Colombia: New Killings, Disappearances in Pacific Port
Colombia: New Killings, Disappearances in Pacific Port
Government Fails to Stop Criminal Groups’ Abuses
March 4, 2015
(Buenaventura) – Paramilitary successor groups are abducting, “disappearing,” and dismembering residents of the mostly Afro-Colombian port of Buenaventura, despite government measures announced a year ago to curb the violence, Human Rights Watch said today.
On March 6, 2014, after police reported finding several “chop-up sites” in Buenaventura where victims had been dismembered, President Juan Manuel Santos announced a “special intervention” to improve public security and dismantle paramilitary successor groups there. But new Human Rights Watch research shows alarming levels of abuses by the groups since the intervention began, including disappearances, sexual violence, and child recruitment. The groups have driven at least 6,900 residents from their homes since Santos’s announcement, with the municipality still having the highest rate of forced displacement in Colombia.
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Nevertheless, extortion remains rampant by paramilitary successor groups, which emerged after a deeply flawed official demobilization of right-wing paramilitary organizations a decade ago. Residents still risk attack if they cross “invisible borders” between neighborhoods disputed by rival groups. Children live under the threat of recruitment and sexual violence, thousands have fled, and people continue to be abducted and disappeared with impunity.
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Paramilitary successor groups in Buenaventura have typically dumped the remains in the sea or buried them in hidden graves. Authorities have unearthed 18 bodies from hidden graves in the city since March 2014, at least 12 of which had been dismembered. On December 26, investigators exhumed a grave containing the dismembered remains of 28-year-old Jhon Eder Cerón, who had been missing for a week. His autopsy indicated he had been struck in the face with a machete-like object and dismembered while still alive.
On December 22, the day after two men went missing in the El Progreso neighborhood, investigators found an abandoned house in the area with three machetes and blood on the floor and walls. Three weeks later, authorities found hidden graves in the neighborhood and exhumed what prosecutors believe are the dismembered bodies of the two men.
More:
http://www.hrw.org/news/2015/03/04/colombia-new-killings-disappearances-pacific-port
