OAS Condemns FARC Assassination of AWA Indians and Demands Return of Bodies

Media-Newswire.com
Released February 26, 2009

THE OAS UNANIMOUSLY CONDEMNS THE ASSASSINATION BY THE FARC OF THE INDIGENOUS GROUP AWÁ AND DEMANDS THE HANDING OVER OF THE BODIES

The Permanent Council of the Organization of American States ( OAS ) passed with unanimity a Declaration in which it expressed its "most energetic condemnation of the assassination of Colombians from the indigenous group AWA by the FARC ( Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia ), which occurred at the beginning of this month.

The document emphasizes, "the need to hand over the bodies of the AWA indigenous people that have not yet been recuperated" and demands an investigation and adoption of the necessary actions to "sanction those responsible of this crime."

Simultaneously, the Permanent Council offered "its solidarity and most sincere condolences to the families of the victims, the indigenous community AWA, the citizens, and the Colombian government for this atrocious crime."

The Declaration was submitted for consideration to the Council by the OAS permanent representative of Colombia, Ambassador Camilo Ospina, and after the document’s approval, the diplomat thanked the "firmness in which the hemisphere condemns barbarian acts, such as the massacre on the AWA people. The world must know that such serious events cannot occur without the firm condemnation of all the OAS States," he said.

It must be recalled that in a press release delivered last February 18th, OAS Secretary General, José Miguel Insulza, expressed his most energetic repulse and condemnation for the assassination of the indigenous group AWA that took place in the locality of Barbacoas, in the Colombian department of Nariño.
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(c) Media-Newswire.com 2009

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FARC Retaliates Against Awa Indians by Taking 120 Hostages

Latin American Herald Tribune
Published February 17, 2009

Colombia FARC Takes 120 Indians Hostage

BOGOTA -- A total of 120 Awa Indians were taken hostage last week in southwestern Colombia by presumed leftist FARC insurgents, who killed at least eight of the captives, two indigenous rights organizations said Wednesday.

The members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia rebel army also returned for the children who had been left alone in their homes, although it remains unclear what happened to those youths and how many of them there were, according to the National Indigenous Organization of Colombia, or Onic, and Indigenous Unity of the Awa People, or Unipa.

In a joint statement released in Pasto, the capital of Nariño province where the abductions and killings occurred, the two associations offered details on the murder of eight Awa Indians and the disappearance of nine others.

Onic and Unipa said the mass abduction occurred Feb. 4 within the limits of the Tortugaña Telembi reservation, located amid jungle-clad mountains near the town of Barbacoas, and was carried out by "armed men with FARC emblems."

The kidnapped Indians "were taken with their hands tied to he so-called El Hojal stream of the El Bravo (indigenous) community," the statement said, adding that witnesses saw the insurgents kill "some people with knives."

The FARC guerrillas returned the following day for the children who had been left alone, but "we don't know what happened to them," the statement said.

New York-based rights group Human Rights Watch, meanwhile, said Tuesday on its Web site that 17 Awa Indians were killed and called on "the national, state, and local governments to take immediate action to provide assistance to the displaced population and victims, to protect the civilian population in Nariño, and to ensure that all abuses in the region, by all armed groups or forces, are thoroughly investigated and prosecuted."

HRW also said the Office of the Ombudsman of Colombia had issued a report prior to the kidnappings alerting authorities that "civilians in the region were at risk" because the FARC suspected the Awa of cooperating with the army and a rival insurgent group.

It urged the Colombian government to improve its response to such warnings.

Onic and Unipa, for its part, did not say if those Indians taken captive were still being held by the insurgents.

They said the Awas believe the guerrilla incursion was in retaliation for supposed support the Indians have lent military troops who have entered their territory.

The rebel presence has left some 1,300 Awas "confined," or cut off from the outside world, according to Onic and Unipa, whose leaders met Tuesday in Pasto to analyze a crisis whose antecedents date back to the past decade, always related to Colombia's long-running internal armed conflict.

According to the two associations, some 200 Awas have been killed since the 1990s, with several of the deaths occurring in four separate massacres. Another 50 have been killed by landmines, while many more have been arbitrarily detained, kidnapped, threatened or recruited by illegal armed groups.


Fighting in that region has led to mass displacement of the Awa population, including cases of cross-border migration due to the bi-national Colombo-Ecuadorian nature of the Awa ethnic group, the statement added.

They said these communities also have suffered blockades and their property has been confiscated by the different armed actors in Colombia's civil conflict.

The Onic and Unipa also said last week's abductions and killings coincided with fighting between the Colombian army and the FARC between Feb. 5-7.

But the army's Cali-based military division, responsible for security in Nariño, said there have been no armed clashes in recent months in the 24,960-hectare (96-square-mile) expanse of the Tortugaña Telembi reservation. EFE
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Copyright Latin American Herald Tribune - 2008 ©

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UNHCR Calls for Colombian Probe in Retaliation Murders of 17 Awa Indigenous people

UNHCR urges Colombian probe into killing of 17 indigenous people

BOGOTA, Colombia, February 10 (UNHCR) – The UN refugee agency called Tuesday for a thorough investigation into the reported murders last week of 17 Awá indigenous people in a remote area of south-western Colombia.

"We strongly urge all parties involved to respect international humanitarian law and ask the Colombian government to fulfill its obligations to protect civilians and take special measures for the preservation of indigenous people," said a UNHCR spokesperson.

According to initial reports from provincial and local authorities, the victims include two women and a child and were killed last week on Awá collective territory in the Colombian department of Nariño. The rest of the population is now extremely frightened amid increasing concerns over a mass displacement of people in the days to come.

The area, located along the Telembi River between the villages of Ricaurte and Barbacoas, is remote and extremely difficult to reach. In some areas, there are many landmines. According to first reports, which are not yet possible to fully verify, the 17 indigenous people were murdered in a retaliatory attack carried out by an irregular armed group against the civilian population following the arrival of the Colombian armed forces.

The UNHCR field office in Nariño has been working closely with the Awá people, who like many Colombian indigenous groups have been struggling for years to keep out of the country's internal conflict. The Awá in this part of Nariño live on protected collective territory, but this has not stopped armed groups from entering their lands.

As a result, they have been subjected to severe rights violations, including constant pressure and persecution, repeated murders and forced displacement. They have repeatedly been forced to flee their ancestral lands over the past few years. Some have crossed the border to take refuge in neighbouring Ecuador. The use of landmines by irregular armed groups on their territory is another source of terror and forced displacement.

Ron Redmond, chief UNHCR spokesperson, told journalists in Geneva on Tuesday that the refugee agency was "shocked and saddened at the reported killings and we express our condolences to the Awá people, reiterate our support to their right to live peacefully on their own territory, and reaffirm our commitment to keep working with them.

"We also call for an urgent and independent inquiry into the reported incident and for quick and effective prevention measures as outlined in a series of early warnings repeatedly issued by Colombia's Ombudsman Office for the Nariño region."

With 21,000 people, the Awá are the largest indigenous group in Nariño, a department that suffers some of the worst violence and forced displacement in Colombia. For the past two years, Nariño produced more than 10 percent of all cases of new forced displacement in the country.

More than 300,000 people were displaced in Colombia in 2007 and preliminary 2008 figures show a similar trend, bringing the total number of registered internally displaced people to more than 2.8 million.

The Awá people are one of 87 different indigenous groups in Colombia. More than a third of these groups are at risk of extinction, largely as a result of armed conflict and forced displacement. Their survival depends greatly on being able to remain on their ancestral territories and maintaining their close links to the land. The Colombian constitution recognizes them as people with special rights and specific protection needs.

With 12 offices in Colombia, UNHCR works with the government to help it fulfill this protection duty and with indigenous organizations all over the country. Part of that effort has been a campaign to raise awareness of the magnitude of a crisis that unfortunately continues year after year.

By Marie-Helene Verney
in Bogota, Colombia
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Copyright 2001-2009 UNHCR

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Posted By Alliance for Indigenous Rights to Native Rights News at 2/11/2009 09:31:00 PM

Columbian Tribes Employ Principles of Nonviolence in Midst of FARC Insurgency

Colombia Indians face down violence

Rebels, drug traffickers and soldiers may battle around them and encroach on their lands, but tribes hold on to their peaceful ways to resolve conflicts.
By Chris Kraul
January 11, 2009

Reporting from Jambalo, Colombia -- After word spread across this Indian reservation that seven people had been kidnapped by leftist rebels, the community's unarmed "indigenous guard" sprang into action.

Within minutes, hundreds of men, women and children were out on roads and pathways searching for the hostages, communicating by radio, cellphone and shouts. Many held lanterns that, as the search continued after nightfall, made the rescue party seem an eerily glowing centipede snaking up and down hillsides.

Soon, the guards had found the hostages. The rebels were holding them in a school, which was quickly surrounded by hundreds of Indians, who, lanterns held high, kept a silent vigil. A guerrilla leader threatened violence and fired his weapon into the air, but no one budged.

After a brief standoff, the unarmed Indians secured the hostages' release.

The incident in November was a dramatic example of how many of Colombia's 92 indigenous communities use a common front and an almost Gandhian stance of nonviolence to coexist with, and sometimes prevail over, the rebels, drug traffickers, paramilitary fighters and government soldiers who for decades have battled one another in the country.

"We forbid violence. All we have is the power to convene," Rodrigo Dagua, leader of the Jambalo tribe, said as he held the so-called staff of command, a ceremonial rod that confers authority on its holder. "It's what keeps us alive."

The peaceful approach doesn't always work for Colombia's indigenous people, who number about 1.4 million, or 3% of the population.

For the last decade, the Wayuu tribe in northeastern Colombia has suffered killings and extortion at the hands of paramilitary bands who covet the Caribbean coastline bordering their reservation. Indians in Putumayo state's Sibundoy Valley have been chased off their ancestral lands to make way for coca plantations.

In October, an Indian marcher here in Cauca state in Colombia's southwest was shot and killed by police as he took part in a protest against the government's failure to deliver 45,000 acres to local tribes as promised in a 1991 land reform plan. Cauca's 18 indigenous communities had declared a minga, or collective movement, and had shut down the Panamerican Highway.

Tensions in Cauca rose last month after soldiers killed Edwin Legarda, the husband of minga leader Aida Quilcue of the neighboring Totoro reservation. The military said the shooting at a checkpoint a few miles north of here was an accident. The Indians and some human rights groups contend that it was a criminal attack and an effort to silence Quilcue.

But nonviolence remains the watchword for how the indigenous deal with the outside world, as shown by the foiled kidnapping by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, in November.

The kidnapping victims included four consultants from the state capital, Popayan, who had driven up to this isolated town in Colombia's central mountain range to assist Jambalo leaders with administrative and bookkeeping matters.

The consultants were returning to Popayan with three locals when half a dozen guerrillas stopped their van and took them all hostage. The kidnappers and their captives began marching east up a rugged mountainside toward an area where FARC leaders are known to hide out.

One of the victims managed to make a cellphone call to Jambalo leaders, who ordered out the indigenous guards, a 360-member phalanx of mostly young leaders whose job is to spread the alarm at times of crisis and to organize a community response.

Guard leader Fermin Jembuel said the kidnappings violated a tacit decades-long agreement with the FARC that the rebels leave Jambalo alone in exchange for the community's neutrality in the FARC's quarrel with the government.

"We have 36 villages on the reservation, and all were activated under our emergency plan," Jembuel said. "Checkpoints were set up on every road and path."

After the hostages were released, the guerrillas were allowed to flee. All except for one: a member of the Jambalo community who was a FARC collaborator. In a subsequent trial, he was banished from the reservation for 15 years as punishment, said Dagua, the tribe's leader.

"The level of organization and commitment that the communities have, and how much they resist all external threats to their land, is a clear example of strength," said Mario Murillo, a Hofstra University professor who is writing a book on Colombia's indigenous communities.

"But it also points up the challenges they face, surrounded as they are by forces that pose a severe threat."

It was hardly the first time the Jambalo tribe has had to look down the rifle barrels of armed groups encroaching on its domain. Several years ago, tribe members destroyed five "kitchens" set up by drug traffickers on their land to process cocaine. More recently, they repeatedly have escorted army patrols off their 1,500-acre reservation.

"The army offers to come and deal with the FARC and the traffickers, but we don't want them involved," Dagua said, adding that the presence of armed groups would only ignite a cycle of violence. "We'll take care of our problems our way."

chris.kraul@latimes.com

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Copyright 2009 Los Angeles Times

Native Rights News is making this material from the Los Angeles Times available in accordance with the Fair Use Doctrine codified at Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107: This article is distributed without charge or profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information. Distribution of this material is for research and educational purposes that will promote social and economic justice and benefit society.