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Colombia - Continued War Is Quickening The Pace Of Indigenous Peoples' Gradual Extinction

News Release

OTTAWA, 11 OCTOBER, 2001 ? Colombia's 35-year-old conflict is threatening the country's indigenous peoples with extinction, and Canada should lead the international community in stepping up pressure on all sides for a negotiated solution, say Rights & Democracy and the Assembly of First Nations in a report published today on a joint mission to Colombia.

"The military build-up and ensuing prolongation of the war are quickening the pace of the gradual disappearance of Colombia's indigenous peoples," said Ghislain Picard, Regional Chief for Quebec and Labrador of the AFN.

The 40-page report is a first-hand account of the mission in June this year to Colombia organized by Rights & Democracy with the co-operation of the Assembly of First Nations, detailing meetings with some 20 of the country's 84 indigenous nations. Delegates were Warren Allmand, Ghislain Picard, George Erasmus, Chair of the Aboriginal Healing Foundation, Beth Phinney MP, Chair of the Parliamentary Sub-Committee on Human Rights and International Development, and Lydia Hwitsum, Chief of Cowichan Tribes of Vancouver Island.

Despite Colombia's progressive legislation which on paper, protects indigenous peoples, their numbers have dwindled to 800,000, representing a mere 2% of the national population, the report documents. At least four nations are currently facing a serious and imminent threat of disappearance, with their members numbering fewer than one hundred individuals. Overall, half of Colombia's indigenous peoples are "highly vulnerable" to total extinction, according to the UN definition, the joint mission recorded.

Although indigenous peoples have a position of active neutrality in the conflict, more than 300 leaders have been assassinated since 1991 by members of paramilitary and guerrilla groups and the government army. The southern department of Cauca, visited by the mission, has been particularly hard hit, with 120 natives murdered between September 2000 and March 2001. And the indigenous communities are particularly vulnerable to being uprooted and displaced by the conflict - United Nations personnel described how indigenous and Afro-Colombian communities make up 33% of the country's 1.5 million internal refugees.

The report documents indigenous peoples' categoric rejection of the US Plan Colombia, as they see a resulting escalation of the conflict and increased death and destruction on their territory. 75% of the Plan Colombia US$860 million package is made up of military aid, much of which is for the aerial fumigation of areas affected by illicit crops. Led by Cauca Governor Floro Tunubal?, Colombia's first indigenous elected governor, indigenous peoples propose the gradual, manual eradication of illicit drug crops, accompanied by a programme to facilitate subsistence alternatives for small farmers. Indigenous peoples have consistently denounced the failure of Plan Colombia aerial fumigation operations to distinguish between illicit and legitimate crops, resulting in the destruction of families' and communities' livelihoods, water contamination and public health problems.

Since their return from Colombia, Rights & Democracy and the Assembly of First Nations have been saddened to learn of further serious violations against indigenous peoples. These have included the kidnapping on June 2 of Embera Kat?o leader Kimy Pern?a Domic?, and since then the murders of Embera leaders Alirio Pedro Domic? and Alberto Sabugara Vel?zquez, Paez leaders Cristobal Secu?, Misael Chepe and his wife Nanci Garc?a, and the father of Paez governor Jaime Arias Cabildo.

The investigation into the kidnapping of Kimy Pern?a Domic? has barely advanced, despite the intense international pressure to resolve the case. Kimy Pern?a Domic? had met with the delegation two days prior to his kidnapping, and had also travelled to Canada twice to denounce the catastrophic effects on his community of the Urr? Dam project, part funded by Canada's Export Development Corporation.

Although an intensive search mission by over a thousand natives from all over Colombia, part funded by Rights & Democracy, resulted in the government agreeing to put together a special commission to study the case, and that of at least 11 other leaders of the Embera Kat?o community murdered by the armed groups since 1993, the commission has failed to take action, the community has denounced.

"We saw Canada's work on the ground to promote peace. Yet this positive peacebuilding work is contradicted by Ottawa's officially neutral position on US military aid," President of Rights & Democracy Warren Allmand said. "If we wish to see an end to such cases, then Canada must take a far more forceful stand for peace, and support indigenous peoples' proposals for alternatives to illicit crop eradication."