Agencia de Prensa IPC reports on new death threat against CAHUCOPANA leader Carlos Arturo Morales

Agencia de Prensa IPC reports:

“The inhabitants of the Carrizal corregimiento warned about this in early August, when they made the humanitarian camp in the village of El Carmen, in the Carrizal corregimiento in Remedios, and denounced that they were in the middle of a confrontation between members of the AGC or Clan del Golfo, the ELN and the FARC dissidents.

This morning [August 19] they found murdered the miner Elmer Lenin Guerra, who, since yesterday, August 18, was held by members of the AGC on the outskirts of the municipality of Segovia in the El Aporriado sector, when he was returning from Medellín with his partner Yuliana Liceth Galeano.

Photo: Lenin Guerra, Yuliana Galeano.

El Aporriado is one of the places where members of the AGC are concentrated, as denounced by the communities in the early warning of July 17.

Elmer and Yuliana were the parents of a baby girl. Yuliana appeared alive today, but she is beside herself, pained by the loss of her partner. She, as secretary of the community action board of the village of El Carmen, was one of the leaders who met with officials of the Government of Antioquia and with members of several embassies in Bogotá to denounce what they were living in their territory.

Just the day she returned to her municipality, after several weeks of raising her voice to make visible the threats and the resurgence of the armed conflict, she was held with her companion and today mourns his death.

Photo: Yuliana (third from the left) and Carlos Morales (fifth from the left) meet with the Canadian Embassy in Bogota, August 11, 2022.

Carlos Arturo Morales, legal representative of Cahucopana (Humanitarian Action Corporation for Coexistence and Peace of Northeast Antioquia), was with Yuliana denouncing the humanitarian crisis they are experiencing due to the abandonment of the State and the intensification of the armed conflict.

“Before they were captured, I was on the tour with my companera Yuliana, and they just informed me that they also have a plan to murder me,” says Carlos.

Carlos learned yesterday of the threat of the AGC against him and in the afternoon they informed him that they had held his two companions.

“I have denounced the violations of human rights in the territory, on February 27 they made an attack on me, they wounded my rib and my wife in the arm. We were going with my five-year-old son. I learned, from a reliable source, that there is an order to kill me,” he says. The message he received said that he will be killed “because we gave him a warning and I did not heed.”

The warning said to remain silent and not to denounce more about what was happening in the Northeast of Antioquia. And they are persecuting him, four years ago he had to flee his territory and today he lives in another area of the country, where they attacked him and his family.

Photo: Carlos Morales

Since 2018, Carlos and other members of Cahucopana have had precautionary measures from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR). At the time of the attack he was not accompanied by his security scheme.

Cahucopana has been a human rights organization for 17 years and brings together 50 community action boards in Segovia and Remedios, which impacts more than 14,000 people in the region.

“We continue to bet on the defense of the permanence of the communities in the territories in a peaceful and organized way, it is where the new government has to enter to listen in front of the communities and generate contacts to expedite the dialogues where communities, institutions and actors feel to think about how peace is going to be built with territoriality.”

In addition to Carlos, there are other members of Cahucopana threatened, victims of WhatsApp messages in which they warn them to shut up, not to denounce the presence of illegal armed actors.

Now, the communities of Carrizal and the members of Cahucopana mourn the death of one of their members. They denounced the risk they were running at the beginning of August and now, three weeks later, they mourn the death of one of their own.””

The full article can be read at Las AGC asesinaron a un campesino de Carrizal y amenazaron de nuevo a un líder de Cahucopana.

The Peace Brigades International-Colombia Project has accompanied the Humanitarian Action for Coexistence and Peace in Northeastern Antioquia (CAHUCOPANA) since 2013.