Agricultural workers are being targeted for assassination or arrest all across Colombia. Even the general secretary of the agricultural workers's union, Nicolas hernandez, has been attacked by death squads linked to the army
23.01.2003 (ANNCOL/FENSUAGRO) ANNCOL is pleased to provide our readers with an English translation of the latest communique from the Colombian agricultural workers' union FENSUAGRO:
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The NATIONAL UNITED AGRICULTURAL WORKERS UNION (FENSUAGRO) denounces before the international and national community the following:
1. The assassination of comrade ABELARDO BARBOSA PAEZ on 21 January 2003 at 5:45am when he was heading from his home by motorcycle to his place of work (The Puerto Wilches Palm and Oil Products Company, Santander). Armed men shot him several times and killed him. Paramilitaries have been operating in this region for several years with the silent complicity of the government.
2. According to information provided by Mr OSTANIO MONTERO, regional analyst for the Public Defender's office in Huila, around 16 people, including campesinos and small traders from the municipality of San Jose de Isnos, Huila department, were killed during the months of November and December 2002 by paramilitary groups who came to the municipality demanding money from the traders and who are currently in the urban centre of this municipality despite the denunciations of the Public Defender.
3. The onslaught by State bodies (Counterinsurgency Group No.1, Corozal Brigade), who, in the Don Gabriel area, Morroa municipality, Sucre, on Saturday 18 January, detained the leader of the Sucre Small and Medium Agricultural Workers Union (SINDAGRICULTORES), NUBIA ESTHER GONZALEZ, daughter of the president of the trade union, ETELBERTO GONZALEZ, who is under house arrest because of the agricultural workers mobilisation on 16 September 2002 and who is going to be criminally charged in the kind of set-up that trade union leaders are subjected to in Colombia.
Likewise, the popular leader and secretary of the Colombian Communist Party, JORGE GOMEZ, was detained in the same rehabilitation zone (Sucre).
4. On 18 January, the home of POLICARPO CAMACHO and his partner GLORIA HOLGUIN was raided and they were detained. They are on the executive of the Agricultural Union of the municipality of Calaca and were depicted in the media as being the owners of a FARC clinic. This is none other than a montage by the State security forces that are trying to eliminate any trade union organisation fighting for the demands of the campesino movement.
5. In Arauca, a department decreed a rehabilitation zone and the most militarised department in the country, not only by the public forces as it says in the newspaper El Tiempo, but also through the presence of more than 60 North American marines who arrived to fight the armed insurgency, this is the sort of thing that is happening:
On 20 January at 7:30pm soldiers from the 14th Group of the Rapid Reaction Force, FUDRA, arrived in the hamlet of Nuevo Jordan, better known as Pueblo Nuevo, Tame municipality, as part of an operation that was underway in the whole area.
At 8:00pm Mr CARLOS JULIO BARBOSA URIBE, with a Mr NICOLAS, both campesinos who lived in the area, were going to the village. When they arrived the army opened fire on them. Mr Carlos Julio was killed and Mr Nicolas seriously wounded. The inhabitants of the region are worried about the fact that these victims were presented by the media as guerrillas killed in combat, when their real activities are widely known.
It is also very worrying that the military operation underway is being carried out by soldiers without any identification and according to the population some of them have made it clear that they don't even belong to the army. They have carried out raids without the presence of any civil authority and without any explanation in the village of Las Filipinas. They are also on the outskirts of Pueblo Nuevo hidden in the mountains.
6. On 20 December, when he was just about to go home after an agricultural meeting, the General Secretary of FENSUAGRO, NICOLAS HERNANDEZ CABRERA, was attacked in Chaparral, Tolima department, along with his bodyguard, JAIME RODRIGUEZ, by men wearing military uniforms and balaclavas, just in front of the area patrolled by the Caicedo Battalion. This zone is characterised by the frequent military check points that have been set up in recent times.
In response to all the above, we are asking for all human rights defence organisations at both national and international level to issue a statement to the government demanding:
* An exhaustive investigation into the death of comrade ABELARDO BARBOSA
* Clarification of events in the department of Huila
* Protection for the survivor of the attack in the department of Arauca and a Truth Commission for the same case
* The immediate release of NUBIA ESTHER GONZALEZ, POLICARPO CAMACHO and GLORIA HOLGUIN.
HUMAN RIGHTS DEPARTMENT
NATIONAL UNITED AGRICULTURAL WORKERS UNION
FENSUAGRO
21 January 2003, Bogota
(Translated by the Colombia Peace Association)
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