Campesinos murdered in the settlement of Santo Domingo

30.12.05

by the Asociación Campesina del Valle del Río Cimitarra
Zona de Reserva Campesina, 18 de noviembre de 2005

Last November 12th, 2005, Mrs. Diana Patricia Arrieta Rodríguez and Mr. Wilson Bravo Niño were found dead in their home. The community says that they found them in their pajamas with their three children around the bodies. It seems that they were assassinated as they slept. The community says that some shots were heard in the early morning.

In the context of this murder is the fact that for nearly a year, the Army’s 5th Brigade has installed a military base around the town center of Santo Domingo, in a clear violation of international humanitarian law (IHL), as they are using the campesinos as human shields, as a result, this murder in the middle of the militarization of the region, will remain in impunity, as the case of Luis Sigifredo Castaño, campesino murdered on August 7th, 2005, by the Calibío Battalion of the Army’s 14th Brigade, and who was made to pass as a guerrilla killed in combat when he appeared dead in the settlement of Campo Bijao, just like the impunity of the assassination of José Albeiro Aguirre, 37 years old, presented as a killed combatant by the 5th Brigade’s Nueva Granada Battalion on October 27th, 2004.

All of this is happening in a military operation that has continued for 16 months to the date in the entire region of the Nordeste Antioqueño, the Cimitarra River Valley, and the Sur de Bolívar.

The Campesino Association of the Cimitarra River Valley repudiates these systematic assassinations of campesinos as well as all the human rights and international humanitarian law violations, of which we daily are victims. We denounce the Colombian State and its military and security forces as the prinicipal perpetrators of these bloody and terrifying incidents.

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