Colombia New action on behalf of the Peace Community of San Jose de Apartado Apr24

The IS office in Mexico City has reopened the IAR casefile on the Peace Community of San Jose de Apartado. This  coincides with the ongoing threats and killings of its members, the latest being a woman and a boy believed by the PCSJA to have been killed by former paramilitaries (the Gaitanistas Self-Defence Forces of Colombia or Clan del Golfo) on 19 March.

The IS writes:

Dear colleagues,

We owed you some information about the Peace Community of San José de Apartadó, the situation they have been experiencing and what we can do about it.

As you may know, last March 23 marked the 27th anniversary of the Peace Community of San José de Apartadó. The anniversary was overshadowed by yet another murder, one of many that the Community has suffered, committed on March 19 against a woman (Nallely Sepúlveda) and a 14-year-old minor (Edinson David).

Few days before, the European Network of Solidarity with the Peace Community of San José de Apartadó had arrived in Colombia to participate in the anniversary (including colleagues from Amnesty International Belgium). On April 19, a few hours before learning about the murder, the Network held a meeting (in which we were present from the Regional Office) with the Director of the Government’s Peace Agreement Implementation Unit, Gloria Cuartas. In addition to being in charge of promoting the implementation of the 2016 Peace Agreement, Cuartas was mayor of Apartadó (the municipality where the Peace Community is located) at the time of its creation, she knows them well and is interested in helping them.

Gloria Cuartas convened different Government agencies that should coordinate to fulfil the many pending commitments with the Peace Community. At the meeting were: Ministry of the Interior, Ministry of Defence, Ministry of Environment, Ministry of Mines and Energy, agencies of the Ministry of Agriculture such as the National Land Agency and the Land Restitution Unit, and the Presidential Advisor for Human Rights and IHL.

Given the request of the European Network for quick solutions that show results soon, Gloria Cuartas proposed to this group of agencies to set clear dates to make joint visits and impulse dialogues in San José de Apartadó with the Peace Community, the peasants organization, and the local “communal” organizations that are controlled by people close to the armed groups that have historically attacked the Peace Community (today, the Gaitanistas Self-Defence Forces of Colombia or Clan del Golfo). We saw an important commitment on the part of Cuartas to promote dialogue from the Government to calm local tensions that lead to violence. The news of the murder of Nallely and Edinson reaffirmed this commitment.

From the Regional Office we are following up on these commitments, as well as the situation of the Peace Community, together with our partner organization dhColombia. The Director of Human Rights of the Ministry of the Interior visited the Peace Community, but we are very attentive to the implementation of Gloria Cuartas’ proposals, as they would give us a clear path to send more specific requests to those different Government agencies that should be articulated to deliver to the Community.

Meanwhile, we have taken the following actions:

• We sent a letter from the Regional Office to President Gustavo Petro (attached) asking for attention and respect to the Peace Community.
• We attach a sample letter in Word that you can feel free to use to reiterate this call. In addition to the Colombian embassy in your countries, we recommend you to direct it to the following addresses: contacto@presidencia.gov.co; gloriacuartas@presidencia.gov.co; lourdescastro@presidencia.gov.co
• We published the calls from the letter on the social networks of the Regional Office to make them public (thanks for sharing!)
  • https://twitter.com/AmnistiaOnline/status/1778105673579892884
  • https://www.instagram.com/p/C5lquMLLGsG/?img_index=1
• We have begun to update the casefile that the Community has had for some time on the IAR platform, but we hope that the commitments of the aforementioned State agencies become clear so that we can put more precise calls to these different ministries and agencies.

Best regards,

We can help by writing to President Petro, here are model letters in English and Spanish for your perusal. Please send a copy to Roy Barreras, Colombian ambassador to the UK at 3 Hans Crescent, London SW1X 0LN .

Many thanks

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