“It’s hard for us to do human rights work where we are. We have to hide what we are doing so they don’t watch us. Our comings and goings are monitored. Our emails are monitored. Our leaders are in a permanent state of stress, not just for themselves but for their children. It was hard for us to even get out to talk to you.”
Work at La Caypa coal mine in northern Colombia resumed after police broke up an "illegal" strike, confirmed Pacific Coal in a statement released Monday.
Recent statements by President Juan Manuel Santos and other senior state and government officials calling into question the integrity of the José Alvear Lawyers’ Collective (CCAJAR), which represents victims of human rights violations, may put CCAJAR at risk of physical attack and undermines the work of all human right defenders, Amnesty International said today.
Today the US Office on Colombia published a report on the dramatic situation of land rights leaders and associations of displaced communities in Colombia. Against all Odds: the Deadly Struggle of Land Rights Leaders in Colombia documents the cases of 20 land rights leaders that were assassinated during the Santos administration’s first year in office and the multiple threats, attacks and stigmatizations that such leaders face.
In 2010-2011, serious attacks continued against human rights defenders in Colombia, including numerous assassinations. Likewise, the climate of constant intimidation, threats and harassment continued against human rights defenders and their organisations. Among the most affected groups of defenders, were those working for truth, justice and reparation and land restitution, indigenous and peasants leaders, environmental defenders, leaders and members of trade unions, defenders of LGBTI persons, and organisations and journalists who denounced human rights violations.
How much pain, dispossession, how many tears, disappearances, political prisoners and torture are needed for the world to stop its conspiratorial indulgence of the Colombian regime? The figures of those who have been killed, tortured, imprisoned and disappeared, as well as the impunity laws for paramilitaries, the submission to multinational corporations and continuous plunder clearly show the government's genocidal nature.
The Quimbo Dam in the Department of Huila, Colombia is one of the largest infrastructure mega projects the country is currently implementing. It is expected to be functional in 2014.
After 11 September 2001, U.S. financial assistance to Colombia that previously had been funnelled through the Plan Colombia to fight “narcotics trafficking, was also used to combat terrorism. In October 2001, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the National Liberation Army (ELN) and the paramilitary groups were added to the list of terrorist organisations.
Our message is in memory of those who were victims of extrajudicial executions, torture and forced disappearances and those who have lived or are in condition of forced displacement, dispossession and violent prosecution, crimes that reflect a way of persecution and extermination which are being committed by state structures from the 70’s.
Mister BAN KI-MOON, General Secretary of the United Nations