First they came for the communists
and I did not speak out, because I was not a communist.
Then they came for the Jews
and I did not speak out, because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the workers
and I did not speak out, because I was neither a worker nor a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Catholics
and I did not speak out, because I was Protestant.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left to speak out.
On March 16th 2007
my husband Daniel Torres and my 16-year old son Roque Julio were murdered.
The 16th Brigade based in Yopal did this
and the payment is up to 3,815,000 pesos (€1.250)
for killing guerrilla members.
I was told there had been an ambush and there were two dead guerrilla.
It’s obvious some sectors keen to discredit the government’s ‘democratic security’ policy
see this issue as the ideal opportunity
to make unfounded complaints
and to manipulate the figures and discredit the security forces.
Who were the two dead guerrilla
if my husband and son were on the farm,
and they were not guerilla in a any shape or form.
They were working on the farm
as they were farmers and worked with cattle.
Why were they killed?
Because my son had witnessed
two deaths that occurred in the same settlement, in 2005 and 2006.
My son gave evidence about these two deaths.
For that he paid with his life,
Because he testifiedabout what they were doing
to civilians from the same settlement.
It wasn’t just them,
many people have died at the hands of the army.
It’s not right.
Who is responsible
for this life we are living?
The government... the president we have.
He is the only one responsible for all this.
We are facing a phenomenon
or a widespread pattern
of disappearances and executions, so to speak.
Look at the yearly figures: In 1996 one case of human rights violation
1997: 8
1998: 4
1999: 6
2000: 4
2001: 3
2002: 12
2003: 37
2004: 93
2005: 125
2006: 223, 2007: 397
2008: 112
and the Public Ombudsman says that till now around 100 complaints have been made
against members of the security forces.
My name is Paola Sanabria, I'm a relative of one of the extrajudicial killing victims.
My father was called Eiver Mendoza. He was my foster father.
He died on March 24th.
He was said to have been killed in combat.
He was dressed up as a guerrilla.
You will understand that it isn’t easy, a father is a father.
As the Army is paid for each guerrilla killed,
it’s obvious that it’s easier for them to kill civilians,
and dress them up as guerrilla.
The Army are said to be the heroes of Colombia,
one isn’t supposed to feel afraid of them,
but should feel protected at their side.
But i am afraid of them.
Casanare: Exhuming the genocide
They executed my husband
Payment is up to 3,815,000 pesos (€1.250)
Discrediting the security forces
Carrying out selective killings
They were killed
Executions
‘False positive’ extrajudicial executions
The 16th Brigade
Distorting reality
Their lives were taken
Who disappeared her?
They were disappeared
He was disappeared
The paramilitaries
Tortures
Links with the army
They were coordinated
They went around as friends
They were the same
They were accomplices
Of the 25th Brigade
Too many dead
They killed him here
Of course they killed him
That was my son
He was killed
BP
The end of Acdainso
Gaula (anti- kidnapping unit)
Murderers
Would someone tell me if they have seen my son.
He is a pre-medical student.
He’s called Augustin and he’s a good guy.
He’s sometimes stubborn when giving his opinion.
He was arrested.
I don’t know by which of the security forces.
Jairo was 17 and Luis 19,
they were college students.
Luis was taken from the home of a sister.
They forced their way in, battering down the doors, they took him out.
And they got Jairo in the street,
it was 6 in the evening and he was there in the street.
That’s when they got him.
They couldn’t be found anywhere.
We went to the army with the local government human rights official and asked them.
They said they didn’t know,
that the previous night there had been a clash
and several had died
and they didn’t know what had happened.
Nobody could tell us.
We looked everywhere and nobody could give us a reason.
Until the third or fourth day...
..a man came out to milk his cows
in a pasture near the River Chamezano bridge.
When he arrived he found them dead.
They had been terribly... massacred.
They pulled their fingernails out.
The Army was proven to have been there at that moment,
to have murdered the men.
With this event all the violence started.
that we have suffered for almost 15 years in our municipality
They were the first victims.
And we were the ones who paid the first price.
They would come and take people off
sometimes tied up, and sometimes not,
After they were far away, they did whatever they wanted.
My husband disappeared on February 9th 2003,
here in Chameza municipality.
He was abducted by paramilitaries.
They took him and nothing more was known of him.
Along with my husband
22 people from the municipality disappeared.
This is my daughter who the paramilitaries killed.
They grabbed her at the Unete bridge and then
they took her to Tauramenta and killed her,
when captain Guerrero was the commander
and the Army and the paramilitaries were close friends.
They sat down at the tables to drink beer together.
They entered the village here.
The Army would note down the names
of people who left and entered the village.
By day the army was here, the police were here, but...
the same things would happen.
In 2002
the paramilitaries kidnapped my husband.
They took him off.
They held him for 8 days,
abusing him, torturing him.
And that same day we fled.
We abandoned the farm, the animals, everything.
We had trusted that the Army
was going to protect us at that time.
Then we became aware that
one day the captain of the army had been speaking to the paramilitaries,
he would greet them and we said:
‘this is serious...
they are all the same’.
We didn’t have any hope.
‘Would someone tell me if they have seen my husband,
the lady asked,
‘he’s called Ernesto X, he’s 40
and a caretaker at a vehicle company.
He was wearing a dark shirt and light trousers.
He went out the night before last
and hasn’t returned
and I don’t know what to think as this hasn’t happened before.’
My case is about the disappearance of 7 relatives.
Among them my father, my mother,
two brothers and three uncles,
who were disappeared in February and March 2003
by paramilitary groups.
My husband disappeared on 18th
Yes, February 18th 2003.
My son was called Carlos Andrés Barrera Pedraza,
he was a zoology student
at Sogamoso university.
And was disappeared on February 28th 2003.
He was disappeared by the paramilitaries
on February 20th 2003.
Till now I haven’t had a...
concrete explanation of what happened to him.
My great wish is...
is to know...
if he is alive...
or, if he was killed,
to know where they left him to collect his remains.
Here in Casanare the ACC -
Autodefensas Campesinas del Casanare (Casanare Peasant Self-Defence) were active,
led by Martin Llanos.
These paramilitaries entered at the end of 2002
and start of 2003.
They started to fight for control of this region.
The paramilitaries disappeared my two sons
on February 2nd 2003.
And till now I don’t know where they are.
I only know that they were disappeared,
and we still don’t know what has happened to them.
From the day when our loved ones were disappeared
we have been threatened by the same
paramilitaries.
Also
in this period
we have also been threatened
by army troops.
I don’t want my face to appear here
because... I’m afraid.
I have so many things to say
but dont dare to say them
out of fear.
At that time I was drafted for military service,
it was the Tauramena Batallion, the 44th Batallion.
At the beginning
it dawned on me that as I was serving in the army
I could get some kind of help
that they could help me rescue my relatives.
I mentioned to my superiors what had happened to my family
and asked them if they would help rescue them from the paramilitaries.
Every time I mentioned it to my superiors
they mocked me
and criticised,
implying that the disappearances from Chameza and Recetor
had been a plus for them
as the paramilitaries had removed
who weren’t farmers from the region.
For me the worst thing, what hurt me most
when the paramilitaries came here,
they had links to the Army
because the Army was here in Recetor
and the paramilitaries still came and took people away.
They always came here
armed.
They took food, and the Army accompanied them.
They were together... one with the Army...
let’s say...they were part of the same gang
because the Army was here in the municipality
and the paramilitaries were right there, that’s why.
They weren’t afraid the Army would carry out any operation.
It’s well known that they coordinated together.
they are notorious for it.
So how could we ask the Army
to help and protect us
if they were all the same.
Well, it’s no secret here that
the guerrilla were active here before the paramilitaries came
and large companies had held meetings.
When we came into contact with the guerilla...
they told us
not to let
the oil companies in
because where the oil companies have appeared...
as they arrived with the permission of the government...
So we opposed their presence
and organised civil resistance.
That’s why there was a delay in oil company activity.
First they sent
the paramilitaries to carry out
a so-called ‘cleansing’.
When this did in fact occur
shortly after the company Petrobras appeared.
It was since these companies arrived that a new‘social order’came into force.
Before People could go out at any time
at night, go to their farms
and nothing happened
and it was because of these companies
that it happened that bad people came...
Nobody was allowed out at night.
At any moment we would find killed people on the paths.
My husband wasn’t killed here on the farm,
he died in Aguaazul.
And my brother was killed here on the farm.
My husband is among those
‘false positive’ extrajudicial executions.
It happened on March 24th 2008
in Monterralo settlement
at the hands of the National Army,
to be precise the 16th Brigade.
BP pays the army for the security of the drill holes.
Following this problem
the only thing I have received are threats from the Army.
8 days after his death we were threatened.
When the men were here
the Gaula (anti-kidnap unit) came for them and locked them up.
They were taken away tied up.
Tied up
and were definitely killed.
The other man, the one from the house
was released
and he went up with someone else
apparently he heard shooting.
They said there were clashes
but there was nothing over there.
When they had them they couldn’t see anything, he didn’t see anything.
And apparently he heard bullets and bombs.
Soon after a helicopter came.
They obviously killed them and then took them to Yopal.
Yesterday we were threatened again.
Yesterday at 7.40 in the morning they called my daughter.
I don’t understand why the Army does these things.
They are the ones supposed to protect the community, the farmers,
but they turn out to be just murderers.
When the president came to Yopal
he told the Army
that they had to produce
results.
He asked what they were doing
and that they shouldn’t give up.
So they started killing farmers and passing them off as guerrilla.
Farmers as guerrilla and...
the government was supposedly finishing off the...
the insurgency. Lies, because they were killing farmers.
People were afraid at the time to complain
out of fear of being killed themselves.
When the poor speak out,
speak out to complain,
they are accused of being a guerrilla.
Always mistreated,
having their rights trampled
as if not human
and to the boss their lives are only worth a cent.
For equal rights,
for rights we should be struggling,
united as one,
the trade unions and workers’ bodies as one.
Showing with open heart
that we have never been silenced
and that we know how to defend ourselves from the wicked.
That is the situation,
the situation in my dear country,
where today we speak out,
we speak out for all those suffering,
in the voice of a singer, who wanders the paths
driven by the wind of liberty for the worker and farmer.
The people have organised
and...demanded their rights,
and the leader who demanded their rights,
who was most insistent, was the first...
to be killed.
The one who speaks and makes demands is the first to disappear.
They killed our leaders
who...were trying to speak to BP
to large companies
but...I don’t know why
these leaders were disappeared.
Look...they are the armed forces,
and are in Tauramena where there is a military base
the whole time
and the paramilitaries scattered over the hills
how can they not know they are there?
My son was called Nelson Raúl Pinto,
he was 18.
I don’t know what happened to him,
he disappeared in 2002.
He went to Yopal
and never came back.
I haven’t had any kind of news
neither that he’s alive or dead.
Well...I hope he’s alive
but I know that he isn’t
I know that he isn’t alive.
Well I never made a complaint...
to the authorities because...
I always hoped that...
one day he would suddenly appear
and I still hope, although now not very.
And...till now nothing has been known about him
so...I just don’t know.
I don’t know...
who killed him, who took him off.
I think it was the paramilitaries.
Around 1998
the farmers began to be persecuted
by the military.
The Army, 25th Brigade...
I went with two men and one person
who was mentally ill.
We were on our way to a smallholding
when we ran into the Army
and each one of us was taken aside
and we were kicked and beaten with rifle butts.
We were kicked and beaten, they did what they wanted
And why?
Because we didn’t tell them where the guerrilla were
And we didn’t know why...
one who lives and works on one’s farm
isn’t after anything or anyone.
That time they told me if I made a complaint
they would come for me,
so I left the farm.
At that time they would come for anyone.
They would just capture you and make you out to be a subversive.
The Army would benefit from that...
they get rewards,
they get holidays
for each person handed over.
They get a load of money
and also when they commit an assasination.
I went and asked them
and they told me:
they told me: ‘we can’t give you an account of what happened,
we can only tell you that
there was a clash and a subversive was killed’.
I told them: ‘what kind of subversive,
that was my son.’
Then I was treated very badly,
I was told that I was an old ‘son of a bitch’,
that he was a guerrilla.
I told them: ‘he wasn’t a guerrilla at all’.
..and he left and while he was walking up a field
by the river
the Army was already there. They followed him.
They caught up with him.
They held him and beat him.
They beat him all the way
down the hill.
When they reached the bottom they put him in some bushes
and simulated a shoot out.
They said there had been clashes and they had killed him.
The guy had just been at home,
without a weapon or anything.
Then they legitimised it,
because they dressed him in camouflage and gave him weapons.
And the helicopter came and picked up the body.
That must have been in 2005.
When the companies started arriving everyone was happy
bacause they paid a very good salary.
Everyone was going to have plenty of money.
And it was lies, because...
maybe they made money but...
but too many people died for it to be worth it.
This war started in aboriginal times
when muiscas and quimbayas killed each other out of greed.
Spanish plunderers
arrived without warning, shooting and enslaving
many of our indigenous.
However, the warriors of these lands have changed.
Now, it’s the insurgency against state forces
youth gangs against militia groups,
the war of the drug lords, the war among killers,
the war of the races and between social classes,
the hunter against animals.
This is a society
largely forged from lead,
where there have been wars for land and gold.
Limited wars, silent ones, never declared
which result in death and displaced families.
Despite the 14,000 barrels of crude leaving El Morro daily,
El Morro district lacks a doctor and roads.
The farmers don’t have electricity.
domestic gas is very limited
and the cost is very high.
Acdainso was formed...
was formed by 17 or 18 settlements
and fought
permanently for workers’ rights
and achieved some things.
It gained the respect of the community.
It achieved respect for the workers
and the environment.
It was very difficult to negotiate with BP.
BP didn’t like that they were meeting
and that its leaders were inspiring the communities to rebel.
to rebel
Until BP...
seeing Acdainso as a permanent obstacle,
… not know
using any means
they set about persecuting Acdainso’s directors.
People started getting killed.
Our colleague Oswaldo Vargas was killed in 2004
and Acdainso closed as a result.
A new organisation called Asojuntas was set up.
Parmenio was elected president of Asojuntas
on May 7th 2005,
And on May 10th, three days later he was murdered.
He came down to the house to have lunch. He was on his way back.
Arriving back at work, they were waiting for him.
A few gunmen intercepted him.
That day they killed him
and another friend who was on the motorbike.
They didn’t want there to be any trace of Acdainso
because Acdainso was an organisation that
put BP in check,
put BP in check a few times.
We held 2 or 3 strikes
the last one lasted around 45 days
demanding the workers’ rights
because the pay was very low.
They were polluting the environment a lot -
the Cravo Sur river, the La Guatoca stream.
There was total deforestation.
Regarding the death of my bother and the other guy,
nobody wanted to know.
So the road was open for BP
They had achieved what they had wanted all along,
But what is said against multinationals here doesn’t get acknowledged.
because in effect the multinationals
replace the state in the countryside.
The Colombian state, regrettably,
doesn’t have a presence here in the countryside in Casanare.
We attribute my brother’s death to the 16th Brigade, the Gaula.
On April 16th 2008
I was detained by the DAS (internal security) and the army
in Teislandia in Tamara municipality.
Since then I have been persecuted by the authorities
and have been harassed.
It has happened at home and on the farm.
Both I and my family have been persecuted.
Sometimes they turn up near my house
or I find them on the farm.
I can’t walk about alone.
Various people have told me that
they want to find me alone, I don’t know what they want
to do with me.
This worries me.
I am afraid because
with all the extrajudicial executions they have carried out
they could harm my life.
Here, near to this post
that is, in Campo Hermoso,
here in Tamara
a lot has happened.
For example, civilians who the Gaula and Army have killed.
There are four cases of this.
Some guys working on the farm
were taken off and passed off as guerrilla
by dressing them in camouflage.
Later the state will have to pay them.
This is well-known.
For example, they seized one civilian, put a uniform on him
and killed him.
They offered him 300 million pesos to allow an oil company onto the reservation
and he refused. His name was Alvaro Salon.
He didn’t allow it, he wouldn’t sell his community at any price.
so...he was killed.
Between the Foothills and the Eastern Plains
the department of Casanare had the bad fortune to contain enormous oil reserves
which made it a prime target for state and quasi-state violence.
This has in its turn facilitated the indiscriminate takeover
of this precious energy resource
by multinational companies.
The extractive zeal hasn’t stopped,
not even for the right to life of the Casanarians,
willing to use any means
to eliminate any obstacle to the seizure of the black gold.
Out of a population of just 300,000 inhabitants
in the last 20 years
over 2,600 have been disappeared
while thousands have been murdered.
The world is divided between those who possess the word
and those who have to borrow it.
Faced with a government that tries to forgive and forget
for itself and the executioners,
today the victims have broken the silence,
have put aside the fear
and are taking up the word.
There are things which are highlighted nationally,
and with much enthusiasm
about the guerrilla, the kidnapped,
those to be exchanged,
politicians, soldiers.
But what happened here also concerned human beings.
And what happened here should also be publicised.
And what happened here should also be given due importance.
We, as victims, only want
to get to the truth,
to be helped to to clear up all the cases,
for justice to be done,
to be able to establish the truth of the events,
so that there can be truth and justice,
and compensation
for the damage these groups have caused
us and the relatives of the disappeared.
I don’t agree with the ‘Justice and Peace’ law
as I don’t sense any justice there.
It’s just a way of
fooling people.
they were all complicit in doing those things
well now,
they say that with this ‘Justice and Peace’ law...
this can’t happen.
Well...the government is the one who will forgive and forget
because it doesn’t feel what the relatives of the victims feel.
We, as victims of the relatives, can’t...
We can’t forget.
It’s convenient for the government...
to forgive and forget
because it doesn’t feel any pain.
It doesn’t feel any pain doing those things to farmers.
What I grow on the banks of the river Ariporo are plantain and yucca.
That’s why I won’t leave this Casanare.
Corn cobs,
there are corn cobs there
I have enough plantain,
half a hectare of yucca.
We are able to live off it.
October 31st – November 1st 2009. National Pilgrimage to Casanare
We have been called together here today
in Chameza
by the painful memory of what happened on this day 20 years ago.
On October 31st 1989
when the brothers Jairo Antonio and Luís Álvaro Acosta
were violently taken from their homes,
subject to barbaric tortures
and executed by state officials
who were supposed to protect lives
not destroy them.
But that was only the start of the horrors.
While the mass media
rejoiced in the discoveries
of large hydrocarbon deposits in Cusiana and Cupiagua,
and the progress in agreements with multinationals
who would exploit these riches and so benefit the country.
These areas were increasingly subjected
to military and paramilitary control
who brought death and devastation
to residents who should have been the first to benefit from those riches.
It’s very tempting to forget the past
so its horrors don’t continue to torment us
like impertinent ghosts
that haunt the days of life we have left.
How can we create a future of dignity
and solidarity
if it’s accepted that no one
will be held accountable for the past.
It will never be possible to construct accountability in the future
based on a lack of accountability in the past.
Peace isn’t simply an absence of war
as the church tells us in so many documents.
Peace is the fruit of justice,
Christian peace is the fruit of justice.
And we are certain that the violence
won’t be totally eradicated
until there is justice
because justice is the root of peace.
Even surrounded by death,
even surrounded by torture
there is hope.
A hope that lies in the right to memory,
the right to remember.
We shouldn’t be ashamed of our past, our people,
of the struggles we have fought,
no more impunity, no more torture,
no more state violence.
but the victims of Colombia have the ethical and moral authority
of a right to a free, sovereign country.
Through this pilgrimage we want to encourage
all the families of this region,
with the spirit of courage and valor,
to continue this struggle and search for the truth,
searching for justice,
trying to reconstruct all that has been destroyed.
And we also live with the awareness
that the society we are immersed in
is like this and not otherwise
due to the extermination
of those violently deprived of life.
Their dreams were annihilated
their vital energy,
their social and life projects were crushed.
The reality that surrounds us is
an illegitimate and perverse reality.
But one thing is for certain
the whole feast of horrors and cruelty
had a precise purpose
which was clearly a result
of state policies.
Conspiring with global capital,
working to the same timetable,
we can see the undeniable coincidence
of oil multinationals establishing their presence in the region
and the spread of terror.
But I want to tell you:
fear paralyses, fear is blinding.
But out of the love that we feel for our country, for our loved ones
we are not afraid of the threats
we are not afraid of the phrases that justify
in the name of god and democracy the murdering of a people.
A lot of people can be killed
but thoughts can’t be killed.
We have to work for memory,
for truth, for justice.
And to a state
that has direct links with paramilitaries,
drug smuggling and organised crime
we say: enough.
No more crimes, no more impunity.
Last night I heard several explosions.
Shots from a shotgun and revolver.
Cars accelerating, brakes, shouts.
An echo of boots in the street.
The banging of doors, curses, broken plates.
A soap opera was on
so no one looked outside.
Where do the disappeared go?
Look in the water and the thickets
And why do they disappear?
Because we are not all equal
And when will the disappeared return?
Each time they come to mind
How does one talk to a disappeared person?
With emotions squeezing together inside.