Rapid Response Network

Attacks against former FARC combatants who are integrated into the peace process continue at an alarming rate. About 300 have been killed since the signing of the Peace Accords in November 2016. On January 28, the Constitutional Court, noting that former combants’  “fundamental rights to life, personal integrity and peace … were ignored” by the Colombian state, ordered the government to take measures to protect the lives of former FARC combatants. On February 12, Jhon Sebastián Rivas and Leonardo Agudelo Murillo were with other members of Memoria Viva (a union which represents security personnel for former FARC combatants) in San Vicente del Caguán, Meta Department, to provide security to another former combatant, Lucila Moreno. TV news footage showed the police violently assault one of the men from behind. When the two tried to run away, police opened fire, shooting and killing a 14-year-old bystander.  Two days later, an armed group began distributing pamphlets, warning that Memoria Viva members should present their accredited weapons and vehicles or otherwise be “declared military objectives,” i.e. marked as targets of assassination.  

Social movement leaders Jorge Tafur and Teofilo Acuña Ribón were outspoken against threats to land rights of campesinos and artisanal (traditional) miners in the Magdalena Medio region. The expansion of fossil fuel drilling (fracking) and palm tree plantations (for palm oil) pose threats not only to land rights but to the environment. In February they were staying in a rural area of San Martín, Cesar Department, denouncing that the police and the mayor of San Martín were colluding with a local landowner in making threats and harassing campesino victims of violence. On February 22, armed men dressed in military gear arrived at the house where they were staying, camouflaged by the darkness of the night, and shot them dead. Jorge Tafur and Teofilo Acuña Ribón were active in several social movement organizations that are accompanied by IRTF’s partner organization Community Peacemaker Teams-Colombia (CPT), including the Agro-mining Federation of the South of Bolívar (FEDEAGROMISBOL), the Inter-dialogue Commission of the South of Bolívar, Center and the South of Cesar (CISBCSC), the People’s Congress, the National Agrarian Coordinator (CNA), the Agrarian, Peasant, Ethnic and Popular Summit (CACEP), and others. We join with organizations across Colombia to express our sadness and outrage at the assassinations of Jorge Tafur and Teofilo Acuña Ribón.

Francisco Ruiz was a local campesino leader of the Coordinating Body of Popular Organizations of the Aguán (Coordinadora de Organizaciones Populares del Aguán, COPA). He was recognized by COPA and by the Regional Agrarian Platform of the Aguán Valley as a human rights defender supporting subsistence economic activities of the El Remolino cooperative. Ruiz had received threats a few days before a gun attack on on March 8 in the village of La Brea, in the municipality of Trujillo, Colón Department.  It appears he was killed by employees of a security company because of  his work in defending human rights and the lands of his community. There have been several previous attacks on members of the El Remolino cooperative and members of COPA, including forced evictions, unjust criminalization, and assassinations. Francisco Ruiz, ¡presente!

Linda Oneida Suárez Sánchez is a teacher and environmental defender and founder of the departmental chapter of Resistance to Mining and Extractivism in Santander Department. Connected to the national coordination of the Colombia Free of Fracking Alliance, she accompanies communities in opposition to fracking projects in the Magdalena Medio region. Linda was recently warned to remain silent or face death. Contentious at this moment is a proposed fossil fuel extraction project of the Ecopetrol company in the Magdalena Medio region. Environmental defenders attended a licensing hearing in February to register their opposition to the project.  Retaliation against outspoken movement leaders is common. Ecopetrol has been making statements that stigmatize movement leaders with false accusations. Heightening the danger is the significant presence of illegal armed groups in the Magdalena Medio region.

The Afro-Indigenous Garífuna community of Triunfo de la Cruz in the municipality of Tela, Atlántida Department, suffered an incursion by an armed group in search of Garífuna leaders. One hour after denouncing the incursion and intimidation on social media, Miriam Miranda, coordinator of the Black Fraternal Organization of Honduras (OFRANEH), received threats to her life and her family’s life via text to her personal phone from an unknown number. For several years, Miriam Miranda has been threatened, harassed, and illegally jailed for her human rights defense work on behalf of Garífuna communities, whose members and leaders have been persecuted even more with criminalization and assassinations. In repeated rulings, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights has criticized the government of Honduras for not adhering to its mandates to protect Garífuna ancestral lands from outside land invaders and adequately investigate the murders of Garífuna community leaders.

Catholic priest José Enrique Vásquez left his mother’s house after a visit at 10am on March 2, returning to his parish in San Pedro Sula, Cortés Department, for Ash Wednesday religious services. He never showed up. At 10pm that night, his lifeless body was entered at the morgue as an unknown person. There were six bullet wounds in his body, including two in the head and two in the chest.

Álvaro Marcos Román was riding home from Guatemala City on his motorcycle overnight to arrive on time the next morning to meet with the City Council in Santa María Xalapán, Jalapa Department. He never made it. The 34-year-old was shot and killed on the highway at 2:00 in the morning. Álvaro Marcos Román served as president of the Community Directive of CODECA (Committee for Campesino Development) in Santa María Xalapán. Through his leadership with CODECA, he fought for land rights, defended labor rights in the agricultural sector, and pushed for the nationalization of privatized goods and services. He became the 23rd member of CODECA killed in Guatemala since 2018.

We expressed our deep concern to officials in Honduras about the assassinations of three persons of the LGBTI community early this month. On February 2, men dressed as police entered a shop owned by Jonathan Martínez, shooting and killing him and his partner César Zúñiga. The following day while 18-year-old Maria Fernanda Martínez was standing in the doorway of her home, someone threw a stone at her head and then shot her 210 times. Because of our concern of the odious assassinations of these LGBTI Hondurans on property that was their own to inhabit, and because of the wave of violence against this community and ongoing national impunity for these hate crimes, we called upon authorities to (1)  thoroughly investigate these killings, implementing the use of forensics compliance of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights’ ruling on the state’s culpability and failure to investigate crimes against members of the trans community and (2)  publicly condemn the killings of LGBTI Hondurans and show a commitment to a more inclusive Honduras by taking advantage of the offer of technical assistance made by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR/OACNUDH)

Indigenous Tolupán community leader Melvin Geovany Mejía Rodríguez was gunned down and killed by two unknown people on the highway to Morazón, Yoro. He was traveling with a friend who also died in the attack. Melvin Geovany Mejía Rodríguez was a recognized leader of the Candelaria tribe. Through his activities with Movimiento Amplio por la Dignidad y la Justicia (MADJ), Melvin Geovany Mejía Rodríguez worked to protect the ancestral lands of the Tolupán people from domestic and international mining operations. He had been the victim of harassment, intimidation and death threats over the past few years, which led to him having to relocate his family to reside in a different town.

We wrote to officials in Colombia about the ongoing dangers facing Nasa Indigenous peoples in Cauca Department who are under pressure from illegal armed groups with an agenda of expanding illicit crops, illegal mining, and drug trafficking. In two separate attacks on one Nasa Indigenous Reserve last month, three members of their nonviolent peacekeeping force (Indigenous Guard) were killed: on January 14, Breiner David Cucuñame López, member of the Student Indigenous Guard of Cauca; Indigenous Guard member Guillermo Chicame Ipia was killed during the same attack; and ten days days later, José Albeiro Camayo Güetio, a former coordinator of the Guardia Indígena del Cauca, was killed.  Fourteen-year-old Breiner David Cucuñame López was known as a committed environmental and indigenous rights activist. The Regional Indigenous Council of Cauca (CRIC) described Breiner as “a carer for Mother Earth, a child protector of life and a Nasa of collective actions and grand dreams.” ... Recent figures released in January 2022 showed that last year, a social leader—whether a human rights defender, community activist or environmentalist—was killed every 60 hours in Colombia.