Hundreds Displaced Or Trapped Amid Clashes In Colombia

[struggle4progress]

Colombia, second to only Sudan, in displaced people.

BOGOTA -- Some 800 peasants have been forced to abandon their lands or have been caught in the middle of clashes between army troops and guerrilla or paramilitary groups in the southwestern Colombian town of Barbacoas, a humanitarian group said Saturday.

The armed combat is intense and began two weeks ago, the Consultancy for Human Rights and Displacement, or Codhes, a non-governmental organization that documents and investigates the displacement phenomenon in Colombia, said in Bogota.

The branch of the International Committee of the Red Cross in Nariño province, where Barbacoas is located, and local authorities "have counted a total of 800 people between those who have had to abandon their lands and those who have been trapped by the fighting," Codhes added.

The NGO said the ICRC's sub-delegate in the region, Serge Thierry, indicated that "the situation of armed conflict in the region is very worrying for residents and the displaced" ...

http://www.laht.com/article.asp?ArticleId=321915&CategoryId=12393


Nuevo desplazamiento por combates en Nariño
Bogotá, Prensa CODHES, 28/11/08. Más de 800 personas han tenido que huir del municipio de Barbacoas Nariño. Combates se agudizan entre Fuerza Pública, guerrilla y nuevos grupos paramilitares. Los campesinos que habitan la zona rural de este municipio han tenido que huir en las últimas dos semanas por cuenta de fuertes combates que libra la Fuerza Pública con grupos de nuevos paramilitares y guerrilla que hacen presencia en la región. Hasta el momento las autoridades municipales y el Comité Internacional de la Cruz Roja, CICR, han contabilizado 800 personas entre los que han tenido que abandonar sus tierras y quines se encuentran confinados por los enfrentamientos. En un comunicado de prensa el jefe de la subdelegación del CICR para Nariño, Serge Thierry, aseguró que “ la situación de conflicto armado en la zona es muy preocupante para residentes y desplazados. Para muchos la única salida ha sido abandonar sus tierras y perderlo todo” ... http://www.codhes.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=402

[Judi Lynn]

1. Well, that Plan Colombia's going great guns, isn't it? Jesus H. Christ.

From the first article you posted, from the Latin America Herald Tribune:

~snip~
Colombia, which is second only to Sudan in the number of internally displaced people, saw 270,675 people forced from their homes during the first half of this year, up 41 percent over the same period in 2007, Codhes said in a report in late September.

"These figures show an exponential increase in displacement," CODHES president Marco Romero told Efe at the time, pointing to an upward trend coinciding with the tenure of rightist President Alvaro Uribe, who took office in 2002 and is now more than halfway through his second four-year term.

Causes of the rise in forced displacement include the re-emergence of right-wing paramilitaries despite the 2006 demobilization pact between the AUC militia federation and the Uribe government, CODHES said in that September report.

The group also blames the FARC, Colombia's biggest leftist insurgency.

The origin of Colombia's civil strife dates back to 1948, when the assassination of popular politician Jorge Eliecer Gaitan spurred a 10-year-long civil war known as "La Violencia."

About six years after that conflict ended with a power-sharing pact between Colombia's two main parties, a government offensive against peasant self-defense groups led Manuel "Sureshot" Marulanda, who was pursued by death squads during La Violencia, to form the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC.

SECOND ONLY TO SUDAN, and with billions of U.S. taxpayers' hard-earned tax dollars fanning the fires of that right-wing fascist's appetite. If he had to live on his country's income it would destroy him. He'd have to cut way back, couldn't finance so much death and destruction, couldn't afford the huge number of troops to terrorize the villagers, and run them off their property, out of their homes, cut loose to trift homelessly, apparently forever.

Simply incredible.