WE WILL NOT BE SILENT VOICES
OF WOMEN
Barrancabermeja – Magdalena
Medio – Bogota
We wish, as women, to issue a statement
about a series of events that support our denunciation and our proposal, which
we shout forth from the depths of our soul in defense of our status as full-fledged
members of the civil society with all the rights thereof. More than 15 months
ago, our city underwent a pacification by blood and fire, like all those carried
out in Colombia and around the world. By this means, one armed actor was thrown
out and another has taken control as overlord of the city, which enables one
to conclude that the armed political conflict is over and that today we are
in a period of transition moving towards a para-constitutional or constitutional
society.
This new situation is not really clear, even in the city, because the struggle
to separate the one from the other has not been equally publicized, and the
notion that there exists a radical change towards peace has been proclaimed
far and wide.
Some say that we are experiencing
today and lull of peace and tranquility. We can accept that there is no public
evidence of armed conflict, but we cannot accept that violence in the city has
been overcome, because the facts that we have established in the communities
confirm that violence continues being a daily occurrence. It is no longer violence
against a State government, but against human beings, the civilian population,
both men and women, leading to the loss of their liberty, their possibilities
for full legal rights as citizens. The people are required to act in accordance
with the dictates of whoever are the ruling actors in the various communities
and to be only whatever those individuals permit them to be.
Autonomous social groups disappear
daily and are replaced by those permitted and created by the overlord of the
city. To demand work, education, health services or any social right has become,
today more than ever, a signal for persecution or to be stigmatized as a dangerous
individual, as nowadays one is prohibited from thinking and acting outside the
framework established by the lords and patrons of the city. Upon deep reflection
and taking on the role of rightful citizens during Holy Week, we act in a Christian
spirit, which, with each passing day, we are convinced that although we might
seem to be the widows or wailers, as one gentleman of the city said, "What
we must defeat is not an actor but violence itself", which has become a
feature of daily life in the communities. We must make something positive of
this extraordinary condition of not being subjected to political armed conflict
at the moment and make an extraordinary effort to devise a plan of development
for the civilian population that will be conducive to strengthening the Establishment
that will lead to the ultimate defeat of violence.
As women, we feel the moral and political obligation to denounce the violations of human beings and of the International Humanitarian Law, and denounce as well the fact that they want to convince us that there is nothing going on in Barrancabermeja even when facts are to the contrary.
1. In our city to date, there have
been 30 homicides. It should be noted that 50% of these homicides were first
disappearances and then murders and among them there are eleven cadavers never
identified.
2. In our city, disappearances as
a strategy of war are on the increase but the worst thing is that fear and lack
of confidence in the State do not permit the denunciation of these events, to
the extent that so far this year there have been only three denunciations registered
when at the same time unofficial reports in the communities show an average
of thirty disappearances this year.
3. During the first three months
of 2002, Barrancabermeja has been subjected to increasing organized delinquency
resulting in holdups and robberies from one day to the next. We must mention
four of them, which have had a serious impact on the city.
Robbery at Banco Bogata – 110,000,000 pesos
Bancafe (Cashier) – 8,000,000 pesos
Pharmacy Ideal
Gas of Barrancabermeja (3 captured and robbery intercepted)
Coomultrasan de Torcoroma
4. Theft of gasoline is one of the
ways illegal armed actors finance the war and take advantage of increasing poverty
in the communities by turning this into a means of creating employment for the
poor, both men and women. We see the results nowadays in the stream of containers
full of gasoline parading through the neighborhoods, on street corners, in the
patios of houses where entire families, children, men and women, sow their hopes
for resolving how to obtain their daily bread. Yet another form of employment
is the "cartel del tubo" (tapping oil pipelines by the armed actors),
an illegal act in which the families and communities collaborate in order to
obtain food.
5. The paramilitaries continue calling
meetings in the neighborhoods, the playing fields, the street corners, in the
parks, in the headquarters of some of the community action and political groups,
and in this first quarter, one of the objectives was to present the "manual
de convivencia" (manual on social regulations) as the accepted norm of
conduct for each man, woman, young person and child.
6. The first of February of this
year, the paramilitaries moved to San Rafael de Lebrija an average of 20 busses
filled with women who do domestic work in the city and who are paid with funds
from Plan Colombia. The women were taken there for an interview with the top
boss of the paramilitaries and, in this way, to show support for the position
of the person who is in charge of these contracts and to listen to the "manual
de convivencia", which establishes the norm for accepted behavior established
by the paramilitaries.
7. Displacement continues to be
a way of controlling the city. Barrancabermeja continues receiving dozens of
families coming from various towns in the region, which also results in the
dislodgment of dozens of families from the various neighborhoods and sectors
of Barrancbermeja where people are given just a few hours notice that they must
abandon the area, because their house or property is being seized by the paramilitaries
and handed over to other families.
8. Paramilitary commandoes are still
present in the neighborhoods and sectors of the city, with the public function
of maintaining armed men who punish and torture, maneuver and apply the norms
of behavior they have established, and dictate who lives and who dies.
9. Young people continue to be punished
(hair cut, eyebrows shaved, whippings and punishments when they are in the bathroom),
and schedules are dictated for when parties can be held and when the stereos
must be turned off.
10. Paramilitaries control employment,
dictating through a lottery who may work and for how long.
11. Death threats continue, accusations
and murders of leaders of social organizations (both men and women), as well
as leaders of labor unions and of the church.
12. The ultimate exercise of democracy,
the right to vote, is manipulated by direct pressure on the voters to back the
candidates that support the paramilitaries.
13. In the break-in of a house indicated
by the paramilitaries, which was carried out on 7 January in the neighborhood
of Las Granjas in the northeast sector, among long range weapons and grenades
a list written by the Judiciary on 24 May was found giving orders to capture
certain people. As indicated thereon, this list was received by the DAS (Secret
Armed Forces of Colombia) the next day, the day that Jhon Jairo Fernandez was
captured.
14. The Penal Judge of the NUBIA
PINILLA circuit, who was reporting to the Attorney General denunciations against
the paramilitaries, was transferred to Bucaramanga because of death threats
against her.
15. To date threats continue against
the directors and some of the coordinators of the Organizacion Femenina Popular
(Women’s Organization of the People) and, in general, against all activities
of the Organization.
We will not be silent.
In view of this panorama, the women
of the Organizacion Femenina Popular must state that very serious events continue
to unfold despite the end of the armed conflict, which does not signify peace
because conditions prevailing after the conflict are conducive to further degradation
of the human being, more hunger, more deterioration of the social fabric, more
families destroyed and an increasingly vulnerable civil society. We must contradict
the voices that proclaim that there exists a lull of peace in Barrancabermeja.
We feel obliged to call attention to this city and to call for justice for Barrancabermeja,
a city that sees its democracy, its autonomy and its civil institutions in danger.
We must be clear that we women do
not want any armed actor, neither guerrilla nor paramilitary, we do not want
the power that emanates from their weapons; we want the reestablishment of civil
life safeguarded by its legitimately constituted institutions.
We Request:
That an investigation of the civil, military and police authorities be initiated
because of actions or omissions denounced as violating human and civil rights.
We Propose:
The establishment of a committee to oversee the monetary contributions from
the International Community to ensure the use of such funds for the real social
development of the communities and to strengthen their civil institutions and
that such funds not be applied to fortify the war and the power of the para-state
that today is entrenched in Barrancabermeja.
We call:
On the citizens to rescue the values of a civil society so as to not be seduced
or pressured by the weapons that militarize our life and cause us to be a part
of the war. We call on the citizens to recognize no authority but that of the
State, a legitimate and transparent State.
ORGANIZACION FEMENINA POPULAR
Barrancabermeja, 30 March 2002
Translated by Trisha Novak, USA
Disseminated by the Network of Women in Black