CPTnet
25 November 2006

COLOMBIA: CPT begins accompaniment of Awa indigenous community

On Thursday 16 November, CPTers Noah Dillard and Nils Dybvig began an
eight-week accompaniment project with the Awa (pronounced ah-WAH) indigenous
communities of Narino in southwestern Colombia. The mobile team, invited by
the community to provide physical accompaniment in the zone, hopes to make
visible the grievous situation that the Awa community currently faces.

On World Indigenous Day, 9 August 2006, the Awa community suffered a
massacre of five community leaders by assailants still unknown. The
community has been enduring a surge in violence since last July, when
military operations in its territory forced members to displace under
life-threatening conditions. "The situation continues to be a critical
one," said Olivio Bisbicús, the president of the indigenous community
organization, UNIPA. "The community is living all together in whatever
areas they can find; public buildings, makeshift plastic tarp tents, etc--"

The war has worsened in the last several years, with the implementation of
the U.S. military financing package, Plan Colombia, which focuses its
funding on this region. The early part of this decade has seen a steady
increase in military, paramilitary, and guerrilla presence in the Awa's
traditional territory. These armed groups have been responsible for a huge
increase in armed violence, including massacres, assassinations,
disappearances, forced displacements, and rampant fumigations of food crops.

The violence against this community did not begin there however. Mainstream
Colombian society has long marginalized the Awa, depriving them of
opportunities for cultural and economic wellbeing. Nevertheless, they have
sustained their culture, and strive to strengthen it, in the midst of the
decades long civil war.

Dillard, Dybvig, and other team members will support the grassroots
organizing efforts of the Awa to confront and transform the violence all
armed groups present to their way of life.