S.O.S

ANNOUNCED MASSACRE IN THE MINING MUNICIPALITY OF SUAREZ, CAUCA, COLOMBIA

Santiago de Cali, 8th April 2010

Eight miners were murdered by armed men travelling in two vehicles and a motor bike. The killings occurred in a place known as “Alto de Ovejas”, a rural zone in the municipality of Suárez, department of Cauca, southern Colombia. The place where the massacre occurred is the upper part of the Ovejas river. It can be reached by a one and a half hour journey on foot.

Last October, Wayuu Indigenous leader Karmen Ramirez Boscan was in London as a guest of the Colombia Solidarity Campaign. She came to Britain for the AGM of mining multinational BHP Billiton, which is one of the three multinational owners of the Cerrejon coal mine (the other two are Anglo American and Xstrata. All three are listed on the London Stock Exchange. The largest shareholder in Xstrata is the private Swiss company Glencore.) Since returning to Colombia, Karmen and her colleagues have suffered threats from paramilitaries for their organisational work and their criticisms of the Cerrejon mine's operations. Karmen's organisation, Fuerza de Mujeres Wayuu, has issued the following Urgent Action.

Forwarded from Washington Office on Latin America     December 6, 2009

Dear Activists,

AFRODES USA and WOLA urge you to contact Colombian authorities immediately and urge them to take action to guarantee the safety of Afro-Colombian, Indigenous and human rights leaders in northern Cauca.

On December 4, Lisifrey Ararat of the Community Council of La Toma and the Black Communities Process (PCN) received a text message that stated:" Hp no decidan por la comunidad que si quieren los recursos, tienen 8 dias pasalir sigue la lista *** fin **. This translates into English as "Motherfucker don't decide for the community what they want. You have eight days to leave the area. The list remains active."

We denounce before the national and international community that on 24 November 2009 our comrade Luis Javier Correa Suárez received a call on a mobile phone assigned to him by the protection programme of the Ministry of the Interior and justice, the call came for the mobile number 312-8160930 and a man who identified himself as Arnold Jiménez told Javier Correa “you have until the 22nd to renounce, and there won’t be another phone call”, when he asked why the man replied “you know why, don’t play games, you know what I mean” and hanged up the phone.

The organizations listed below urgently contact inter-governmental human rights organizations, international organizations and the general public in order to inform about the security situation of the human rights lawyer JORGE ELIECER MOLANO RODRIGUEZ, who during the last few days has experienced increased persecution, including the harassment of his family.

THE GENOCIDE OF INDIGENOUS COMMUNITIES CONTINUES:

CERRO TIJERAS INDIGENOUS RESERVE (SUAREZ MUNICIPALITY, CAUCA DEPARTMENT) AND HONDURAS INDIGENOUS RESERVE (MORALES MUNICIPALITY) TARGET OF CRIMES

Paramilitaries threaten social organisations in southwest Colombia again.

Aida Quilcué amongst those declared as military objective by paramilitaries

Paramilitaries have again threatened social organisations across the southwest region of Colombia, as paramilitary violence and threats continue to intensify in the Andean country. Indigenous leader Aida Quilcué was amongst those threatened, a month after she returned from a trip to the UK at the invite of Unison Northern and the Northern TUC, in conjunction with the Colombia Solidarity Campaign.

The threat is signed by the ‘Grupo Armado Los Ratrojos – Comandos Urbanos’, a new generation paramilitary militia based in Nariño department, and dated November 2009. It names Aida and several other social organisations and individuals which operate in the South West region of Colombia.

URGENT ACTION!

From the human rights team of the Process of Black Communities and other organisations:

6th August is the date fixed for the eviction of the black community in La Toma, in the Suárez municipality in north Cauca, Colombia. La Toma´s Afro-descendant inhabitants have been declared ´squatters in bad faith´ in a legal possession order taken out by Raúl Fernando Ruiz Ordoñez and Jesús Sarria. Yet the presence of black communities on these lands dates from 1636, since when they have worked small gold mines which is today the only means of subsistence for hundreds of families.