AfroColombia.org

David Bacon (American Prospect, January 16, 2007)

A U.S. trade deal with Colombia may just have been signed, but foreign investment projects have already cost Afro-Colombians their land and their lives.

Development projects anywhere in the world often have a high human cost. In Colombia, the price is often measured in human lives and blood.

Esperanza (she would risk her life, she says, if her real name appeared in print) saw her neighbors pay that price in 2001. Her house sits on the bank of the Rio Salvajina, in the Afro-Colombian municipality of Buenos Aires in Cauca province. 'I saw armed men arrive in cars,' she remembers, 'with two, three, four, even five people tied up. They dragged them onto the bridge, shot them two or three times and threw their bodies into the river.' When the paramilitaries came to her own home, she was so frightened she lost the baby she'd been carrying for five months.

By Toby Muse, Buenaventura, Colombia (AP) -- In a slum church fortified by steel doors, the Rev. Ricardo Londono teaches children music, hoping to steer them away from becoming killers.

"We are convinced that every child that picks up an instrument is less likely to pick up a gun," he says as children joyfully raise a cacophony with drums, recorders and cellos.

The Catholic priest is well aware of the dangers on the streets of this impoverished neighborhood called Antonio Lleras: The day before, two men were shot just blocks from the church. A day later, two more men would be gunned down nearby.

By Frank Bajak, Bogotá, Colombia (AP) - A political ally of President Alvaro Uribe is under investigation for allegedly doing business with illegal right-wing militias as head of a company that sells fruit to Del Monte Fresh Produce Co. for shipment to the United States and Europe.

Juan Manuel Campo, a member of the Uribe-allied Conservative Party's executive committee, heads a company that ships 40 tons of plantain bananas a week to the Coral Gables, Florida-based company from land cleared of its rightful owners through intimidation by banned paramilitaries.

Amnesty International
23 November 2006

UA 314/06 Fear for safety/death threats
COLOMBIA
* Washington Vladimir Angulo Cuero (m)
* Willington Cuero Solis (m)
* Other members of the human rights group Proceso de Comunidades Negras en Colombia (PCN), Process of Black Communities in Colombia

Several members of the Afro-Colombian human rights organization Proceso de Comunidades Negras en Colombia (PCN), Process of Black Communities in Colombia, have reportedly been threatened and abducted by army-backed paramilitaries. This appears to be part of a pattern of targeted persecution of the PCN and their work.

By Helda Martínez, Bogota, Dec 5 (IPS) - The Colombian government is stepping up production of biofuels amidst an unstable mix of a boom in clean energy technologies, the advance of monoculture and the stripping of indigenous and black communities of their land, a habitual practice in Colombia's four-decade civil war.

The production of biofuels from certain crops, a cleaner alternative source of energy that is drawing ever-increasing global interest, is tainted in Colombia by the armed conflict and reports of violations of human rights and the environment.

By Constanza Vieira. LA PLATA, Colombia, Nov 23 (IPS) - The Colombian government has chosen the pristine Malaga Bay on Colombia's Pacific coast, which draws tourists interested in whale-watching, for a new deep sea port.

The bay, located in an area of enormous biodiversity, has thus become a new scenario of the global confrontation between development and conservation. At stake is not only a relatively untouched tropical beach paradise but also one of the world's most important breeding grounds for humpback whales (Megaptera novaengliae).

GENEVA, November 3 (UNHCR) – Dozens of Afro-Colombian and indigenous communities are at risk because of an upsurge in violence in north-western Colombia. Ron Redmond, the refugee agency's chief spokesperson, told journalists here Friday that while hundreds of people have fled to other parts of Colombia and some have crossed the border into Panama, thousands more were trapped and unable to leave.

CHOCO DEPARTMENT, Colombia, August 2 (UNHCR) – Maria and her family are among the victims of stepped up violence in northern Colombia that left her husband dead and forced the 22-year-old to flee her home village with her three children.

SANCHEZ, Colombia, May 15 (UNHCR) – In a crowded church hall in the small village of Sanchez, Jose* waits in line with his three young children and recalls the day when a bullet slammed through the tin roof of his farmhouse and lodged in the kitchen wall just inches from his daughter. It was time to leave.

Apr 28 2006 (UNHCR) -- This is a summary of what was said by UNHCR spokesperson Ron Redmond – to whom quoted text may be attributed – at the press briefing, on 28 April 2006, at the Palais des Nations in Geneva. --