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OPEN LETTER TO THE PRESIDENT OF COLOMBIA
An open letter to Álvaro Uribe Velez, president of the Republic of Colombia, from whom we demand protection for the Wayuu people and punishment of its aggressors: the paramilitaries, who while they met to negotiate with the government, assassinate and raid the Wayuu off from their native territory.
Mr. President: Your government - the one of "democratic security" -, is avoiding its much touted role to protect the citizens of Colombia, or at least, investigate the violence that they are subjected to, especially when it involves indigenous populations or when the aggressors are part of the so called paramilitary peace process:
Last April 18th, while your peace commission met with paramilitary leaders, groups of mercenaries well known to be established in the Portete Bay region for more than a year, situated in the Guajira Peninsula within the Wayuu peoples reservation of the Middle and Upper Guajira, said to have viciously killed twelve indigenous children, elders, and women, who inhabited the vicinity of the Bay, after months of harassment and threats against Wayuu families, and after assassinating other Wayuus around Maicao. These mercenaries "guard" the embarkation of drugs and traditional smuggling of liquor and cigarettes, and accumulate resources for their paramilitary army with the control of smuggled gasoline, without even trying to cover up their actions, well known by regional governing bodies, the Internal Revenue Service (DIAN) workers, members of the military, of the police and other municipal and department authorities. The authorities "overlook these crimes" and don't act against them: One month after the massacre, there still has not been an institutional mobilization against the act, nor support for the more than 500 Wayuus forced to abandon their homeland land and seek refuge in Uribia and Maicao, in Colombia, and
in Maracaibo and other parts of Venezuela, far away from their ancestral lands.
Among those assassinated are Nicolás Barros Ballesteros, Arturo Epiayu, Alberto Everts Fince, Rolan Everts Fince, Rosa Fince Uriana (an old woman who was decapitated), Diana Fince Uriana (disappeared without anyone knowing the place where her body was thrown), Reina Fince Pushaina (disappeared with no knowledge of where her body was thrown, a minor at 13 years old), Margarita Epinayu, Rubén Epinayu (a minor at 16 years old), along with a young child of the Epinayu linage, who was taken from his home; the body still has not been found, in addition to many more people that have been buried in different areas of Portete, and the 30 people who are presently considered "disappeared," according to testimonies of the survivors and displaced persons, the situation is announced as urgent by the National Indigenous Organization of Colombia -ONIC- and by other sources, such as the Actualidad Étnica (Ethnicity Now) and the newspaper EL Tiempo, with reports that are rather precise in their information.
Violence and atrocity; fear and landlessness, silence and complicity all combine in the Alta Guajira without the authorities taking any action or even opening their mouths, only days after you presented to your country and to the international cooperation -at least 10 kilometers from Portete, in el Cabo de la Vela-, for the start of an "Ethnic Tourism" government project, you now want to take advantage of traditional hospitality of the Wayuu. You want to present yourself as protector and liberator of remote and poor communities, while you try to ignore the fact that today indigenous tribes are being systematically massacred, tortured and burned out of their land by the same "autodefensas" (papramilitary) that arrived in la Guajira from the interior of the country to defend and protect the drug trafficking industry. The paramilitaries have created hell in this region, which was historically excluded from internal armed conflict.
And all this is happening near large multinational projects that have been establishing themselves in the region, such as the recent concessions of the seagoing petroleum and gas company -Bloque Tairona-, in the same maritime waters as Portete; the expansion of coal production that is shipped out through Bolivar Port, the port for the El Cerrejon coal project; and the new wind energy generation park, Jepirachi, constructed by public companies of Medellin - EPM- near Portete, next to the communities that have been robbed of all their rights, and you, Mr. President, initiated five months ago projects whose own security is not able to guarantee the security of the ancestral inhabitants of the territory that has harbored the above mentioned companies.
The defense and protection of the rights of the Wayuu people, or at least the requirement to live peacefully together, showing respect for this indigenous people whose members make up a part of the diversity of Colombia, is as much the responsibility of these companies as it is the responsibility of local, regional and national authorities. We all have the responsibility to protect the integrity and respect the diversity that comprise the identity of all Colombians and is a paramount value of the national constitution, but of you we demand that you live up to your responsibility: to protect the lives and the rights of indigenous tribes so that they can remain in their ancestral territory.
The following organizations and citizens for peace in Colombia and in the world, demand that you, Mr. President, as the person with maximum responsibility for the lives and the rights of all Colombians, order the appropriate investigations; protect the
Wayuu; capture the paramilitaries responsible, and demand that their leaders, who are communicating with your peace commission, withdraw their mercenaries from the Wayuu territory and facilitate immediate action by organizations that control and defend the human rights of these indigenous people, natives of the American continent, and the largest native population of Colombia and Venezuela.
May 20th 2004
A copy to:
General Prosecutor of the Nation
High Commissioner of the United Nations in Colombia
Amnesty International
Signatures:
