Urgent Action: Colombian navy attacks and displaces community in the Cimitarra river valley

Situation

The Cimitarra River Valley Peasants' Association (ACVC) is a non-governmental, civil organization. The ACVC works with and is led by small-holder farmers in eight municipalities in the Middle Magdalena region of Colombia. In the last few days, heavy fighting has occurred in the region with close to 30 causalities on both sides. Last Friday, May 5th, Colombian Navy and paramilitary forces attacked a coorperative financed by the World Bank whom they have labeled as a guerrilla organization.

CSN asks: Does this Army deserve $1.7 billion?

On May 5, 2000 a group of 300 members of the Colombian Navy, with members of the AUC paramilitary mixed in, assaulted the Cuatrobocas neighborhood in the Municipality of Cantagallo, causing the displacement of all residents of Cuatrobocas and the neighborhood of Puerto Machete.

The paramilitaries kidnapped 4 persons who were engaged in removing sand from the Cimitarra river; these persons remain "disappeared". The military and paramilitary forces asked community residents about the 'guerrilla cooperative" and the administrator, whom they called a "guerrillera". they stayed in the community for 2 days and removed food products from the cooperative, which markets products from the cooperative and of the peasants organized into the Cimitarra River Valley Peasants' Association. This permits them to receive a fair price for their crops, insures that they will have enough food to eat, and benefits thousands of peasants.

This peasant cooperative has been the subject of systematic threats and attacks by paramilitary groups with the complacency of the Colombian government. Members of the cooperative's Board of Directors have been permanently threatened and boardmember Diomedes Playonero was killed a few weeks ago. The paramilitaries act with total impunity protected by omission to act and collaboration by the state security forces. Agreements negotiated after the Peasant Marches of 1998 have been broken by the Colombian government, as a result of which more than 500 peasants have been killed and more than 30,000 displaced by the paramilitaries.

With their classification of this cooperative as "guerrilla" the Military Commanders and the criminal paramilitaries are trying to link to the guerrillas not only the peasant organization but also the World Bank from which monies from a Colombian government loan have come and the Program of Peace and Development of the Middle Magdalena, directed by Jesuit priest Francisco de Roux, which administers the fund in the region, monies which permitted the reconstitution of the cooperative project of the peasant cooperative. This ultrarightist military sees "guerrillas" in all kinds of government officials and international institutions which have supported this cooperative. And there is a PARAMILITARY CHECKPOINT JUST 10 MINUTES FROM THE NAVY BASE IN BARRANCABERMEJA which has been responsible for the assassination and disappearance of more than a dozen peasants and the theft of thousands of foodstuffs and merchandise items, in spite of frequent protests about this situation.

Cimitarra River Valley
May 7, 2000
Cimitarra River Valley Peasant Association
Asociación Campesina del Valle del Río Cimitarra - ACVC
cimitarra@mixmail.com

What you should do

In response to the continuous violations of human rights, we the peasants of the Middle Magdalena demand that the Colombian state :

1. Verify these events and create at once by decree a permanent inter-institutional commission financed by the government to investigate and verify the violations of human rights in the region as called for in the 1998 agreements.
2. Convoke at once a "Center of Coordination of the Struggle against Illegal Self-Defense Groups and other Groups acting outside the Law", to combat these groups as called for in Decree 324 of 2,000, and capture and prosecute those responsible for human rights abuses.
3. To pay reparation for all the damages and loses caused to the Cooperative in Cuatrobocas by the military/paramilitary actors; and
4. Comply with the Agreements of the Peasant Marches of 1998, signed with spokespersons of the peasants by President Andres Pastrana.

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