Farmers forced to flee fighting in Buenaventura (FARC terrorists)

The farmers made the decision to leave following visits to their villages by men in civilian clothing thought to be members of the FARC, who were "threatening the integrity of the people and their property."

http://colombiareports.com/colombia-news/news/9885-farmers-forced-to-flee-fighting-in-buenaventura.html

Pastor, Afro-Colombian social leader assasinated.
Eye-witnesses report assassins identified themselves as members of the Self-Defense Forces (AUC).
Wednesday 7 June 2006, by Janna Hunter-Bowman ·

During the final months of 2005 alleged self-defense forces, also known as the paramilitary, increased their presence and level of involvement in the everyday life of the Pacific Coast Colombian city of Buenaventura. Oscar Muñoz Perea lived and pastored a congregation of 550 members of the Colombian Christian and Missionary Alliance Church in the Buenaventura neighborhood called Pascual de Andagoya (Paloseco). Pastor Muñoz was also an active social leader and community organizer.

The AUC did not have a passive presence. The illegal armed group demanded community support, placing its members, including pastor Muñoz and his family, in grave danger.

On March 2 at 2:10 pm Pastor Oscar Muñoz Perea, father of five children, was leaving his home when he was shot five times in the head. He died immediately.

Witnesses, both children and adults, identified the assassins as members of the Self-Defense Group (AUC). The following Sunday the family received a phone call informing them that members of the immediate and extended family were on a list of people sentenced to death. To protect their lives, a total of 35 members of the extended families with surnames Muñoz and Ruiz, left the city.

http://www.justapaz.org/spip.php?article81

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~snip~
Sat 09 – Regional DAS director sacked for false alarms; Six killed in Buenaventura massacre.


The Director of the DAS (Colombia’s secret police) in the Atlantico department, Emilio Vence Zabaleta has been sacked for fabricating three false attacks against the person of President Uribe Velez. According to the reports, the functionary, with 22 years’s experience in the DAS, wanted to win presidential recognition. The last of the reported ‘threats’ was ‘discovered’ last June, El Tiempo reports.

Six people are killed and two more injured in another masacre in the city of Buenaventura. According to local authorities, gunmen wearing military uniforms arrived by boat in a poor district of this coastal city and shot their victims. According to Wilson Perez, from the regional governor’s peace office, 130 people have been killed this year in similar circunstances, El Espectador reports.

More:
http://www.abcolombia.org.uk/old%20abc/previews_weeks.asp?id=130

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Death squad kills 12 near main Colombian sea port

BOGOTA, Colombia (Reuters) -- A rightist death squad murdered 12 civilians in
an attack aimed at ousting suspected Marxist rebels from a region around
Colombia's main Pacific coast sea port, authorities said Friday.

The massacre took place early Thursday in the village of Sabaletas, just outside
Buenaventura, the port which handles 60 percent of Colombia's international
trade, police said. In a communique sent to local media, a group identifying itself
as the "Calima Front" of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia -- a
nationwide paramilitary alliance known as the AUC -- claimed responsibility for
the killings. It said the victims were "plainclothes guerrillas."

It also said it had killed 14 other rebels in clashes in the same area, although
police and army were unable to confirm that.

In a February report, Washington-based rights group Human Rights Watch said
it obtained evidence from government investigators and eye-witnesses that the
army's Third Brigade, based in the southwest city of Cali, provided weapons and
intelligence to the Calima Front.

Thursday's massacre came a week after a lone gunmen shot to death truck
drivers' union leader Javier Suarez near his home in Buenaventura. Union leaders
said they believed he had been killed by paramilitary gunmen.

http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/colombia/sabaletas.htm

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09/05/2005

Fri 29 - 5 paramilitaries detained for Buenaventura massacre; 2 students detained in Pamplona.

· Five alleged paramilitaries were detained by the Colombian police, accused of having committed the killing of at least 12 young people "invited to play football", on 5th April in Buenaventura harbour. Those arrested belong to the Pacific bloc of the Self-Defence Forces of Colombia (AUC), Colonel Gutierrez added. The five men are accused of having "invited" more than twenty young men from the town to play a football game: two days later, the corpses of the youths were found with signs of torture and shot in the head, El Pais reports.

http://www.abcolombia.org.uk/old%20abc/previews_weeks.asp?id=113

ETC.

“Truth Behind Bars”: extradition should not shield paramilitary leaders
Extradition, Justice and Peace process, U.S. Policy

~snip~
About Gen. Rito Alejo del Río : “I don’t know why they haven’t tied him to any criminal investigation. I’ll just give you one piece of information: when I was the commander in Urabá and he was the commander of the 17th Brigade, I kidnapped two people who had been detained by the Army, held at the Brigade headquarters. I got them out of the brig (…) with complicity. I took them out in a car from the brigade itself, in a covered red Trooper (…). They were from the FARC’s 5th Front and they had kidnapped a woman in Buenaventura. I entered the Brigade, took the people out, we took them to Buenaventura and disappeared them. (…) Gen. Rito Alejo went to see Carlos Castaño many times and they met at ranches near the border of Córdoba and Urabá . The security forces were very tied down when it came to fighting the guerrillas, and we used the same methods the subversives did. Our results benefited the Army. There is more (…) I patrolled with Col. Byron Carvajal in 1995 and we fought the guerrillas (…). I went anywhere I wanted, like Pedro in his own house. I entered brigades’ headquarters, police barracks, I did what I wanted.”

About the victims’ bodies: “In Urabá, when we began, all the bodies were left where the people were killed. But the security forces protested and asked us to keep working, but to disappear the cadavers. That is why mass graves were implemented… (The problem was that) the mortality rates increased rapidly and this was not helpful (…). I traveled freely in a white Hilux , which they called ‘road to heaven,’ and we killed people every day, in all the municipalities of Urabá. The only one who denounced this was Gloria Cuartas .”

About the victims: “The biggest victims will be the victims who are going to be left without the truth (…). It is necessary to tell the truth about this war in which only the rich benefited, and the poor lost.”

More:
http://www.cipcol.org/?cat=79