PBI-Colombia accompanies Peace Community as impunity continues six months after the murder of two members
PBI-Colombia has posted:
“We continue to accompany the Peace Community of San Jose de Apartadó who, continue to defend the territory and build alternatives from food sovereignty for peace.
6 months after the murder of Nallely Sepúlveda and Edinson David, we continue to share the concern for clarifying facts and access to justice.”
The Peace Community also tweeted:
“On 19 March, our comrades Nallely Sepulveda and Edinson David were assassinated. 6 months have passed, everything is still in impunity.”
Community members Nalleli Sepúlveda, age 30, and Edinson David, age 14, were killed on March 19, 2024.
The threat of armed groups, commodity exports
Moira Birss, formerly of PBI-Colombia, has written in the NACLA report:
“Part of what makes Apartadó and the Urabá region so attractive to armed groups (and the economic interests that often drive them) is the area’s strategic location near the Gulf of Urabá. The gulf flows into the Caribbean Sea, connecting to the Panama Canal and all its commodity export opportunities. On the other side of the gulf is the Darien Gap, which in recent years has become an important migratory route and where transit is controlled by the Gulf Clan. The Peace Community believes that the transit of goods and people through this area is central to the motivation behind the murders of Nalleli and Edinson.
In the months and weeks leading up to the killings, tensions had been building in La Esperanza over widening a pedestrian and horse path to become a car-sized road that would go deep into the hills, presumably to facilitate commodity exports.
The route runs through the Las Delicias estate [where Nalleli and Edinson were killed]. As it is not authorized by the regional authorities, the construction of the road is illegal. The Peace Community has opposed the project and has denounced the involvement of the Gulf Clan and the support of the Army in the process.”
The specific threat of a mine
Birss also notes: “The area is also reported to contain significant coal deposits, for which the state issued an exploratory license more than 15 years ago.”
Photo: Nalleli Sepúlveda paints a wooden gate that the Peace Community rebuilt after it was destroyed. It reads: “Mining kills the land. We have the right to protect nature.” Photo by the Peace Community.
In the days after the murders of Nalleli and Edinson, the Minister of the Interior Franklin Castañeda visited Las Delicias.
On the evening of March 27, Castañeda tweeted: “A field inspection will be carried out on the mining titles.”
We await an update on this.
The Peace Community
The Peace Community is located more than 700 kilometres northwest of Bogota in the mountainous northern region in the department of Antioquia.
On March 23, 1997, the Peace Community of San Jose de Apartado was formed. The farming community declared itself neutral in the armed conflict and rejected the presence of all the armed groups in its territory.
On the twentieth anniversary of its formation in 2017, the Peace Community stated that 326 of its members had been murdered and that more than 4,000 human rights violations had been committed against the community.
PBI-Colombia began accompanying the Peace Community in 1999.
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