Colombia: Peace Community Displaced

by Weekly News Update on the Americas
April 3, 2005

The Peace Community of San Jose de Apartado in the Colombian department of Antioquia announced in an Apr. 1 statement that it had begun to leave the hamlet of San Jose. The community reports that police arrived in the community on Mar. 30 with psychologists, sociologists and people who filmed them, and gave out flyers proposing a joint effort between police and the community, which the community supposedly had agreed to. The flyers said the police would carry out educational work with the children, as well as conflict resolution and social work. After filming the community, the police left.

The next day a busload of police agents returned to the community, accompanied by a priest affiliated with the police, and tried to hand out gifts and candy. When residents refused the gifts, the police agents and the priest got angry and told the residents that they would pay dearly for their refusal. The community said it will no longer dialogue with the government, and is moving to a humanitarian camp set up on a farm belonging to the peace community.

"We are displacing ourselves to the La Holandita farm, which belongs to the community," the statement said. "We have been leaving our homes closed and we have asked the Office of the Defender of the People to verify the condition of the houses in San Jose. We have filmed the community to leave evidence of how it was and we have done a house-by-house inventory, so that they can't do a setup, as the public forces have been trying to do for years. We demand that our homes be respected and we hope to return one day. We also hope that paramilitaries don't take over our homes as has happened in many areas of the country." The community clarified that the decision to leave was a collective one, and any families who wanted to stay were free to do so.

The latest attack on the peace community follows the Feb. 21 murder of eight of the community's members, including four minors [see Updates #787, 788, 791]. On Mar. 15, the Inter-American Human Rights Court in San Jose, Costa Rica, issued a series of provisional measures in the peace community's case against the Colombian government. The Court reiterated its order that the government protect the rights of the peace community and respect the community's decision to reject the presence of all weapons and armed groups. [Comunidad de Paz de San Jose de Apartado 4/1/05; Corporacion Juridica Libertad 4/1/05]