COLOMBIA / ECUADOR - without State Frontier from Quito
While the governments of Colombia and Ecuador say they are overcoming the difficulties that caused the rupture of diplomatic relations since March 2008, following a Colombian military attack by a guerrilla camp of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) in Ecuadorian territory on the border there is no evidence to ensure the same, persist as military incursions, contract killings, murder of civilians and controls that prevent the border town food. After the extraordinary meeting of the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) held in Quito on 9 February, the Colombian Foreign Minister Jaime Bermudez said that "the difficulties have been overcome with Ecuador." Days earlier, Colombian President Alvaro Uribe himself had shown close to Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa, to thank for their collaboration in the fight against the FARC.
"I thank the Ecuadorian government has recently made efforts in the border area neutralizing terrorists of the FARC, "Uribe said referring to an Ecuadorian military action took place on January 18, in which three people were shot.
Correa, meanwhile, said that" our soldiers could defend and the three casualties are part of the FARC had been low before our troops. "
However, farmers in the Agricultural Cooperative" United Forces "and the Federation of Peasant Organizations Sucumbíos Border Cord (FORCCOFES) both of Ecuador, rejected the two presidents and said the three dead were farmers, two Colombians and one Ecuadorian, who traveled down the river Opuno, near the Colombian-Ecuadorian border, carrying supplies to Puerto Mestanza, Ecuador, and were mowed down by the Ecuadorian army.
"Mr. and Mrs. Orlando Tapia Molano, and Francis Pérez Tamayo Sabrino peasants were known to all of us. Mr. Tamayo was a dealer in Puerto Mestanza" says Calito Parraga, chairman of the Joint Forces cooperative.
Parraga's version is corroborated by the prosecutor of the Ecuadorian Amazon province of Sucumbios, Felipe Villota, who made the removal of the bodies and said no military uniforms or weapons found in the bodies of those killed.
"I have evidence that they were not armed and had no military uniforms. This is an Ecuadorian national who [Francis Tamayo], a native of Loja and worked in sales in Puerto Mestanza. People are very angry, denouncing the abuses and mistreatment of military troops and said they witnessed the shooting. Saw who did it, "said Villota.
In this case there are at least 15 witnesses who saw what happened, so he decided to denounce FORCCOFES and other events that occur in the border area of \u200b\u200bSucumbíos, where states actions only exist with military repression.
Joint actions of intimidation According FORCCODES since August 2009 have produced 14 incidents in which military patrols involving Ecuadorian and Colombian paramilitaries, the most serious of the murder of Miguel Lapo and Miguel Pinzon, Ecuadorian community leaders of Vermilion and St. Martin, at the hands of Colombian paramilitaries on 28 September 2009.
FORCCODES also denounced the raids of the Navy of Ecuador to the United Forces cooperative intimidate Colombian refugee families and community leaders, such as cases of Wilson Ernesto Chapa, whose house was robbed on August 7 last year by a patrol of about 40 Ecuadorian military and Claudia Maria Palma, who was beaten along with his 15 year old daughter and an employee of her farm by a patrol of the Ecuadorian Navy, August 15, defending one of his farm workers who was being attacked by the military.
Communities of the Colombian-Ecuadorian took a binational meeting of local authorities in the Ecuadorian province of Sucumbios and the Colombian department of Putumayo, held in Puerto Asis, Colombia, on 29 January, to raise awareness of its reality. They note that "while local authorities seeking integration border trade based on big business, the opening of land routes, river and air, and the national authorities want to restore diplomatic relations, communities border are outside these agreements and to survive in an area where virtually none of the two countries want peace. "Condemned"
hunger? For border communities, including the agreements signed by the two States may cause repression. For example, Article 30 of Decree 1047 of 1994, signed by the two governments, which regulates cross-border relations between Ecuador and Colombia, provides that the border population will buy food for approximately $ 700 monthly on either side of the border and move the other side. The population that uses this option runs the risk of being intercepted by the armed forces of any countries, who would seize the food products claiming that they are to supply the FARC.
Fearing the confiscation of food, boats try to avoid meeting with the military, knowing that the patrols do not hesitate to shoot before asking anything, as happened on 18 January.
The need for food supply in a region where nothing is produced, because the ground was devastated by the spraying of glyphosate to coca cultivation in the Colombian side, has led his people to protest controls and post surveys, as the case of Puerto Leguizamo (Colombia), on the Putumayo River, the border Colombia and Peru.
Puerto Leguizamo had to endure three months of armed strike late last year, decreed by the FARC, which could be prevented by supplying the Putumayo River. In addition, it faces a drought in the past two months has caused the Putumayo River loses flow and is not navigable and therefore can not make the six-hour trip between Puerto Asís and Puerto Leguizamo to be provisioned to city.
Puerto Leguizamo authorities arrived at the meeting in Puerto Asis with one slogan, asking to be allowed, based on Decree 1047, stock up on food in Puerto El Carmen, Ecuador, two hours drive by the San Miguel, and avoid the famine that looms over this city. The response of the Directorate of National Taxes and Customs of Colombia (DIAN) was negative.
"I do not understand that attitude," said Rep. Colombian department of Putumayo, Euler Guerrero. "I do not understand how having even the rules, refuses to eat the right city."
is no doubt that in this region the struggle against FARC, which is already involved in Ecuador, will override the right of communities to feed and survive, to respect for private property, as the military pillage farmers , and the process of trade integration, since trade in the Putumayo and San Miguel is punishable by death, just as they should understand the three riddled Opuno River.
The question to be is why the Ecuadorian government does not support these allegations despite the fact that they are promptly sent to Defense Minister Javier Ponce, or if reality is as stated by one of the riders of the Putumayo River, "the Army Ecuador still responds to the U.S., they fund the entire military to move along these rivers, and these actions are parallel activities that have a name: they are paramilitary activities. "
-Latinamerica.
