COLOMBIA: Killings of Indians Continued
During UN Rapporteur's Visit
By Constanza Vieira
BOGOTÁ (IPS) - "Colombia’s indigenous
people find themselves in a serious,
critical and profoundly worrying human
rights situation," says the preliminary
report by United Nations special rapporteur
James Anaya, who just completed a visit to
this country.
But this hard-hitting statement that appears
at the beginning of his report is actually a
quote from the 2004 report by his
predecessor, Rodolfo Stavenhagen, after his
mission to Colombia.
"This assessment still applies today,
despite a few important initiatives by the
Colombian government in the last few years,"
Anaya said Monday at the end of his five-day
special visit to this civil war-torn
country.
The United Nations Special Rapporteur on the
Situation of Human Rights and Fundamental
Freedoms of Indigenous Peoples said he
visited Colombia to assess compliance with
the recommendations set forth by Stavenhagen
five years ago.
Anaya, a law professor at the University of
Arizona in the United States who is himself
an Apache Indian, visited the southwestern
provinces of Nariño and Cauca, met with
members of dozens of different indigenous
groups in Bogotá, and received reports from
the Colombian government, the local United
Nations offices, and donor countries.
In El Diviso, in Nariño, he spoke with Awá
indigenous people displaced by the
intensification of the country's nearly
five-decade civil war and by aerial spraying
of drug crops, which also affects legal
crops, livestock and people's health.
Eight Awá Indians accused of being army
informants were killed by the Revolutionary
Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) in February.
Anaya also visited the Territorio de
Convivencia ("coexistence territory")
established by the indigenous movement in La
María, a Guambiano reservation in Cauca
province.
In October 2008, La María was the starting
point of the National Minga of Indigenous
and Popular Resistance ("minga" means a
traditional indigenous meeting or activity
for the collective good) – a six-week
protest that was the target of a harsh
crackdown by the security forces. And in
November, the protesters met in La María
with Colombian President Álvaro Uribe,
although no agreement was reached.
A month later, soldiers killed Edwin Legarda,
the husband of the Minga's leader, Aida
Quilcué, in a rain of bullets apparently
meant for her. And in May, the couple's only
child, a 12-year-old girl, was threatened.
The threats and killings did not even let up
during Anaya's visit.
On Sunday, two members of the Nasa
indigenous community, Jesús Darío Fernández
and his wife Carolina Romero, were abducted
at 9:00 AM in the San Francisco reservation
in Cauca province.
One hour later, another indigenous man,
Arnulfo Palacios, was killed by unidentified
thugs in the nearby López Adentro
reservation.
On Jul. 23, the Indigenous Organisation of
Antioquia (OIA) reported that the FARC
killed Embera Indian Luis Orlando Domicó in
the Jaidezabi reservation in the
northwestern province of Antioquia on Jul.
20.
Two days later Ana Luz Soto, a member of the
Senú indigenous community, was shot and
killed by unidentified gunmen in her house
in the municipality of El Bagre, in
Antioquia.
And two weeks ago, in the Antioquia
municipality of Ituango, Silverio Majore was
killed by a land mine placed by the FARC in
response to the army's penetration into
indigenous territory.
Fighting between the army and the FARC in
Ituango has triggered massive displacement
of indigenous people and small farmers to
the main town in the municipality.
On May 13, indigenous governor Manuel
Martínez of the Senú community of Tigre II,
in the Antioquia municipality of Caucasia,
was murdered.
An OIA statement complains that members of
native communities in Antioquia are
frequently accused of supporting one side or
the other in the armed conflict, making them
targets in the war.
The organisation, which reiterated that
indigenous groups - who account for roughly
two percent of the population – demand to be
treated as neutral in the war, condemned
these acts of violence against innocent
people who "only carry their work
implements," rather than weapons.
In the western province of Chocó, on the
border with Panama, in Cauca and in the
country's Amazon jungle region, the army
uses children to translate its propaganda –
messages aimed at persuading the guerrillas
to lay down their weapons - into native
languages.
"That is wrong, to involve our communities
in the war," Luis Evelis Andrade, leader of
the National Indigenous Organisation of
Colombia (ONIC), told IPS. "We are opposed
to this being done with children, who have
special rights and should not be drawn into"
the armed conflict.
"We have asked that our native languages not
be used to intensify the war in this
country," he said. "We have asked the army
and all of the armed groups not to use our
men, children, or women to fan the flames of
the war."
So far this year, ONIC has documented 60
politically motivated killings of indigenous
people, and 99 in 2008. It also reported
that 3,312 Indians were displaced by
violence in 2008, compared to 3,100 already
this year.
In Anaya's meeting with senior military
officers, he asked them if they used
indigenous people as informants. "They
assured me that this is not happening, and I
hope that assertion is true," he said.
The U.N. rapporteur urged the security
forces to respect indigenous peoples'
autonomy, and to negotiate with local
authorities "the conditions surrounding any
necessary presence in their territories."
But he emphatically stated that at this
moment it is the FARC that is foremost in
violating the rights of indigenous people in
Colombia.
Paradoxically, Constitutional Court
sentences handed down in favour of
indigenous peoples in Colombia represent
"exemplary jurisprudence" at a global level,
said Anaya, who also underscored the role
played by the ombudsman's office in
protecting native people in the midst of the
war.
In a January ruling, the Constitutional
Court stated that indigenous peoples in
Colombia "are at risk of cultural or
physical extermination by the armed
conflict, and have been the victims of
extremely grave violations of their
individual and collective fundamental rights
and international humanitarian law."
The Court declared that 34 of the country's
102 indigenous groups are facing a
humanitarian emergency, and ordered the
government to adopt safeguards to protect
them, as well as guarantees for all
indigenous communities.
It also issued a warning regarding corporate
interest in the natural resources in native
territories, which frequently threatens the
rights of indigenous peoples.
In addition, the Court overturned two laws –
on forests and land – that hurt the
interests of indigenous people without prior
consultation with affected communities, as
required by the constitution.
Both laws had been pushed through by the
right-wing Uribe administration, against the
recommendation made by Stavenhagen in 2004:
"Any draft legislation, draft constitutional
reform or other initiative which introduces
into the law provisions that violate
indigenous peoples’ rights or the principle
of diversity should be withdrawn."
The ombudsman's office, meanwhile, continues
to run an "early warning system" – albeit
with insufficient funds and amidst death
threats - which Anaya described as "an
important mechanism for identification and
prevention of violence against indigenous
peoples."
The U.N. rapporteur urged the Colombian
government "to ensure all necessary support
for the effective functioning of these
institutions, including implementation and
funding of the early warning system."
With respect to the government's efforts, he
said "concrete steps" had been taken but
there had been no "concrete changes"
benefiting indigenous people.
Anaya "found that his predecessor's
conclusions and recommendations remain
valid. Despite a few government
announcements and programmes, the extremely
serious situation faced by indigenous
peoples remains basically unchanged,"
Gustavo Gallón, head of the Colombian
Commission of Jurists, a prominent human
rights group, told IPS.
"This is disturbing, because it means the
recommendations have not been put into
practice, and that it is thus necessary to
insist that they be implemented and
enforced," he said. |
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