The FARC-EP: Secretariat of the Central and the ELN: Central Command have issued a joint statement announcing that they will now be working together in unity to oppose the latest escalation of the US proxy war in Colombia. (more…)
Since assuming responsibility as head of the UNHCR in March this year, Christian Salazar has been charged with promoting and seeking to protect the rights of all Colombians.
In an interview with El Espectador, Salazar denounced serious problems such as the blocking of investigations into cases of extrajudicial killings in the prosecution, the growing threats against human rights defenders and judicial sector, the violence committed by groups and post-conflict, what more it reveals, assassinations duplication of leaders and members of indigenous people.
How has enforced disappearance changed in recent years in Colombia?
It (enforced disappearance) is fairly old, the UN recorded the first case in Colombia in 1973.
The office handles about three different phases. The first, in the 90s, when selective disappearances were committed against the opposition, NGOs and alleged guerrilla sympathizers. Many of these disappearances were committed by members of the security forces. The second was at the end of the decade and early this, when the paramilitaries were the main actors and the forced disappearance was combined with mass atrocity. In recent years, we are concerned that the missing are more and more young and live in marginal areas of the country. This practice has to do with the misnomer of “false positives”. Post demobilisation paramilitary groups also perform more and more disappearances. (more…)
Justice for Germán Escué Zapata, an Indigenonous Leader murdered by the Colombian State - 21 Yearsago
By Nicole Karsin*
Etelvina Zapata addressing the ceremony in which the state admitted responsibility for her son’s murder.
One night in February 1988 in the native Nasa territory of Jambaló, in southwest Colombia, soldiers barged into Etelvina Zapata’s home and snatched her 21-year-old son, barefoot and clad only in shorts, accusing him of working with the leftwing guerrillas.
Since then, the 63-year-old mother, grandmother and great-grandmother has not rested. Against all odds, including sleeping in the mountains because of death threats, she and her family have courageously denounced the torture and extrajudicial execution of her son Germán Escué Zapata. (more…)
Credit:Nicole Karsin/IPS