05/22/2008

Author: ELDER COUNCIL – CRIC [Regional Indigenous Council of Cauca]

Today, 21 May 2008, in the hacienda La Emperatriz, nearly 500 people claimed their right to land and demanded the fulfillment of agreements that the Colombian state made with indigenous communities in Northern Cauca, agreements associated with the massacre in El Nilo. The community was attacked by the ESMAD [the Colombian version of a ‘SWAT’ team] of the national police with bombs and firearms, seriously injuring 8 indigenous Nasa. Victims of the attack included Eulogio Dagua Cuetia, Luís Enrique Ramos, Alex Méndez and Luís Eduardo Ramos, community members from the reserves of Jambaló, San Francisco, Huellas, and Toribío.

As the public will remember, on July 29, 1998, President Ernesto Samper, recognized the responsibility of the Colombian State in the massacre of El Nilo, which occurred in December 1991. On behalf of the Colombian state, he apologized to the families of the victims and to the Nasa community of Northern Cauca, making promises to the victims to carry out the recommendations of the Inter-American Human Rights Commission in the matter of Justice and Individual and Collective Reparations.

Ten years after this incident, the breaches continued, even though on September 13, 2005, the current government promised to fulfill any pending obligations through another agreement within the next two years. Nevertheless, as is customary with this government, the agreement has been stalled through administrative maneuvers, bureaucratic processes, and media disinformation.

In the latest episode of events, the national government has launched strategies to generate conflict among indigenous communities, Afro-Colombians, and peasants as a means to ignore its obligations. Even worse, it has promulgated the Rural Statute and taken other administrative measures that, in fact, invalidate the agreements and commitments it had made, all in unabashed support of multinational capital.

The Presidency of the Republic maintains a defamatory campaign filled with propaganda against indigenous communities aimed at denying our rights to reparations and to our territories. This is evidenced by the March 15, 2008, Community Council in Popayán – in a conversation among President Uribe, the president of the SAG [the Society of Agriculturalists and Livestock Farmers of Cauca], the regional public prosecutor, an army general and the Ministers of the Interior and Agriculture –, where the government offered rewards to informants who denounced anyone involved in the Liberation of Mother Earth.

In spite of the 1991 Constitution, which recognized the existence of indigenous communities and ordered the protection of ethnic diversity in Colombia, the massacre of El Nilo represents the continuation of official policies presented in a discriminatory and hostile manner against the people of Cauca. This situation continues in concert with the arrival of the current President to power: the Naya massacre occurred in April 2001, an event which made more than 100 people victims to paramilitary violence and nearly five thousand displaced, many of whom returned home without finding any form of security put in place by the state. In 2001, there were also the massacres of 13 indigenous in Gualanday, in the municipality of Corinto, and 7 indigenous in San Pedro, in the municipality of Santander de Quilichao.

An agreement signed in September 2005 ratified the process of the Liberation of Mother Earth put forward by the communities of Caloto. Coincidentally, three indigenous people have since been assassinated by the Public Forces, and there have been numerous reports of forced disappearances, selective murders, and disturbances of armed confrontations, all of which have had their risks minimized by the displacement to permanent assembly zones organized and defined by the communities themselves.

The government’s propaganda strategy advances with threats to landowners who choose to sell their lands to indigenous peoples and objects when land is seen as destined for the hands of peasants, victims of displacement, and Afro-Colombian communities. The main obstacle has been the insertion of impediments presented as general policies in Municipal Plans of Territorial Order, whose main expression is “not one more centimeter of land for indigenous peoples.”

However, the main strategy being spread by the current president is the campaign aimed at stigmatizing indigenous organizations in Cauca, accusing us of terrorism and alliances with guerrilla groups. This is the main pretext to the carrying out of Phase II of Plan Colombia in our territory, which is being implemented through military-civic actions with the objective of facilitating our flight from our land and resources, which would then be handed over to the private interests of the multinationals.

Given the repressive activity of the Public Forces against the Nasa community in Northern Cauca, as the CRIC Elder Council, we reiterate our support for the communities that choose to continue to defend our Mother Earth and demand that the Colombian State fulfill its constitutional duty to guarantee the fundamental rights of our communities.

We urgently require humanitarian monitoring from the international community due to the permanent violations of human rights of indigenous communities in Cauca and the breach of commitments that the Colombian State has with our communities. Said attention from multilateral organizations is essential given the lack of neutrality from Uribe’s government in the conflict for land in Cauca.

Lastly, we ask other indigenous communities and peasants to join in solidarity with those who claim their sacred right to land through truth, resistance, and justice.

Popayán, 21 May, 2008

ELDER COUNCIL

REGIONAL INDIGENOUS COUNCIL OF CAUCA [CONSEJO REGIONAL INDIGENA DEL CAUCA] -CRIC

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Santander de Quilichao Cauca -Colombia