"We are tired of death": Letter to the special rapporteur on extrajudicial executions by the UN

16.06.09

San José de Cucuta June 13, 2009

Dear Philip Alston
United Nations Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial Executions Bucaramanga

Fleas dream of buying themselves a dog, and nobodies dream of escaping / poverty: that one magical day good luck will suddenly rain down on / them—-will rain down in buckets. But good luck doesn’t rain down / yesterday, today, tomorrow, or ever. Good luck doesn’t even fall in a / fine drizzle, no matter how hard the nobodies summon it, even if their / left hand is tickling, or if they begin the new day with their right / foot, or start the new year with a change of brooms.

The nobodies: nobody’s children, owners of nothing. The nobodies: the / no ones, the nobodied, running like rabbits, dying through life, / screwed every which way.

Who are not, but could be. / Who don’t speak languages, but dialects. / Who don’t have religions, but superstitions. / Who don’t create art, but handicrafts. / Who don’t have culture, but folklore. / Who are not human beings, but human resources. / Who do not have faces, but arms. / Who do not have names, but numbers. / Who do not appear in the history of the world, but in the police / blotter of the local paper./ The nobodies, who are not worth the bullet that kills them.”

Eduardo Galeano (Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent)

Please receive a warm greeting from the peasant farmers of Catatumbo, Norte de Santander, Colombia. We would like to take the opportunity of your important visit to Colombia to show you the reality that we are presently living and explain our struggle for a more dignified life. It is evident that in our region there is a persistence of serious, massive and systematic violations of human dignity due to the historic abandonment of the state as well as the failure to keep the agreements to maintain the Human Rights of the peasant farmers in the area of Catatumbo. Due to this, a number of communities (veredas) from this area, have established a Humanitarian Refugee Camp “For Life, Dignity, Land and the Defense of the Territory” in Cano Tomas, in the corregimiento of San Juancito, municipality of Teorama, department of Norte de Santander in the northeast of Colombia. This camp began on April 29, 2009.

This Refugee Camp is not only an alternative mechanism to avoid indiscriminate displacement (1) of the peasant farmers but also a space of passive resistance where we can create alternatives to overcome the humanitarian crisis that we are living in the region generated by the constant abuses of the Army and Police against civilians: extrajudicial executions, threats, arbitrary detentions and illegal accusations, and lack of funding of public social programs to better the quality of life in our communities.

The Humanitarian Crisis in the region today originated in the paramilitary political, economic, social and military control in the region since 1999. This control began to be exercised in the urban centers as well as the countryside in 1999 and continues to date (now known as the Aguilas Negras). The result has been massacres, uncountable forced disappearances, selective assassinations, threats, tortures, violation of freedom of the press and expression, forced displacements, indiscriminate fumigations of Plan Colombia, human rights abuses, food and sanitary blockades, extrajudicial executions by the army, criminalization of social organizations, destruction of the social structure, seizing of lands and goods of the population with disproportionate military spending and almost no social investment.

With the so-called paramilitary demobilization of December, 2004 and March, 2006(2) and the implementation of the “Law of Justice and Peace”, (a law promoted by Alvaro Uribe Velez) the victims of the paramilitaries continue being victims of the impunity of the central government. The perpetrators of the crimes of war and violators of Human Rights are benefited by the national government with educational programs, productive projects, housing, and health programs while the peasant farmers, upon voicing protest for state abandonment, are pointed out as being subversive or as being part of insurgent groups. The reason for this is that they have protested their conditions and have demanded social investment by the State in their communities, looking for a better life.

With the so-called demobilization of the paramilitary, Catatumbo passed into a strong militarization, from 1.500 soldiers in 2005 to 10.000. At the end of 2005 and the beginning of 2006 two new brigades of the Army began to operate in Catatumbo: Brigade #30 from Cucuta operates in the North of Santander and the south of Cesar. It is financed by Plan Colombia. The other is the Mobile Brigade #15 from Ocana with jurisdiction in Catatumbo and the Province of Ocana. Militarization brought with it an increase in abuses by the military against the civilian peasant farmer population. An example of this is 68 (3) extrajudicial executions by member of the Mobile Brigade #15 in Catatumbo. Added to this are the disappearances of the young men from Soacha, Cundinamarca whose bodies were found in mass graves in Ocana and presented as guerillas killed in battle. This situation caused the destitution of Brigadier General Jose, Joaquin Cortes Franco, commander of the 2nd Division of the Army, Brigadier General Paulino Coronado Gamez, Commander of the 30 th Brigade and Brigadier General Gabriel Rincon Amado, Chief of Operations of the 15th Mobil Brigade and a considerable number of officials and sub officials of the national army.

Due to this the 15th Mobil Brigade was withdrawn from the region and on January 29, 2009 and replaced by the 23rd Mobil Brigade. Colonel Gabriel Rincon Amado (4) and private Medardo Rios were arrested and accused of breaking the law, homicide, forced disappearance and the death of Jonathan Orlando Soto and Julio Cesar Mesa, two youths who disappeared from Soacha.

All of these things that have happened have encouraged us to convert this space, of the Humanitarian Camp, into hope. Through this camp we wish to demand that the government confront what they have denied us for so long: respect for life, our right to land, work, health, education, our life projects and above all, to respect the agreements made between peasant farmers and the past governments. We are tired of death; we have been frightened, threatened, pursued, arrested, judged, stigmatized, and pointed out as enemies of the state, our peasant farmer organizations have been pursued to the point of disappearing.

Our subsistence crops have been fumigated with the dangerous glifosate. They pretend they are eradicating the coca and drug trafficking but they are fumigating and destroying the yucca, the plantain, corn, chickens and grasses for grazing. They are eradicating the peasant farmer culture; they are making us a displaced people and clearing out the countryside in order to give our ancestral and legitimate land to foreign capital and transnational companies, to the drug trafficking companies that invest in State projects, to large landowners and large cattle ranchers, all of these with ties to the paramilitaries.

It is clear to us that the State wants to destroy the peasant farmers, displace us from our lands and open these areas up to the robbery of our natural resources which will only favor a few people. That is why it is important for us to be able to tell you what is occurring in our region of the country. We are 250 delegates from different regions of Catatumbo. Even though there have been no extrajudicial executions since October, 2008, this does not mean that abuses have ended nor pointing out “enemies” of the state nor arrests. We raise our voices again to demand out right to the land.

We, the members of the Peasant Farmer Association of Catatumbo (Asociacion Campesino de Catatumbo – ASCAMCAT) will continue in the Humanitarian Refugee Camp. We respectfully ask you to be informed of our struggle and we would like to have a direct channel of communication with you in order for your organization to understand the reality that we are presently living.

We do not wish to be displaced and we will return to our small farms and continue working the land. This can only happen when the government promises to honor our agreements and truly guarantee us our right to a dignified life, our right to healthcare, education, land and work. Our struggle is for our right to the land and the defense of our territory. It is a peaceful agrarian initiative, for production of chemically free foods, the rational exploitation of the land and resources, the protection of the environment, the defense of life, culture and territory.

Sincerely, Asociacion Campesina del Catatumbo

(1) Colombia is the second country in the world with great numbers of internally displaced people. Sudan is first.

(2) December 10, 2004 , 1424 paramilitaries from the Catatumbo Block demobilized and on March 8th and 10th, 2006, 4759 paramilitaries demobilized from the North Block (Bloque Norte)

(3) These 68 cases were collected by the Asociacion Campesina del Catatumbo in two different verification commissions. The total number of cases presented for Catatumbo is 111.

(4) http://www.eltiempo.com/colombia/justicia/coronel-y-soldado-no-aceptaron-cargos-por-dos-falsos-positivos- de-soacha_5416189-1 de-soacha_5416189-1

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