CPTnet
24 August 2011
COLOMBIA URGENT PRAYER REQUEST: Media glossing over the murders of sixteen people in the last week.

The foreign and Colombian media are portraying Colombia as a nation at peace while it hosts the FIFA (Fédération Internationale de Football Association) U-20 games.  Unfortunately, the media are glossing over some of violent episodes that have occurred over the last week.  Below are a few examples, mostly from the regions where CPT’s Colombia team works:

• A group of hit men assassinated a fifteen-year-old boy in Barrancabermeja on 13 August and injured a fifty-six-year-old man as well.
• Jarlinson Andrés Guzmán Muñoz, a twenty-three-year-old motorcycle-taxi driver of Barrancabermeja left his home on 13 August and never returned.
• In the Santander Department’s municipality of San Pablo,  members allegedly belonging to the ELN guerilla group massacred four men on 14 August.  The victims were found shot to death on a road forty minutes outside the town center.
• Two unidentified men on a motorcycle killed Fernando Peña Betancourt of Barrancabermeja on 16 August by shooting him in the head.
• A shootout at a bar injured three young men, including a seventeen-year-old in Barrancabermeja on 17 August.
• Three young men were massacred on 17 August in the Sur de Bolivar Department.  A group of twenty armed men who identified themselves as the paramilitary group las Aguilas Negras entered the community and killed Pedro Sierra.  They tortured and cut the tongues out of Ivan Serrano and Luis Albeiro and killed them as well.
• On 19 August, five men and one woman were found shot to death in a car in the Department Valle de Cauca.

These murders clearly indicate that Colombia is under the grip of organized armed violence.  In a country where only a small percentage of crimes reach a conviction in court, most, if not all of the families involved will never see justice for their loved ones.

 CPT Colombia asks for prayers for these people who have lost their lives or their loved ones.  We continue to pray for a Colombia and a world where peace and justice reign. 

 For more information on the recent work CPT's Colombia team, click here.