Colombia has the world's second largest population of internally displaced persons (five million) due to the half-century internal armed conflict—the longest-running war in the Western Hemisphere (since 1964). Control for territory and popular support among the three main groups (left-wing rebel forces FARC & ELN, right-wing paramilitaries, Colombian police/military) has left 220,000 killed, 75% of them non-combatants. Since 2000, the US has exacerbated the violence by sending more than $9 billion in mostly military assistance. Colombia, which has both Pacific and Atlantic coastlines, holds strategic interest for the US for global trade and military posturing.
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Please see a summary of the letters we sent to heads of state and other high-level officials in Colombia and Honduras, urging their swift action in response to human rights abuses occurring in their countries. We join with civil society groups in Latin America to (1) protect people living under threat, (2) demand investigations into human rights crimes, and (3) bring human rights criminals to justice…..IRTF’s Rapid Response Network (RRN) volunteers write six letters in response to urgent human rights cases each month. We send copies of these letters to US ambassadors, embassy human rights officers, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, regional representatives of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, and desk officers at the US State Department. To read the letters, see https://www.irtfcleveland.org/content/rrn , or ask us to mail you hard copies.
In 2019, Francia Marquez survived an assassination attempt by men wielding firearms and grenades – an attack that came on the heels of a string of death threats against the award-winning Colombian environmentalist. Now, three years later, she could become the first Afro-Colombian vice president – a historic development in a country where politics has traditionally been the domain of wealthy white men. She was tapped for the position by leftist presidential candidate Gustavo Petro, widely viewed as the frontrunner in the upcoming May election. Marquez has focused her campaign on the need for economic investment in conflict zones, environmentalism, and ensuring implementation of Colombia’s 2016 peace accord. She has vocally opposed the drug wars in Colombia, known as the world’s most dangerous country for environmental defenders.
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.
Q REPORTS (EFE) The Latin American economy will grow 2.3% in 2022, estimated this Thursday the UN Conference for Trade and Development (UNCTAD), which lowered its outlook for the region three-tenths compared to those calculated six months ago, due to the negative effects of the Ukraine war on the global picture.
sing pandemic-related border restrictions, the Biden administration this month launched a deportation operation to Colombia amid a sharp increase in arrivals of migrants from that country to the U.S.-Mexico border. Since the start of the campaign, which had not been previously reported, the U.S. has expelled several hundred Colombians under a border rule known as Title 42, which blocks migrants from seeking asylum due to public health concerns, the DHS officials said. The rule was first implemented by the Trump administration. Fourteen months in, the Biden administration has continued the Title 42 expulsions, arguing they remain necessary to reduce the transmission of COVID-19 inside border processing facilities. To date, U.S. officials have carried out 1.7 million expulsions under Title 42, over 70% of them under President Biden. In February, 9,600 Colombian migrants entered U.S. custody along the southern border, an all-time high, according to government data. In fiscal year 2022, which started last October, U.S. border officials have already processed 23,985 Colombians — a 287% increase from the previous fiscal year.
She is an Afro-Colombian environmental crusader who has faced down untold death threats and survived at least one assassination attempt to become one of the leading lights of Latin America’s new left. Now, Francia Márquez could be on the verge of becoming Colombia’s next vice-president after the leftist frontrunner, Gustavo Petro, picked her as his running mate – a move that has thrilled progressives and civil rights activists across the region. “Every Colombian, in their diversity, from the regions, from each territory, made it possible for us to be here,” said Márquez, who, if elected in the 29 May vote, would join Costa Rica’s Epsy Campbell Barr as one of only two black female vice-presidents in Latin America. Afro-Colombians make up nearly 10% of Colombia’s population of 50 million, descending from enslaved people brought from Africa to work on sugar cane plantations, goldmines and the large estates of landowning Spanish colonists. They remain under-represented in business and politics.
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.
This spring, Colombia could elect its first progressive president. In primary elections earlier this month—held for left-wing, centrist, and ruling right blocs—former Bogotá mayor and 2018 presidential candidate Gustavo Petro won an astounding nearly 4.5 million votes to emerge as nominee for the left-wing coalition known as the Historic Pact. Petro has pledged to ban new fossil fuel exploration from day one, proposing to "end oil exploration, but not exploitation. The old coffee-growing country has been left behind and sadly we moved into oil and coal. This is unsustainable and will bring about extinction. We need to move away from an extractivist economy and move towards a productive one.” Petro has been involved in politics ever since the M19 pivoted toward the constitutional process, and is no stranger to challenging the right. He called out right-wing government connections to far-right paramilitaries as a lawmaker, consequently receiving death threats, which is no surprise as Colombia is the world’s most dangerous country for human rights defenders and environmentalists.
