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LATIN AMERICA |
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Colombian Government Ordered to Pay
Damages for 2001 Massacre
BOGOTA – A judge ordered the Colombian
government to pay more than $1 million in
damages to the relatives of 27 people killed
eight years ago by right-wing militias in
the northwestern province of Sucre, El
Tiempo newspaper reported Tuesday.
The administrative court magistrate in
Sincelejo, the capital of Sucre, ruled that
“there was an omission by the public force”
in the incident, and he ordered the state to
pay 2.5 billion pesos ($1.25 million), which
will be divided among 195 of the victims’
relatives.
Police and a military detachment stationed
in the area did not protect the public when
a group of AUC militiamen on Jan. 16, 2001,
murdered 27 peasants in the village of
Chengue, the judge found.
In fact, the judge said, the authorities
facilitated the entry into and exit from the
town by the paramilitaries.
Investigations have revealed that about 100
men under the command of warlord Rodrigo
Mercado Pelufo invaded Chengue in the middle
of the night and forced the entire
population to come out of their homes and
gather in the park.
While some of the townspeople received blows
on the head, a group of paramilitaries
burned 32 of the 75 houses in the town.
The Inter-American Court of Human Rights
took up the case in 2007, after finding that
the Colombian judiciary had delayed too much
in the matter.
The court, part of the Organization of
American States, already has condemned the
Colombian state for three other massacres
carried out by rightist paramilitaries.
The judge in Sucre also ordered that a
monument be erected in memory of the victims
of the Chengue massacre.
The AUC dissolved in mid-2006 after
demobilizing more than 31,000 fighters
within a peace process worked out with the
government of President Alvaro Uribe. The
group is blamed for more than 20,000 deaths.
EFE
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