THE PLAN IS TO DESTROY US

(Translated by Eunice Gibson, a CSN volunteer translator)
 

It’s necessary and it’s our obligation to history to continue reporting the arbitrary actions and the threats that continue to be made against our system.  We believe that the record of these may one day allow humanity to do justice.
 
*  On Wednesday, August 1 at about 4:30 p.m., the Police called a meeting in San Jose of all the people who live there.  At the meeting, they stated that the Peace Community is a nuisance and that it was time to get rid of it in any way possible.  The mission is to exterminate it.  They added that the recent guerrilla attacks had come from the Peace Community and that, if we are successful in finishing off the community, we will be able to control the area and carry out the plans that we have for the region.  They then presented a former guerrilla who said that the Peace Community is now ten years old and that he knew how to do things:  He said they could go in there with court orders but they wouldn’t find the guns, because they had those hidden outside.  He said that when they need to carry out attacks, they leave the community and carry out the attacks just as they had done with the police.  The police called on everybody there to unite, in order to be able to get rid of the community.  They said they knew that there are 17 countries, internationally, that are supporting the community but that those people from outside would soon get tired of it and that would be their chance to finish off the community completely.  That’s why everybody has to be ready.
 
*  On Thursday, August 2 at 5:20 p.m., two boys from the community, one 7 and one 10 years old, were leading a horse to the pasture when soldiers called to them.  They were on the road about five minutes from San Josecito.  The soldiers asked them if they would like to carry a rifle like the ones they were carrying and join up with them.  The boys answered that they just wanted to be farmers in the community.  Hearing that, the soldiers started to call them little guerrillas and tell them that they would be sorry just like the people in that son of a bitching community.
 
*  On Saturday, August 4 at 3:15 p.m. in Tierra Amarilla, the soldiers stopped a public transport bus.  They told the people on the bus that they are starting to take a census throughout the area and that they would have to give all the information they asked for and that they were carrying out the law and the people had no alternative but to answer.
 
*  On Monday, August 6, by means of various information media, the departmental authorities requested the national government to intervene in the Peace Community with searches and court orders.  They asked that the protective measures ordered by the Inter-American Court for Human Rights and the Constitutional Court be ignored.
 
 
The attitude of the highest levels of the departmental government continues to be worrisome.  They are asking the government to do violence to the community by juridical means.  Instead of demanding respect for the people and for the victims of human rights violations, the local government calls for violence to be done to our community and asks that the protective measures ordered by the Inter-American Court for Human Rights and the Constitutional Court, obedience to which is obligatory for the Colombian Government, be ignored.
 
The armed forces have demonstrated clearly and have announced publicly that their mission is to destroy us, and to make that happen, their methods have to be in accord with their perversity.  That’s the reason for the illegalities, the phony census, and former guerrillas carrying out meetings to make plans against the community and to make false accusations.
 
In spite of all the threats, all the announcements of our destruction and of all these injustices, they are making the same mistake.  Our system feeds on our search for justice, on respect for life and dignity, universal noble principles that will never let us lose courage.  Our determination is strengthened by the memory of our martyrs.  Our future is in our children, who have learned that war and the armed actors are not the right road.  Living life in a peaceful way is the essence of what we have been able to construct.
 
We are grateful for all of the national and international solidarity that we will always have on this path of life and dignity.
 
PEACE COMMUNITY OF SAN JOSE DE APARTADO
 
August 6, 2007 


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