From: Colombian Labor Monitor <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Thu, 17 May 2001 23:37:02 -0500 (CDT)
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: CLM: The Alto Naya Massacre - Another Paramilitary Outrage
________________________________________________________________
COLOMBIAN LABOR MONITOR
www.prairienet.org/clm
Thursday, 17 May 2001
The Alto Naya Massacre
Another Paramilitary Outrage
----------------------------
By Liam Craig-Best
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
"The remains of a woman were exhumed. Her abdomen was cut
open with a chainsaw. A 17-year-old girl had her throat cut
and both hands also amputated,"
- Eduardo Cifuentes - National Ombudsman
BOGOTA -- The district of Alto Naya on the border of the southwestern
Colombian departments of Cauca and Valle experienced a savage 3-day
paramilitary onslaught between 10th and 13th April 2001 leaving an
estimated 120 people dead and more than 4000 others displaced. The
episode has once again exposed not only the inhuman brutality of the
paramilitary death squads (witnessed on an almost daily basis), but also
the complicity of the Colombian Armed Forces and the negligence of the
Colombia states with regards to adequately defending the basic human
rights of its citizens.
Paramilitary activity in the area started on April 10th when peasants
sighted a group of 90 men who were later confirmed, by both local
guerrilla units and other peasants, to actually be part of a much larger
paramilitary unit consisting of over 400 men in one large and two smaller
contingents.
Eye witness Delio Chate said that the killing began on April 11th when
death-squads entered his village, as well as those of El Ceral, La Silvia,
La Mina, El Playa, Alto Seco and Palo Grande among others, dragged people
accused of sympathising with the guerrillas into the street and killed
them.
In the tiny village of Patiobonito the death squads killed 7 including a
local shopkeeper accused of selling food and supplies to the guerrillas,
and an indigenous council worker, Cayetano Pilcue, who was murdered for
possessing a mobile phone. The other five victims were all members of the
same indigenous family - Daniel Suarez, his wife Flor Dizut and their 3
nephews; William, Fredy and Gonzalo Osorio Lopez.
On April 12th residents who had managed to escape the area raised the
alarm and the departmental authorities began to take an interest. In the
evening peasants leaving the region testified that the paramilitaries had
killed at least 23 people and that they were giving all other residents
five hours to pack up and leave the district. By midnight on April 12th
approximately 170 families had fled.
Also on the 12th witnesses reported seeing a joint force of FARC and ELN
guerrillas moving into the region apparently with the intent of
confronting the paramilitaries and preventing further deaths. The
military later claimed, and indeed still does, that the majority of the
deaths in Alto Naya were in fact as a result of subsequent confrontations
between this force and the death squads. However, every other source
completely denies that this was the case.
By the morning of April 13th it had become clear that there was a
large-scale massacre going on and the Cauca People's Defender, Victor
Javier Melendez, requested that the military intervene. He received no
response. In the early evening the names of Luis Ipia, Humberto Arias
Agudelo, Manuel Tiguana, Esteban Delgado, Luis Omar Aponza, Wilson Casos
and Guillermo Trujillo, all from in and around the village of Patiobonito,
had also come through and by the late evening the departmental authorities
were confirming that there were at least 29 dead.
By the April 14th 3,000 displaced people, mainly from the many
Afro-Colombian and Paez indigenous communities in Alto Naya had arrived in
the nearby towns of Timba, (Cauca department) and Jamundi (Valle
department). It is believed that on this date a further 4,000 people were
trapped in the area by paramilitary road blocks that were preventing
anyone from entering or leaving the region, and, as the Attorney General,
Alfonso Gomez made clear, it was difficult to quantify the exact figures
of dead and displaced "because we [hadn't] been able to reach the area."
However, as investigations began the numbers increased and as late as May
2nd a further 20 bodies were found by Attorney General investigators.
Although total figures are still unknown the Spanish-based Nizkor
International Human Rights Team confirmed that around 130 people are
believed to have been assassinated during the 3-day rampage.
As pointed out by human rights investigators in the area the task of
giving exact numbers is an extremely difficult one due to the brutal
methods deployed by the paramilitaries who severely mutilated and then hid
the corpses of many of their victims. The National Ombudsman, Eduardo
Cifuentes, described the remains of a 17 year old girl who "had her throat
cut and both hands also amputated", and of another who had been
decapitated. Many body parts were subsequently spread around the region
and hidden in different locations, making identification and the counting
of victims even harder.
"Now, of course, the army is there or is trying to get there,
but they left us out there alone"
- Delio Chate - Eye Witness
The paramilitary death squad that committed the Alto Naya massacre arrived
in the region shortly after soldiers from the 3rd Brigade of the Colombian
Army had left the area and not long after the paramilitaries had publicly
threatened the region. Armando Borrero, a former national security
adviser, explains that this is a repetitive pattern, "The massacre is
announced. There is information. But at the moment it occurs apparently
no [troops] are in the area where the danger was the greatest. Excuses
are then made to explain the lack of presence."
This analysis fits perfectly with the reaction of the army who claimed
that climatic conditions made it difficult to intervene. However the tone
of General Francisco Pedraza, commander of the 3rd Brigade and himself
strongly implicated in supporting paramilitary death squads, clearly shows
the army's indifference to the plight of Colombian civilians: "'In
Colombia, there are thousands of threats every day, when everything is
urgent, nothing is urgent." He added that suggestions of army complicity
in the paramilitary attack were stories created by enemies of the army and
the state.
Despite 15-days of warnings of an imminent paramilitary assault on Alto
Naya and pleas from both area residents and international organisations
for security units to be sent to the area, a military spokesman, Luis
Enrique Hernandez, said that the army had no prior knowledge of the attack
and that army units in the area were too over-stretched to respond. It is
interesting to note that when the FARC attacked the town of Funes in
neighbouring Narino department on April 13th, as the massacre in Alto Naya
was in full swing, the "over-stretched" 3rd Brigade, backed by helicopter
gunships, responded within three hours.
Many observers say that Alto Naya was targeted due the presence of coca
fields in the area and for its strategic location on a river used by
guerrilla groups for transporting troops and arms. It is also claimed
that the ELN use the thick jungle surrounding in the region to hide kidnap
victims. However there is also speculation that the massacres and
subsequent massive displacements could have been motivated by the large
local deposits of natural resources such as gold and precious woods which
are of interest to multinational companies. On a series of maps produced
by mineworkers union, SINTRAMINERCOL, it appears that there is an almost
perfect correlation between paramilitary forced displacement and existence
of natural resources.
Even with the late arrival of the army in the area former residents still
fear to return to their homes, believing that the army will not protect
them should the death squads return. "I have no guarantees that I or my
four sons will be safe if I go back," explained farmer Luis Alberto Ganas,
who had fled from the hamlet of La Paz. This sentiment seems to be well
justified as less than 10 ten days after Alto Naya, paramilitaries
murdered six members of the same family, including two children, in the La
Cuchilla area, just 20 miles from the scene of the Alto Naya massacres.
Copyright by Liam Craig-Best <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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