For many victims of Colombian strife, the path home is proving treacherous

[Judi Lynn]

For many victims of Colombian strife, the path home is proving treacherous
Posted on Wednesday, 09.18.13
BY JIM WYSS
[e-mail]

SANTA MARTA, -- The government wants to help hundreds of thousands of people reclaim land, but Human Rights Watch says many are targeted for reprisals.

Colombia Almost two years ago, at a high-profile event with media and Cabinet members, the government announced that it was helping Maritza Salabarría and her family reclaim part of the land they lost in 1991 when paramilitary thugs burned their farm, seized the property, and “disappeared” her father and husband.

“They are symbols of hope, symbols of possibility, and symbols of this new Colombia that will rise out of the pain and injustice,” Juan Manuel Ospina, the head of the Colombian Institute of Rural Development, said during the November 2011 ceremony. ?

But Salabarría’s homecoming didn’t last. Within months of moving back to the farm in Mundo Nuevo, in northwestern Cordoba department, the family was on the run again — this time after men tied up two of Maritza’s brothers and warned them that she would die if she kept pressing their land claim.

More:
http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/09/18/3635870/for-many-victims-of-colombian.html#storylink=cpy

[Judi Lynn]

1. We hear it so often now even the fascists can't deny it:

The "criminal bands" or "gangs" Colombian authorities claim are committing the terrorism, have always been the original AUC paramilitary death squad creeps who worked hand in glove with the Colombian military, as stated years ago by human rights workers after Uribe claimed all the paras had been taken out of operation, and disbanded, and ceased to be!

The human rights groups always said the people STILL doing exactly the same things the AUC did, and doing them the same way, are, of course the same people, merely pretending to belong to other groups with new funny names, like the "Aguilas Negras" or "Black Eagles."

Same soulless scums of the earth doing the things the Colombian military doesn't want to have to do, all the "wet work" and terrorism.

From the article:

~snip~

Salabarría blames her most recent trouble on the Urabeños, the country’s largest bacrim (short for “criminal band”), which human-rights groups say is comprised of former members of the AUC paramilitary group. The armed men were working on behalf of the rancher who now occupies her land, Salabarría said.

~snip~

The land has cost the lives of four family members, she says. Her father and her husband were seized and “disappeared” by paramilitaries in the 1990s. Her mother died of “heartache.” And in 2006, when the family tried to return to the land in a prior government-sponsored program, another brother vanished.

“When I hear government officials talk about the victims law it makes my blood boil,” Salabarría said. “I’m just too tired to keep fighting for this property. I think that restitution has been a trick.”