Peace Community

Peace Community of San José de Apartadó

The Peace Community of San José de Apartadó in the Urabá Antioqueño region was founded in 1997 in the midst of armed violence, forced displacement, and the murder of its leaders. Although stigmatization, threats and defamation continue to this day, the Peace Community has managed to establish a certain deterrence against armed actors thanks to the recognition of its project at the international level. On March 23, 2020, the Community celebrated 23 years of peaceful resistance and today it continues to be an inspiring alternative model of community life.


The people of the Peace Community have said it many times: the presence of international organisations is extremely important as a protection measure. If not for that, the dead would have been many more. The Peace Community would no longer exist.”

Father Javier Giraldo, companion of the Peace Community of San José de Apartadó

Father Javier Giraldo. Photo: PBI Colombia

International accompaniment has meant that we can continue to be a community of peace. It’s a form of mutual thinking about how to organise against the economic monster. We feel supported to confront the paramilitaries who continue to threaten us, without which they kill us. With this accompaniment, so much visibility has been given to our work. It also helps us deal with public authorities such as the Prosecutor’s Office, where we have only found impunity.”

German Graciano Posso, legal representative of the Peace Community of San José de Apartadó

German Graciano Posso. Photo: PBI Colombia

The beginnings: neutral in the midst of violence

The rural population of San José de Apartadó has lived for decades in the midst of the armed conflict. Located in the Urabá region (department of Antioquia), an area rich in natural resources and strategically located near two oceans, the border with Panama and the Panama Canal, these peasants have suffered the impacts of violence at the hands of armed groups which have controlled the area. Since the 1970s, the guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the People’s Liberation Army (EPL) have been present here. The incursion of paramilitary groups from 1996 started an escalation of the conflict, with the Colombian Armed Forced also heavily involved. The conflict was not limited to attacks between these armed groups; there were constant attacks against the civilian population.1

On March 23, 1997, a group of peasants from different villages who wanted no part in the armed conflict that was plaguing their region, signed the declaration that identified them as the Peace Community of San José de Apartadó.2 Instead of joining the thousands of displaced people in the country3, this peasant population created a pioneering initiative in Colombia: a community that declared itself neutral in the face of the armed conflict and rejected the presence of all armed groups in its territory.

However, in the same week of its creation a brutal campaign of attacks against the Community began. “The paramilitaries were visiting the villages and forcing the peasants to leave their lands. They were told they had four or five days to leave and if they did not, they would be killed,” recalls Father Javier Giraldo, the Jesuit priest who has accompanied the Peace Community since its beginnings. To demonstrate that they were to be taken seriously, the paramilitaries murdered many peasants.4

“What the peace community lived through in those first months was terrible”

Non-stop threats and attacks

Despite declaring themselves an outside party to the armed conflict and promoting their vision of non-violence, since its creation the Peace Community has been the target of countless attacks, including forced displacements, assassinations and massacres.

The human rights impacts of twenty years of violence are overwhelming. In a judicial hearing in July 2018, Father Javier Giraldo spoke of the most serious human rights violations to date5: three hundred and twenty peasants killed; five hundred threats and extermination announcements; one hundred incidents of torture, two-hundred people deprived of their liberty in arbitrary and illegal operations, and more than fifty forced displacements. In addition, the Peace Community registered hundreds of sexual abuses, rustling, looting attacks and armed robberies. These crimes have been perpetrated by all the armed actors who have been present in the area for decades: guerrillas, paramilitaries, and the Colombian Armed Forces.

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Despite declaring themselves an outside party to the armed conflict and promoting their vision of non-violence, since its creation the Peace Community has been the target of countless attacks, including forced displacements, assassinations and massacres. Photo: PBI Colombia

After the demobilizations of paramilitary groups between 2003 and 2006 and the signing of a peace between the government and the FARC in 2016, new groups considered heirs to paramilitarism have appeared in the region. In particular, the presence of the Gaitanista Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AGC), also known as the Gulf Clan, has brought new threats and attacks to the population.6 Likewise, the presence of ELN guerrillas in zones that border San José de Apartadó and rumours of a possible rearmament of the combatants of the demobilized FARC7, are also a great concern to the local villagers.

Neo-paramilitary threats to the Peace Community continue

A model for food sovereignty under precarious circumstances

The Peace Community of San José de Apartadó is located in the municipality of San José de Apartadó in the region of Antioquia. The Community is made up of a main settlement, which its members have baptized “La Holandita”, and several smaller settlements in its surroundings, some of which are hours or days away on foot in this extensive, mountainous area of ​​the country. There are about four-hundred and fifty people who consider themselves members of the Peace Community, adhering to its principles and its ways of life.8

In addition to the constant risks associated with the presence of illegal armed actors and soldiers of the Colombian army surrounding the Community settlements, the area is characterised by precarious humanitarian conditions. San José de Apartadó, the municipality belonging to the city of Apartadó where the Peace Community is located, has serious deficits in housing, health, and land possession, as well as a lack of basic energy, water and sewage services.9

graffiti CDP SJA threat
In addition to the constant risks associated with the presence of illegal armed actors and soldiers of the Colombian army surrounding the Community settlements, the area is characterised by precarious humanitarian conditions. Photo: PBI Colombia

In its collective territories the Community’s small-scale farmers produce cocoa, sugarcane, and crops that satisfy daily needs. During the COVID-19 pandemic, armed groups set up checkpoints controlling the movements of peasants in the area. This situation is similar to some of the darkest days of the Peace Community, when armed groups set up checkpoints on the trails to the settlements and farmlands, prohibiting the transportation of food or any merchandise, under threat of death. This situation, which had its most critical moments during the first decade of the existence of the Peace Community, caused the assassination of dozens of peasants in the area, who were killed for taking the risk to go out to buy food. These were times of terror and hunger.

Today, work in the field is based on a model for food sovereignty, which includes the recovery of native seeds from the area and the export of cocoa under fair trade standards to various countries in Europe. The farmers work specific days of the week collectively on the lands that belong to them. In addition to growing enough food to be self-sustainable, this is also a deliberate strategy of self-organisation, showing their presence in the different settlements and their unity and resistance to the armed actors and powerful economic forces present in the area.10

For the Peace Community of San José de Apartadó the desire to live in peace is closely linked to the right to life and land. Germán Graciano Posso, legal representative of the Community, explains: “The right to live implies respect, access to land, water and health… Protecting life, for us, means being able to live as we want – and that the dominant political and economic powers do not determine that for us.”11

Cacao para sembrar vida

Recreating a sense of human coexistence

The Peace Community is governed by guiding principles, which are respected by its members, among others, freedom, transparent dialogue, respect for plurality, solidarity, resistance and justice. In addition to its various organisational elements, such as the Internal Council which supervises the respect for the principles and rules of the community and coordinates daily tasks, the Community is characterized by a firm vision and principles which inspire peaceful resistance in the midst of war.

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The Peace Community is governed by guiding principles, which are respected by its members, among others, freedom, transparent dialogue, respect for plurality, solidarity, resistance and justice. Photo: Charlotte Kesl

The Peace Community wants to be an example of what its founding members call a “humanizing alternative”. This implies that “through our relationships within the Peace Community of San José de Apartadó, we seek to recreate a sense of human coexistence.” The same notion inspires the way the Peace Community understands the importance of community work as an alternative to the dominant capitalist economic model. According to its founding members, “the Peace Community seeks alternatives through community work, to give us all the opportunity to improve our lands’ productivity and share its fruits, and to benefit from the commercialisation of the farm products, improving the prices for those who have worked the land.”12

In the daily reality of coexistence within the Peace Community, the principle of neutrality in the face of conflict means that the Internal Council maintains strict rules regarding people who may have family ties or romantic dealings with members of any armed group, if this occurs, these people must leave the community.

Community organizing to face the pandemic: in the Peace Community solidarity prevails

For the love of land

Advocacy to influence public opinion

An important strategy for sustaining the community’s mission of peace is its advocacy and political work, which includes issuing frequent public denunciations of human rights violations. The Community, as well as varios other national and international actors13, has denounced the alleged collusion between the neo-paramilitary groups in the area and the Colombian armed forces.14

Likewise, in their communications and action alerts, the members of the San José de Apartadó Peace Community have drawn attention to the supposed protection that these alliances between illegal and legal armed actors provide for the interests of powerful business actors in the area, who are rumoured to be interested in investing in the exploitation of minerals and other resources. They, in turn, have the support of local political elites, according to testimonies documented by the Peace Community and its supporters. The Community fears the negative impacts that these companies may have on local ecosystems, food security, and traditional peasant livelihoods.15

There have been no effective responses from the local or national authorities to address these complaints.16 Instead of addressing these complaints, in 2018 the seventeenth brigade of the Colombian army, which has jurisdiction in the area, brought the Peace Community to court for denouncing the alleged collusion between this brigade and the neo-paramilitary groups, leading for an arrest warrant to be issued again the legal representative of the Community, Germán Graciano Posso. This sentence was appealed and sent to the Constitutional Court of Colombia, who in November 2020 ruled in favour of the 17th Brigade17, despite concerns expressed by, among others, Michel Forst, the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights, that such a mechanism should not be used by the armed forces to silence the civilian population.

The voice that will carry the concerns of the Peace Community of San José de Apartadó

Education for resistance and memory

The Internal Council highlights the importance of education, both to strengthen their capacities as farmers and sustainable agricultural producers, and to teach young people about the history of the Peace Community and its resistance.

The generation of adults and elders who participated in the creation of the Peace Community and have been leading its history of resistance did not have the opportunity to be attend formal education. It is their real-life experience that has given them the necessary knowledge and skills. Germán Graciano: “Although we never received any education, twenty-three years of living the Peace Community process has given us the teachings and memory to continue resisting.” The memory of the painful events lived and of the strategies used to deal with them is a fundamental part of the training of the new generations. Graciano explains: “We build up and transmit memory, not to hate and generate more hatred, but to continue resisting and to protect life and the right to live as we want.”18

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Education is not only intended for young people. Photo: Charlotte Kesl

This vision sustains the Peace Community’s approach to education, promoting an alternative model focused on the values ​​of love for the land, on ethics and morals. The community has its own teachers, who combine lessons learned from experience with theory while transferring knowledge to their students.

Education is not only intended for young people. In 2014, together with twenty other communities in civil resistance from different parts of the country, the Peace Community established the Peasant University (Universidad Campesina), also called the University of Resistance. This is a learning and knowledge exchange project between rural communities that have said “No” to the war around them. The University does not have classrooms: knowledge and experiences about land and agriculture, organic production and protection of the environment are transferred in practical sessions. With this initiative, its promoters aim to demonstrate that resistance is a matter of daily life.19

Intercambio de saberes

“Nobody is educated on their own, we all learn together as a community”

Doña Brigida and art for memory in the Peace Community

A break with the Colombian State

The impunity of the crimes committed against its members during the years after its creation and the unfulfilled promises of State entities, led the Peace Community to decide to cease any further dialogue with the State. Father Javier Giraldo explains: “At that initial time we presented denouncements to the Prosecutor’s Office and the Attorney General’s Office, but we quickly saw that instead of leading to something, it was for the worse. Several witnesses were killed.”20

The massacre of six men in the village of La Unión by paramilitaries and the military in June 200021 was another moment where the State’s unwillingness to protect the Community became clear. Father Giraldo remembers: “After the massacre in La Unión, some government officials came with a vibrant attitude, assuring us they were going to take action right away. They said they would create a Government commission, but this promise never came true and we never saw any results. Because of all that, the people in the Community quickly lost faith.”22

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The impunity of the crimes committed against its members during the years after its creation and the unfulfilled promises of State entities, led the Peace Community to decide to cease any further dialogue with the State. Photo: Bianca Bauer

The final decisive moment for the break with the State occurred following the massacre in the Mulatos and La Resbalosa settlements in February 2005. For the Community, the lack of any substantial response from the Government or the entities in charge after this brutal massacre, was the ultimate proof that the Colombian State was not going to provide protection or justice for the Peace Community.

Since then, the only relationship the Community has maintained has been with the Constitutional Court, which has published several judgments in its favour, and more recently, there have been conversations between the Community and entities of the transitional justice system, specifically the JEP and the Truth Commission.23 These organisations are investigating the case as one of the emblematic events of the Colombian conflict, which demonstrates both the involvement of State actors in serious violations of the human rights of the civilian population, and the lack of willingness to investigate and punish those responsible.

2005: The massacre that changed the Peace Community forever

Commemorating the massacre of Mulatos and La Resbalosa

Starting February 21, 2020, the Peace Community of San José de Apartadó commemorated the fifteenth anniversary of the massacre that occurred in the Mulatos and La Resbalosa settlements on the same date in 2005. The facts of this brutal massacre were recalled during the event that lasted several days, attended by national and international invitees such as multilateral institutions and members of the diplomatic corps. The guests accompanied the peasants from the community on a walk to the places where paramilitaries, with the support of troops from the 17th Brigade, committed the crime.24

On February 21, 2005, eight people were killed, mutilated and beheaded, seven of them members of the Peace Community, including three minors and its leader, Luis Eduardo Guerra. After being killed with machetes, the bodies of the leader, his eleven-year-old son and his life companion were left abandoned in the middle of the jungle, exposed to air and animals, in half-covered holes in the ground.25

The massacre was a point of no return that has been etched into the memory of the Peace Community. Following the events, its members rejected all further dialogue with a State that did not allow them to live without violence and that never listened to their requests for justice and protection. Shortly after the massacre, then President Álvaro Uribe justified the events, falsely accusing the San José community of being members of the guerrilla.26

San José de Apartadó massacre

A journey through memory

Slow and incomplete administration of justice

Justice in the case of the massacre has been slow and incomplete, in the eyes of the Peace Community, because in fifteen years of legal proccesing, the real perpetrators, the high-level Army commanders who orchestrated the massacre, have not been sanctioned.

In March 2010, Guillermo Gordillo, a retired Army captain, was sentenced to 20 years in prison as a co-author of the crimes of aggravated homicide, acts of barbarism and conspiracy to commit a crime.27 In June 2012, four other soldiers were convicted of their responsibility in the massacre, as co-authors of the crimes of homicide of protected persons and aggravated conspiracy. Lieutenant Colonel (r) Orlando Espinosa, who headed the military patrol that followed in the footsteps of the paramilitaries on the day of the massacre, is the highest-ranking military officer convicted for the events.28

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Justice in the case of the massacre has been slow and incomplete, in the eyes of the Peace Community. Photo: Bianca Bauer

In 2013, the Constitutional Court ordered an “official presentation of the retraction of the accusations made against the Peace Community of San José de Apartadó”, referring to the false accusations made by Alvaro Uribe Vélez. The act took place on December 10 of the same year and was attended by Juan Manuel Santos, who was the president at the time.29

The violent death of minors and adults in the massacre was declared a crime against humanity by the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP) in May 2018.30 A year later, in May 2019, two officers and four Army non-commissioned officers were sentenced to thirty-four years in prison for being co-participants in the 2005 massacre. This decision by the Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court was classified by many as “historic” within the Colombian context where impunity reigns.31

Lawyer Germán Romero of dhColombia, an organisation that is also accompanied by PBI, who along with his colleague Jorge Molano represents the victims of the Peace Community, supported the decision. According to Romero, “the ruling proves the premeditated, permanent and coordinated actions of the military and ‘paras’ against the Peace Community and the extermination to which the 17th Brigade has tried to subject it.”32

“We believe in true reconciliation”

Submission of the condemned military to the JEP

The legal case of the Mulatos and La Resbalosa massacre took a new turn when, on December 30, 2019, the JEP’s Definition of Legal Situations Room suspended the arrest warrants of three of the military men sentenced to thirty-four years for the massacre in the ordinary justice system. After the conviction by the Supreme Court, Major (r) José Fernando Castaño López, Sgt (r) Henry Cuasmayán Ortega and Corporal (r) Ricardo Bastidas Candia requested the submission of their case to transitional justice.33

It caused great indignation with the Peace Community and its lawyers that this happened without the Army officials having signed submission acts, nor delivered a draft of the plan that demonstrates their commitment to clarifying the truth and reparations for the victims (which is a formal requirement, for the perpetrators to access the transitional justice court). In an appeal to the JEP, they asked that the case be returned to the ordinary courts. The Peace Community does not agree that the massacre is treated as a fact of the armed conflict, since it considers that it occurred in the context of the persecution against the community for having declared itself neutral in the face of the armed conflict.34

“THE 2005 MASSACRE WAS NOT THE END, IT WAS JUST THE BEGINNING”

Peaceful resistance continues

On March 23, 2017, the Peace Community celebrated twenty years of peaceful resistance. Although the stigmatization, threats and defamation against its members continue, the Community has managed to establish a certain deterrence against armed actors thanks to the legitimacy of its project at the international level. It enjoys the support of the main international organisations for the defence of human rights, including the UN, and at the end of 2018 the Pope received its legal representative, Germán Graciano Posso, at the Vatican as a recognition of the Catholic community for its efforts to build peace.35 Today, for many people the Peace Community of San José de Apartadó continues to be an inspiring alternative model of peaceful community life in the midst of violence.

Twenty years of resistance

In 2014, Germán Graciano, as legal representative of the Peace Community, was chosen by the UN to be part of the delegation of victims who travelled to Havana, Cuba, to participate in the peace negotiations between the Government and the FARC.36 Five years later, Germán Graciano sees with critical eyes how, after the signing of the peace in November 2011, little has changed for the Community. He recalls the feeling of hope that was created by the negotiations and the peace deal: “We thought that there would be more tranquillity, fewer bombings, anti-personnel mines, fewer attacks on the community, fewer deaths…. And that this would be the opportunity for us to reconcile, we the people and the FARC. But many former FARC members have been assassinated since then, and the armed groups are still present in our region.”37

Graciano, who in those two decades of violence lost nineteen members of his family, suffered an attack on December 29, 2017.38 Two paramilitaries were arrested for the crime, only to be released shortly afterwards by order of the Second Promiscuous Municipal Judge of Apartadó. At the end of 2018, the same judge ruled in favour of a request from the XII Army Brigade that demanded the right for its good name to be respected. The judge ordered the Peace Community to withdraw the accusations against the military unit, at risk of issuing an arrest warrant against Graciano.39

Neo-paramilitaries attempt to kill Peace Community legal representative

The judge’s decision caused a stir among entities such as the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) and Amnesty International40, who demanded justice and respect for the dignity of the Peace Community. For Graciano, it’s more proof that even today, the Colombian authorities are not willing to respect and protect the non-violence project of their community. Even so, the Peace Community will not lose its capacity for resilience or its will to continue resisting. Graciano: “Despite the presence of paramilitary groups in the region and despite so much injustice, here we are. We do not bend. Stronger than the pain created by the massacres and the lands that have been taken from us, is the wisdom that we have built.”41

Awards

In September 2011, the San Jose de Apartadó Peace Community was chosen as one of the three finalists for the Sakharov Prize for the Freedom of Thought, which the European Parliament grants each year to defenders of freedom. This farming community received the nomination for “the courage, resilience and dedication to the values of peace and justice […] in an environment of brutality and destruction.”42

In 2014, the French and German Embassies granted the Peace Community an honourable mention for its humanitarian work as part of the “Antonio Nariño Franco-German Prize for Human Rights”.43

A year later, in 2015, Germán Graciano Posso, legal representative of the Peace Community since 2013 and member of the Internal Council, was recognised as one of the best leaders in Colombia by Semana Magazine and the Leadership and Democracy Foundation, for his work on behalf of non-violence.44

Finally, in 2018, Graciano received the National Award for the Defence of Human Rights granted by Diakonia, in the category “Defender of the year”, for his efforts to organise work fronts to carry out a life project along with more than five-hundred people, in defence of the territory and the well-being of their community.45 The same year, the Peace Community was recognised for their production of organic cacao, by the Italian “Prophetic Economy in Practice Award” which recognises projects worldwide which integrate social, economic and environmental sustainability practices in their economic projects46.

Defending the collective

Protection measures

In December 1997, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights ordered precautionary measures to protect the Peace Community of San Jose de Apartadó, based on the fact that by then, forty-three of its members had been killed since it had declared its neutrality in the armed conflict in March of that same year.47

In 2000, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights ordered provisional measures to protect one hundred-eighty-nine Community members. That same year, the Court ratified the order of the Court’s president and requested “the Colombian State to grant, without delay, the measures necessary to protect the life and personal integrity of all the other members of the Peace Community of San Jose the Apartadó”.48

On 18 June 2002, the Court widened the measures’ remit and ordered that “the State guarantee the necessary security conditions between San Jose de Apartadó and Apartadó (…) to ensure that the Peace Community members can receive and transport products, supplies and food in an effective and permanent manner”. These were measures against the economic blockades that the Peace Community members were suffering during their movements between San Jose and the city of Apartadó. In 2008 and 2010 the provisional measures were re-confirmed.

The provisional measures granted by the Inter-American Court were ratified by the Colombian Constitutional Court with sentence T-1025 which established that the Peace Community of San Jose de Apartadó and the State should agree measures to ensure the protection of the Community’s population.49

In June 2017, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights issued a new resolution in which it reiterates its demand that the Colombian State “maintain the measures adopted and immediately implement those necessary to effectively protect the lives and personal integrity of members of the Peace Community of San Jose de Apartadó, particularly with regards to the alleged presence of illegal armed groups in the Community’s hamlets in recent months.”50

Sirly con Isaline y Lisa
A member of the peace community with PBI volunteers. Photo: Bianca Bauer

International accompaniment

PBI has accompanied the Peace Community since 1999.

“A huge heart to love, a strong heart to fight”

Contact

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Footnotes

1 CCEEU – Nodo Antioquia: Presencia de grupos paramilitares en Antioquia, y algunas de sus dinámicas en Antioquia: cuatro casos de estudio, December 2017 ; Hernández Delgado: Esperanza: Resistencias para la Paz en Colombia. Experiencias indígenas, afrodescendientes y campesinas”, Universidad Javeriana, May 2009
2 Comunidad de Paz de San José de Apartadó: La historia vivida, 21 December 21, 2006
3 De acuerdo con cifras de Codhes, alrededor de 438.000 personas colombianas huyeron de la violencia entre 1996 y 1997 para salvaguardar sus vidas, en CODHES, UNICEF Colombia: Un País que huye. Desplazamiento y violencia en una nación fragmentada, May 1999
4 PBI Colombia: “Durante varios años la comunidad de paz vivió una situación de terror”, 5 May 2017
5 This was a hearing before the Justice and Peace Chamber of the Superior Court of Medellín as part of the trial against thirty former paramilitaries of the Bananero Block of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), where collective reparation measures were requested for the Peace Community. VerdadAbierta: Solicitan reparación colectiva para Comunidad de Paz de San José de Apartadó, 5 July 2018
6 Defensoría del Pueblo Colombia: Informe especial: economías ilegales, actores armados y nuevos escenarios de riesgo en el posacuerdo, September 2018
7 VerdadAbierta: ¿Frente de Guerra Occidental del Eln se expande hacia Antioquia?, November 7, 2018; PBI Colombia: Interview with German Graciano Posso, legal representative of the Peace Community, and Morelis Arteaga Guerra, Secretary of the Internal Council, 13 December 2019
8 Figure estimated by the Internal Council of the Peace Community, as of December 2019; this amount may vary over time due to the entry and exit of its members. A majority of the members of the Community are members. In addition, some fifty people are considered closely related, however do not directly belong to the Peace Community, but do contribute to the implementation of its strategies and participate in the work and the handling of internal issues. Source: Op.cit PBI Colombia, interview with German Graciano and Morelis Arteaga, December 2019
9 IPC: ¿Que no hay paramilitares en Rodoxalí? En San José de Apartadó dicen lo contrario, November 8, 2016
10 PBI Colombia: Cacao para sembrar vida, Mayo de 2017
11 Op.cit PBI Colombia, interview with German Graciano and Morelis Arteaga, December 2019
12 Facebook page of the Comunidad de Paz de San José de Apartadó
13 See for example: Amnesty International: Colombia: Sistema judicial falla contra la comunidad de Paz de San José de Apartadó mientras que prevalece la impunidad en su caso, 5 December 2018
14 Evidence that seems to confirm these links between civil and armed State authorities and paramilitary groups in the Urabá Antioqueño region includes the conviction in 2012 of retired general Rito Alejo del Río, former commander of the Army’s Brigade XVII for links with the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), and for the murder of Marino López, leader of the Cacarica community in February 1997; and data from the Office of the Attorney General of the Nation (cited by IPC, 2016) indicating that in this region, since 2006, fourteen legal procedures have been opened against public servants for their alleged links to paramilitarism, en Ccajar: Libre Rito Alejo del Río, las víctimas esperan toda la verdad sobre sus crímenes, 28 September 2017; Op.cit. IPC: 8 de noviembre de 2016
15 PBI Colombia: Un viaje a través de la memoria, 23 February 2020
16 See for example: CdP: Apartadó bajo el ordenamiento territorial y político del paramilitarismo, 31 July 2018
17 El Espectador: Corte Constitucional amparó el derecho al buen nombre de la Décima Séptima Brigada del Ejército, 4 December 2020
18 Educación para la Solidaridad: Comunidades de Paz de San José de Apartadó. Universidad Campesina, 24 March 2011
19 Op.cit PBI Colombia, interview with German Graciano and Morelis Arteaga, December 2019
20 PBI Colombia: Interview with Father Javier Giraldo, companion of the Peace Community. December 14, 2019
21 El Espectador: Los crímenes desconocidos de San José de Apartadó, August 10, 2019
22 Op.cit. PBI Colombia: Interview with Father Javier Giraldo, December 2019
23 For example, in February 2019 members of the Truth Commission visited the Peace Community. On this occasion, the members of the Peace Community told their story and provided documentation on the rights violations that they have had to suffer for more than two decades, during an event which, according to Father Javier Giraldo in the interview with PBI in December 2019, “was a very nice meeting, where the Commission mainly came to hear the leaders of the Internal Council, women founding members, and children, and this way they received a very complete vision of the Community and what they have lived through.” See: Comisión para el Esclarecimiento de la Verdad: “Vivir en medio de la guerra sin ser parte de ella”, 26 February 2019
24 PBI Colombia: Un viaje a través de la memoria, 23 February 2020
25 Comisión Intereclesial Justicia y Paz: “Masacre de San José de Apartadó”, 21 February 2020
26 Semana: “Uribe mancilló la honra de Apartadó”, 29 May 2013
27 Primer militar condenado por masacre de San José de Apartadó. In: ColomPBIa Magazine, PBI Colombia, April 15, 2010
28 Verdad Abierta: La condena a cuatro militares por la masacre de San José de Apartadó, 14 June 2012
29 El Espectador: Estado tiene responsabilidad en la masacre de San José de Apartadó, 7 February 2013; Op.cit. Semana, May 29 2013
30 El Espectador: Masacre de San José de Apartadó, otro caso en manos de la JEP, 26 January 2020
31 El Tiempo: Histórica condena por masacre ‘para’ en San José de Apartadó, 12 May 2019
32 Ibid.
33 Op.cit. El Tiempo, 12 May 2019; op.cit. El Espectador, 26 January 2020
34 Op.cit. PBI Colombia, 23 February 2020; El Espectador: Víctimas piden que la Masacre de San José de Apartadó salga de la JEP 5 March 2020
35 El Espectador: Germán Graciano, premio nacional de Derechos Humanos, será arrestado por desacato, 5 December 2018
36 Pnud Colombia: Cuarta delegación de víctimas viaja a La Habana, 1 November 2014
37 Op.cit PBI Colombia, interview with German Graciano and Morelis Arteaga, December 2019
38 FIDH: Colombia: Intento de asesinato de Germán Graciano Posso, Representante legal de la Comunidad de Paz de San José de Apartadó, 2 January 2018
39 Op.cit. El Espectador: 5 December 2018
40 Op.cit. Amnesty International, 5 December 2018; op.cit. FIDH, 2 January 2018
41 Op.cit PBI Colombia, interview with German Graciano and Morelis Arteaga, December 2019
42 European Parliament: Premio Sájarov 2011 a la libertad de conciencia, 15 December 2011
43 Embassy of France in Colombia: Los Embajadores de Alemania, Günter Kniess y Francia Jean-Marc Laforêt, visitaron ‘La Comunidad de Paz San José de Apartadó, 27 March 2015
44 Portafolio: Reconocimiento a los 20 mejores líderes de Colombia, 25 September 2015
45 Contagio Radio: Ellas y ellos son los ganadores del Premio Nacional a la defensa de Derechos Humanos 2018, 5 September 2018
46 Prophetic Economy Award, 2018 Winners
47 Cidh: Medidas cautelares 1997
48 Resolución de la Corte Interamericana de Derechos Humanos: Medidas Provisionales solicitadas por la Comisión Interamericana de Derechos Humanos – Caso de la Comunidad de Paz de San José de Apartadó, 24 November 2000
49 Corte Constitucional: Sentencia de Tutela nº 1025/07, 3 December 2007
50 Corte Interamericana de Derechos Humanos: Resolución del Presidente de Corte Interamericana de Derechos Humanos: Medidas provisionales respecto de la república de Colombia. Asunto comunidad de paz de San José de Apartadó, 26 June 2017

3 thoughts on “Peace Community”

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making space for peace

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