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CAMPAÑAS - CONTRA LA GUERRA - COLOMBIA |
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VOICES OF WOMEN Paramilitary terrorism
on the increase. ORGANIZACION FEMENINA POPULAR |
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In Barrancabermeja and Magdalena Medio the military, police and civil authorities, established within the framework of the National Constitution and who, solely, are charged with carrying out the force and application of the judicial system of Colombia, report through the mass media “total control of the exercise of [their] authority”, while at the same time they accept absolute territorial, political and social domination by the paramilitaries. This situation translates into the absence of armed political confrontation, which the authorities have interpreted as the new peace or absolute calm, creating a climate for great economic investments. The Social Organizations oppose the paramilitaries’ ppropriating the authority and functions of the government and their institutional organizations and agencies. We denounce, once again, events that are repeated without any difficulty or intervention. The paramilitaries: - Order entire communities to gather in neighborhoods in order to dictate their regulations. - Punish children for what they consider “bad
behavior”:
- They punish men and women, imposing penalties that range from being tied and bound, beatings, shaving of head and eyebrows to, even, death. - They rape young women for refusing to be their girlfriends or lovers. - They charge for watching over neighborhoods in carrying out their responsibility as security guards. - They impose illegal taxes on the merchants and contractors. - They manage the employment agencies. - They take people out of their houses, requiring them to give an accounting of their actions, and these people are later found assassinated or they swell the long list of the disappeared. - They dictate for whom one should vote and when. - They organize communities to oblige support for the Referendum of the President Alvaro Uribe Velez. - They indicate to communities which persons are their candidates for advisory councils and position of Mayor. - The Magdalena Medio River and nearby areas are public cemeteries of human remains. The cadavers collected there are almost always mutilated and in a state of decomposition. - They threaten the Social Organizations and impede their work, especially that of the Organizacion Femenina Popular, upon which they exert pressures which are daily harsher and more frequent. PRESSURES EXERTED ON THE MEMBERS OF THE ORGANIZACION FEMENINA POPULAR On 10 May, they threatened Yolanda Becerra. The paramilitaries sent word to the Casa de la Mujer del Nororiente that they planned to “frustrate the bitch” and take away twenty women of the OFP in order to silence us and so that we would stop denouncing them. On 26 May at 8:00 p.m., they threatened Graciela Alfaro. Several men, under the command of a paramilitary political commander going by the alias “fifi”, showed up at her house and threatened her with the statement that all the members of the OFP are guerillas. The OFP denounced this occurrence, but the Office of the District Attorney let the men go because there was no proof by which to bring them to trial. On 28 May at 8:00 p.m., a man entered the house of Flor Canas asking for help because he has going to be assassinated; Flor, as a humanitarian act, protected the man by closing the door. The heavily armed paramilitaries kicked on the door, pointed guns at the windows and entered by way of the patio with the objective of killing the man. Because of the solidarity and quick action of the OFP and the International Brigades of Peace, they managed to save the man’s life, but Flor Canas is still being threatened. On 29 May, the best known paramilitary in the neighborhood of Cerro approached Mrs. Maria Emilse Alvarado and told her to be careful because the paramilitaries had decided to assassinate several women of the Organizacion Femenina Popular. We cry out in anguish and propose asking the National and International Community if we are disposed to accept paramilitarism as the new institutional organization for zones of conflict? WE URGE - That you write messages to the embassies in each country advising them about the plight of the members of the Organizacion Femenina Popular – OFP – and demand guarantees from the State so that we can continue our regional and national work. - That you write messages to the State of Colombia demanding that a special commission be established to investigate the links between the State authorities and the new style of institutional paramilitarism that has been established in the city and the region.
Translated from Spanish by ALVARO URIBE VELEZ
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