CPTnet
28 November 2007
COLOMBIA: CPT begins an accompaniment of the Awa people

On 14 November 2007, CPTers Nils Dybvig and Sarah MacDonald arrived in
Ricaurte, in the province of Nari�o, to begin a six-week accompaniment of
the Council of Elders of the Awa of Ricaurte (CAMAWARI). CAMAWARI represents
the indigenous Awa people of the municipality of Ricaurte, which includes
eleven Awa reservations.

The province of Nari�o is currently one of the deadliest zones in e
Colombian. For many years, guerrilla forces have controlled much of
Nari�o. Starting in 2000, Plan Colombia fumigations elsewhere pushed coca
cultivation into this region, with the result that national military
operations, also funded by Plan Colombia, began to focus on Nari�o. This
fighting between guerrilla and military forces has devastated Awa
territories.

The latest release from CAMAWARI, dated 2 November, calls for armed actors
to respect the distinction between combatants and the civilian population,
and decries how often civilians get caught in crossfire while seeking
refuge. The release tells of the death of an Awa man, Vicente Nastacuas, at
the hands of FARC guerrillas on 24 October. According to family members,
the guerrillas tricked Nastacuas into leaving his house with them and later
killed him. Because of continued fighting, nine days later, his body had
still not been recovered nor his death investigated. As the release also
mentions, the same guerrilla group killed Esther Nastacuas two months
earlier. So far during 2007, twenty-three members of CAMAWARI have died in
the conflict, either killed directly by armed groups or by anti-personnel
landmines.

This mission is CPT's third short-term accompaniment of the Awa in Nari�o
within the past year. Objectives of the accompaniment include supporting
CAMAWARI's organizing process, meeting with political and military
authorities to demand that they protect the Awa's human rights, and helping
to publicize nationally and internationally the crisis faced by the Awa. We
ask you to hold in prayer this CPT accompaniment and the Awa people with
whom they are walking.