they claimed that this was so peasants could return to their land. This was not the case. These signatures were used by businesses to take over the land and implement the planting of African palm plantations in the collectively-titled territory. They used them to prove that peasants were in agreement with the planting of the palm, but the peasants were actually outside the territory, fled to the hills.

More:
http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/17339



A.U.C. leader "Macaco's" ( Carlos Mario Jiménez, recently sent to the U.S. on drug charges, while citizens protested that his stay in the U.S. will allow him to avoid charges for the massacres he committed in Colombia against villagers.) right-wing paramilitary death squad as it enters yet another village.



Carlos Mario Jiménez "Macaco"

[fasttense]

1. Can't have the welfare of the general population get in the way of

the greed and selfishness of the ruling elite.

[Joanne98]

2. Thanx for posting this. The spin about Colombia is sickening.

Uribe is a monster who kills his own people.

[Judi Lynn]

3. You bet Uribe's a monster. The U.S. Department of Defense knew he was connected to Pablo Escobar

all the way back in 1991, when they had a report on him in their own intelligence, which is available as a declassified document now, although it's with redactions.

He was serving the interests of the country's most powerful narcotrafficker first as the governor of their area, then as a Senator, getting legislation for the drug cartel, and as an official handling transportation, making arrangements to create airstrips out in the booneies which allowed them to use their own private aircraft to fly their product out of Colombia.

The ex-mistress of Escobar has written in her book about Escobar that he said if it weren't for his friend Álvaro Uribe they would have had to swim to Miami to deliver their drugs, a broad joke, of course.

Of course, the journalist who helped the mistress write the book has gotten a ton of death threats, as one would expect, and the mistress left a long time ago.

The old "he killed his owwwwwwwwwn peeeeeee-ple" crap doesn't seem to bother _Bush about his friend, Uribe, does it? It really seemed more than _Bush could take, however, when his dulled mind turned to thoughts of Saddam Hussein!

[Judi Lynn]

4. Were you aware that female union members are tortured and murdered? Here's food for thought:

Colombia is the most dangerous place in the world to be a woman trade unionist. In the past year it has become even more so, with a dramatic increase in the number of abuses committed against women. Those responsible for the vast majority of the attacks are paramilitary death squads that work with the Colombian Army.

Since the rightwing president, Alvaro Uribe Velez, took power in August 2002 there has been a 600 per cent increase in human rights violations perpetrated against women trade unionists and 68 female trade unionists have been assassinated. The facts speak for themselves. Last year 70 trade unionists were killed, 260 received death threats and three have disappeared.

Many of those targeted were also tortured and mutilated by the paramilitaries. Some of the women were killed in front of their children. In other cases the paramilitaries threatened the children in an effort to force their mothers to abandon their union activities.

Women are targeted for a number of reasons – to sow terror within communities, to force people to flee their homes and to dissuade others from getting involved in trade unions.

To make matters even worse, the army are increasingly using sexual violence against women. According to Amnesty International rape and sexual mutilation are frequently used by the security forces and their paramilitary allies as part of their terror tactics.

Colombia’s prisons currently hold approximately 320 female political prisoners. Many of them are trade unionists.

The conditions in Colombia’s jails are dire and inhumane. There is inadequate medical care, over-crowding, insufficient sanitation facilities, and prisoners are denied access to educational and reading materials.

Some prisoners (we currently know of 28 cases) have had their infants imprisoned alongside them. These children are not recognized by the prison authorities as separate inmates, so mothers are forced to share the already scarce food rations with their children, leading to malnutrition and other health problems.
(snip)

“The woman who initially acted as leader for the group of prisoners I sat with was a teacher and union member. They created a false case against her and she has been in prison for nine months accused of rebellion. She knows that there is no evidence against her but there has been no progress on her case.

“Many of the prisoners have been here for four years without trial and 70 per cent on this patio have not been convicted. There are nearly 80 prisoners and most are accused of rebellion – all are accused of crimes they have not committed.

"Half of the women are here simply because they live in areas where paramilitaries operate and control. They told us of whole communities being arrested. They told us of massacres where those that are left alive are arrested and put in prison.

“They told of Uribe’s policy to pays informers. Ex-guerrillas and paramilitaries are encouraged to inform on five other people, accuse them of being guerrillas (without any evidence) and then to have impunity from arrest themselves.

“The poor sell themselves to the state with false information but the authorities don’t care as Uribe has to produce ‘results’ to show the Pentagon how his policy of fighting the terrorists is working. He can say that they have arrested and imprisoned x number of guerrillas when in fact they are innocent people, and Uribe will continue to receive the US military aid.

“Over 40 per cent of the women here are heads of household are many are denied visits from their children as they cannot afford to travel to see them. Some women haven’t seen their children in for five years.

“We were told that torture, both physical and psychological, was a regular feature, particularly in the period between arrest and being put in prison and included ripping out finger nails, semi-drownings and being beaten. They believe there is a lot of drug abuse among the armed forces and many seem crazy on drugs when carrying out these crimes.

“One woman said she had a bag put over her head to asphyxiate her until she passed out, they then revived her and repeated the process five times until she confessed to something she hadn’t done.

“Torture is commonplace and if you do get to trial and you say you confessed under torture the authorities say that’s what all the guerrillas say, therefore you must be a guerrilla.

“We heard from another woman who had been beaten and tortured when she had been locked up for five days with no legal help. She hid the scars over her back from the beatings from the authorities and demanded medical help. If they knew she had injuries that could be seen they wouldn’t allow her to see a doctor. Prisoners are forced to sign that they are treated well.

“There were so many tragic personal testimonies that the women gave. It seems a place where no-one can be trusted. A woman was taken from her home by police after being informed on by a 16 year old boy who had been living in her house. This, once very poor young man, is now known to be studying at university – having been paid for informing.

“Being informed on after personal dispute, especially after a fall-out between lovers is commonplace. There were two women who had six-year sentences after their lovers had informed on them.”

More:
http://www.amicustheunion.org/default.aspx?page=3768