'Businessmen in northwest Colombia plan to kill social leaders to prevent land restitution'
by Adriaan Alsema July 12, 2018
Businessmen in northwest Colombia are conspiring with death squads to assassinate social leaders to prevent the restitution of land that was stolen during the armed conflict, according to several organizations.
IPC, Forjando Futuros and the Association of Land and Peace Claimants (ARTP), three renowned NGOs, said at a press conference on Wednesday that three businessmen from the Uraba region would be plotting to murder their directors in an attempt to prevent the restitution of stolen land.
According to the information we have received, well-known businessmen Angel Adriano Palacios Pino, Jose Arley Muñoz, Luis Fabio Moreno Ruiz and Jaime Antonio Uribe Castrillon have been holding meetings … with the purpose of planning attacks that seek to halt the legal proceedings over land restitution that are taken against them as land thieves.
NGO spokespersons
An associate of one of the accused businessmen from Uraba was arrested earlier this year for allegedly murdering the farmer whose land he had stolen with the help of paramilitary groups.
More than 800 businessmen and corporations teamed up with death squads in the 1990s and the beginning of this century to expand their land properties by displacing small farmers.
In total, 15% of Colombia’s national territory was abandoned between 1995 and 2010, according to the government. Many of these lands ended up in the hands of large landowners, businesses and politicians.
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They denounce Urabá businessmen for alleged plan to attack human rights defenders and claimants
At risk would be three members of organizations that accompany the claims and land restitution processes in that region, where 21 claimants have been killed since 2008.
By Yhoban Camilo Hernandez Cifuentes -July 10, 2018
Cuatro banana companies, ranchers and oil palm of Urabá would be plotting an alleged plan to attack Medina Gerardo Vega, director of the Shaping Future Foundation; Carlos Páez, prosecutor of the reclamation association Tierra y Paz; and a researcher from the land team of the Popular Training Institute (IPC), who requested the reservation of her identity.
The complaint was filed by these organizations this July 9 before the Prosecutor's Office, section Antioquia, after the inhabitants of the region gave notice to the three human rights defenders about the risk that their lives were running.
"The criminal plan, according to the information we have, is made up of businessmen: Ángel Adriano Palacios Pino, José Arley Muñoz, Luis Fabio Moreno Ruiz and Jaime Antonio Uribe Castrillón", revealed Gerardo Vega.
Claimants murdered in Urabá and Bajo Atrato since 2008. Source: Popular Training Institute (IPC)
These entrepreneurs had held several meetings on a farm located at kilometer 40 of the Pan-American Highway, in front of the El Trébol farm, in the Municipality of Turbo, Urabá Antioqueño.
The objective of these meetings would be "to plan attacks with the purpose of stopping the legal proceedings for the restitution of lands, which are filed against them as presumed despojadores", the complaint states.
For Carlos Páez, there is a great risk for his organization and the movement of land claimants because "since 2004, before the Justice and Peace Law, we have been assassinating comrades. We have been reporting to the Government, but today people are afraid and there may be a massive displacement because the peasants feel unprotected. "
For his part, Diego Herrera Duque, president of the IPC, said that this type of situation tries to generate fear to prevent the action of social organizations. But "on the contrary, we will always come out to denounce directly, although logically we will have to evaluate with the communities what the implication that this type of criminal plan has for the region".
Herrera added that the current context, in which according to data from the Ombudsman's Office have been killed more than 300 social leaders in the country, many of them land claimants, it is necessary to make a political pact in Urabá with the participation of sectors politicians, trade unions and social organizations, and accompaniment of the international community, "for the right to life of the people who inhabit that territory."
This pact would be similar to the one signed last July 9 by the President of Colombia, Juan Manuel Santos, and the incoming leader, Iván Duque, to protect the lives of the leaders in the country.
Businessmen are opponents in land restitution processes
"It is not the first time that these people are included in the investigations of the Office of the Prosecutor," said Gerardo Vega, who explained that information has been provided to the 75 Specialized Prosecutor's Office in Bogotá for eight years and accusations have been made by "different victims. and organizations without anything happening so far. "
Some of these people, Vega noted, were denounced by former paramilitaries in the Justice and Peace processes as financiers of the paramilitaries in Urabá and beneficiaries of the actions of the United Self-Defense Groups of Colombia (AUC).
In fact, in 2014, the authorities captured Adriano Palacio Pino, known as "Negro Pino", on charges of forced displacement and conspiracy to commit a crime in a process of land dispossession. But some time later the businessman was released. See: Captured by land dispossession in Urabá
On the other hand, the company Todo Tiempo SA, owner of the Hacienda Monteverde of businessman Fabio Moreno and his family, was forced to return 207 hectares of land stripped by paramilitaries to four peasant families in the village of Los Cedros, Belén de Bajirá, department of Chocó, in the nineties. The decision was taken in a land restitution sentence of 2015. See: They order restitution to families who claimed land on the Monteverde estate in Urabá.
On the Monteverde ranch, where four families were restituted, private armies have attacked the claimants on several occasions.
And in the case of Jaime Uribe and Arley Muñoz, after a long process of claiming property on the Hacienda Guacamayas in the municipality of Turbo, the Constitutional Court issued a ruling in 2017 favoring several peasant families that were stripped of their their lands by paramilitaries between 1996 and 1997. See: Constitutional Court ruling in favor of peasants claiming land in Urabá
This decision put an end to a process full of obstacles for the claimants and the Forjando Futuros Foundation that on several occasions denounced the lack of guarantees by the justice agencies and received adverse judgments from the Superior Court of Medellín and the Supreme Court of Justice, which were annulled by the Constitutional Court.
For Gerardo Vega, this ruling could be one of the reasons why a plan against his organization would be being planned as well as Tierra y Paz and the IPC:
We believe that it is a response to the fact that we have won the Guacamayas processes, where there are about 4,000 hectares for 120 claimant families; since we have just won land restitution processes in California, where the process of Chiquita Brands - the banana multinational that recognized the financing of paramilitaries in Colombia before a United States Court - was born.
The lawyer also noted that the four businessmen denounced by this alleged plan are opponents in property claims processes that are being advanced in the Community Council of La Larga Tumaradó, Bajo Atrato Chocoano; where at the end of 2017 the claimants Mario Castaño Bravo, murdered on his farm on November 26, 2017, and Hernán Bedoya, murdered on December 8 of that year, were murdered. See: Dispossession of lands in the La Larga and Tumaradó watersheds: claims for truth and restitution
Against this background, Diego Herrera's call went to the Prosecutor's Office to fulfill its function of investigating those responsible for the assaults on human rights defenders and defenders in Urabá, "because the authors are clear and there is reiteration."
http://www.ipc.org.co/agenciadeprensa/index.php/2018/07/10/denuncian-a-empresarios-de-uraba-por-presunto-plan-para-atentar-contra-reclamantes-y-defensores-de-derechos-humanos/