The Peace Brigades International-Colombia Project has posted on social media:
“This November, we accompanied the Peace Community in the villages of Mulatos and La Resbalosa, where they cultivated corn, rice, cocoa, and sugar cane, and tended to their livestock. Our accompaniment was also marked by preparations for the construction of a monument in La Resbalosa, as a tribute and memorial to the massacre that took place there in 2005.
On 21 February 2005, in the villages of Mulatos and La Resbalosa, eight members of the Peace Community, including four children, were killed in massacres perpetrated by a group of paramilitaries with the collaboration of the armed forces. Memory and resistance remain fundamental, especially in a context in which, even in recent months, the Community continues to face an intensification of threats against it.”
Intensification of threats
On October 16, 2025, the Community posted an article titled “New death threats, a reigning reality” that documents 23 incidents that occurred between July 24, 2025, to October 16, 2025.
That article notes: “The death, displacement, constant threats and persecutions against our community and its members are just signs of the inability of a state in the face of paramilitary control. The destruction of dignified life is perhaps in the end a future without peasants, without the environment and where the only beneficiaries are the same companies that have financed the war through their economic interests.”
Prior to that, Caracol Radio reported on July 14, 2025: “A little more than a month after the act of pardon led by President Gustavo Petro, the Peace Community of San José de Apartadó denounced a serious escalation of threats, harassment and the presence of illegal groups in its territory.”
This article highlights that on July 11, 2025: “The community received new messages of death threats and extermination directed directly against its legal representative, Germán Graciano Posso, and other members of the Internal Council.”
That Caracol Radio report further notes: “Among the most troubling events reported are the repeated presence of paramilitaries on private properties in the community, the use of machinery for illegal exploitation of natural resources, and the imposition of restrictions on land use for peasants, who can now only cultivate on areas of less than two hectares under threat.”
El Espectador has previously explained: “Since 2018, the Ombudsman’s Office has issued several early warnings stating that the Clan del Golfo, which calls itself the Gaitanista Army of Colombia (EGC), has attempted to gain territorial control of that community through ‘conduct that violates human rights, such as threats, murders, forced displacement, land dispossession and exploitation of natural resources.’”
Monument in La Resbalosa
PBI-Colombia has previously explained: “On February 21, 2005, the villages of Mulatos and La Resbalosa (Antioquia), located five hours from La Holandita, the main settlement of the Peace Community, were the scene of a heinous crime that, once again, hit its inhabitants. Among the 8 victims of this massacre, 7 were members of the Peace Community. The massacre was perpetrated by a commando of around 60 paramilitaries from the Heroes of Tolová Bloc of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) along with troops attached to the Army’s 17th Brigade.”
Accompaniment
Peace Brigades International has accompanied the Peace Community of San José de Apartadó since 1999.
