'Government betrayed the peasants who left their coca crops': peasant leader
28 Jan 2020 - 7:00 AM
Sebastián Forero Rueda / @SebastianForerr
Arnobis Zapata, national spokesman for the National Coordinator of Cultivators of Coca, Amapola and Marihuana (Coccam) responded to the statements of the director of the crop substitution program, Hernando Londoño, who said no replacement leaders have been killed. According to Zapata, this Government has no will with the program.
Arnobis Zapata is the national spokesperson for Coccam, one of the platforms that follow the implementation of the PNIS. In this interview he launches strong criticism of Hernando Londoño, who is in charge of implementing that program. Video capture - José Vargas
Indignation and rejection generated among the peasant communities the statements of the director of the National Integral Program of Crop Substitution (PNIS), Hernando Londoño, who, in an interview with Colombia2020, said that crop substitution leaders have not been killed. Likewise, the official said in that interview that the Government has fulfilled the program, but that it is the farmers who have coca crops who have not followed their commitments.
Given these statements, from the National Coordinator of Cultivators of Coca, Amapola and Marihuana (Coccam), a platform that groups various peasant organizations throughout the country, issued a public statement in which they rejected what was said by Hernando Londoño and demanded his departure from the program address
In dialogue with this newspaper, Arnobis Zapata, national spokesman for the Coccam and president of the National Association of Peasant Reserve Areas (Anzorc), reiterated that in these organizations they have documented at least 56 cases of assassinated replacement leaders and explained why They are clearly aware that the Government, contrary to what Londoño said, has no will with the PNIS.
What is the perception that Coccam has about the implementation of the PNIS during the Duke government?
This Government came to end the replacement program. We say this for several reasons: the first, because since it arrived it has not convened the national instances that the program establishes for its follow-up. That we have knowledge only convened once the strategic management board and has not convened the permanent board of directors. The second is that they have only dedicated themselves to turning resources for food assistance to families and hiring technical assistance, but at the moment there is no productive project in the country after three years of starting the program. Still the farmers who voluntarily eradicated their coca do not have the first productive project in their territory, which was what was going to change their economic activity.
The director said that in payments to families they go in 89%. What are your records about that?
Indeed, in some territories, even 100% of the payments have been fulfilled, only those payments were for one year and in the course of that year a food security project and a $ 19 million project should have been implemented. What the Government has done is turn the payments, but no progress has been made in the productive projects. They may have turned $ 12 million during the first year, but they have been hungry for two years for the farmers who took coca cultivation.
Has this delay in productive projects caused some of the farmers who signed up to the PNIS to plant coca again?
What we have now is a great pressure on the part of the peasants for the Government to comply with the replacement program, or they will look for what to do. But so far, according to the latest United Nations report on the PNIS, the re-planting of peasants who are in the replacement program is 0.4%. That means that our farmers have not planted coca again.
The director denied that they were killing leaders of the crop substitution program. You have talked about 56 murders. Do these cases refer to Coccam affiliates or leaders who promoted crop substitution in their territories?
Indeed, they are not 'PNIS leaders', because the program has no leaders, the leader is the Government. These people were leaders of their communities that promoted voluntary crop substitution. Not only people who are in the instances are the only leaders who promote crop substitution in the territories. The program stipulates that it must be one leader per nucleus and in those nuclei there are up to 10 or 20 paths. In each of those 20 paths there are outstanding leaders and here they have killed presidents of community action boards in areas where there are coca crops, they have killed treasurers of community action board of those areas and they are in the replacement program. The program says that the Government must design a security policy for people who are linked to the replacement program, regardless of whether they are leaders or not. He does not recognize other leaderships outside those in the instances of the PNIS. To deny that is to say that they will not take measures so that leaders do not continue to be killed and that is irresponsible on the part of the institution.
Londoño said that peasants who registered for the PNIS reported half a hectare of coca, but that "behind the mountain" they have two other crops. Do you have registered cases like that?
That is totally false. What director Londoño wants is to benefit the policy of forced eradication and that of glyphosate fumigation. The director follows that path because his job there is not to support the replacement program, but to finish it. That is false because the United Nations has certified that there has been no reseeding. The UN is in the territories verifying that. Londoño has not left his desk and behind a desk you cannot run a replacement program that is in territory where you have to run.
The official also said that the PNIS becomes an incentive for farmers to grow coca since they give coca to $ 36 million. How do they get that statement?
That can only be understood from the point of view of a repressive policy that continues to see farmers as drug traffickers. He does not see it from an inclusive policy, which allows the farmer to have opportunities to get out of the economy in which he is at the moment. And that repressive policy has already been proven. Everything that has been spent on forced eradication programs that have not had results. Our position is that this is totally contrary to what the replacement program promotes because this is what the transformation of the territories and change the economy is intended. A farmer who enters a well-implemented substitution program never replaces coca. But a farmer who eradicates his coca bush again sow it and sow twice.
With what has happened with the PNIS, what has been raised in point 4 of the Havana Agreement on illicit drugs?
We believe that voluntary substitution is the way out to end coca crops. The PNIS, as designed, would help to reduce the scourge of coca crops to the maximum. But well implemented. As they are implementing it, we do believe that the Government is betraying the farmers who confidently joined the program. This Government has betrayed the farmers who voluntarily left their coca crops, by not implementing a full program and with guarantees, because it is no guarantee that one will be given $ 12 million for one year and left hungry for two years. As they are implementing the PNIS, what they are looking for is that it does not work to have arguments to say that a replacement program does not work/
Why is it expressed by Hernando Londoño enough to leave the direction of the PNIS, as requested in his public statement?
His statements and how he is implementing the replacement program show that he is a person who does not want the program to continue, but is a person that the Government put there to end the program and say it will not work. That is why we believe that it is not a valid interlocutor for the communities. A person who wants the program to fail cannot be in charge of the program.
How did you receive in the communities the draft decree that seeks to resume spraying with glyphosate for illegal crops, presented by the Government in the last days of 2019?
The announcement of glyphosate is one of the themes that has broken the glass in the communities. They are even going to fumigate territories where the replacement program is waiting to implement productive projects. That for the communities has been like a cold water bucket, because we thought we were going to look for the way. Because of that, several assemblies have already been made in the territories, especially in Nariño, Cauca and Catatumbo, which are already preparing to join the national strike. We believe that in February they can go out to join. We are making the last consultations to see if the mobilizations are made at the regional level or if we are really going to join the mass marches in Bogotá, but that is in preparation. We will be at the January 30 and 31 meetings of the Unemployment Committee, seeing how we can join there.
In other words, in the face of spraying and forced eradication, the response of the communities will be mobilization?
Yes, we have even been mobilizing in the territories. For example, in December, in San José de Uré (Córdoba) they tried to eradicate coca crops and the farmers removed the eradicators from the territories. The Association of Farmers of the South of Córdoba issued a statement because the Army shot the peasants who were there.
If the forced eradication days continue, do you fear that there will be more clashes between the communities and the Public Force?
Effectively. We have been clear that we do not agree with forced eradication. If there is forced eradication in the territories, the communities will respond with mobilization and will remove the Army from the territories. We hope that the Government arrives with substitution proposals that are built in conjunction with the communities, not leaving the desks in Bogotá.
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Asociación Campesina del Catatumbo, persecuted for betting on the Peace Agreement
19 Jan 2020 - 7:48 PM
Nicolás Sánchez Arévalo / @ANicolasSanchez
There are already 15 murders against members of that organization, the last one occurred on January 10 in Tibú (North of Santander). They have also suffered disappearances and judicial assemblies, among others. Promoting the implementation of the Peace Agreement between the State and the FARC has put them at risk, they say.
The peasant guard of Catatumbo is one of the proposals that Ascamcat has made as a measure of self-protection of the communities./ Courtesy Ascamcat.
César Tulio Sandoval Chia was at home when three armed men arrived and tried to kill him in the courtroom. After a struggle he left his home together with the murderers. They walked 200 meters and shot him. He died on the spot. He was a social leader of the village of La Silla, rural area of Tibú (North of Santander), who participated in the Integral Program for the Substitution of Crops for Illicit Use, led land occupation by landowners and was the coordinator of the committee Village of the Campesino Association of Catatumbo (Ascamcat). Sandoval became the member of that 15th organization to be killed since 2013. A history of persecution against Ascamcat.
The organization was born in December 2005. Displaced from the village of El Suspiro, in Teorama, they got together and constituted Ascamcat. Account Juan Carlos Quintero, member of the board of directors of the community, who emulated the organizational process of the Campesino Association of the Cimitarra River Valley after having contact with several of its leaders in a forum that took place at the National University of Bogotá. They set out to defend the human rights of the peasantry, rebuild the social fabric that destroyed the paramilitary intervention in the Catatumbo and promote the well-being of the peasants.
Why was it essential to recover the social fabric? The Catatumbo Block of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) demobilized on December 10, 2004, after operating five years. This armed structure generated a humanitarian drama in the area, apart from the murders and disappearances, they also applied collective punishment. The armed group controlled the amount of medicines and equipment that the peasants could have. In the urban centers of Tibú and Convention they exercised the controls: 100 thousand pesos of monthly market was the maximum that they allowed to pass to the families that lived in the paths.
After the demobilization of the paramilitaries, the farmers of the region had a respite. However, it did not last long because the Army entered to take over the sites that left the AUC. For that, the government of former President Álvaro Uribe created brigades 15 (based in Ocaña) and 30 (based in Cúcuta). Fortaleza 1 and Fortaleza 2 operations were launched. Quintero says that this military deployment generated humanitarian problems and that there were hundreds of displaced people, it was at that time that Ascamcat was founded.
The Association has flourished amidst a context of violence, which has directly affected them. The persecution began in 2013, the year in which Ascamcat called a peasant strike in the region. The mobilization lasted 53 days and was lifted after reaching agreements with the State. The protest had its cost in blood: four members of the organization died and the peasants still point to the Public Force as responsible for the murders.
They have also been victims of extrajudicial executions. On December 2, 2013, the farmer Jorge Eliécer Calderón Chiquillo was murdered on a Tibú highway, apparently by members of the Army. Police said it was a fight, however, Ascamcat has upset that version. Among the work that the organization has done is the denunciation of 'false positives' that were committed in the region. "We evidenced before the country, together with other organizations, that here they were killing civilians and disguising them as guerrillas, at that time they did not believe us much, but they realized this practice when the bodies of the Soacha youth appeared in Las Chircas, in Ocaña, "says Quintero. The organization contributed to the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP) information on 180 extrajudicial executions that the Public Force had committed in Norte de Santander.
In the last two years, the killings against the members of Ascamcat have been committed by armed actors that the organization has not been able to identify and the authorities have not clarified the facts. In addition, kidnappings have occurred. Five months ago Celiar Martínez, peasant leader of the corregimiento of San Pablo (Teorama), is apparently held by the Eln . "It can be a kidnapping or a disappearance, we still don't know," Quintero says with concern. The organization estimates that since 2018 15 leaders have had to move due to threats against their lives. The Ocaña Regional Ombudsman's Office has also recorded victimizing acts such as extrajudicial executions, kidnappings and displacements against the organization.
The organization has identified the factors that put them at risk. The first is stigmatization. For several years Ascamcat has been indicated as a kind of political arm of the Farc. Without evidence, some columnists have spread those points. In 2015, the opinion-maker Salud Hernández, for example, published a column entitled: 'Human rats?' A question in which he made clear allusion to the members of "Ascanca (sic)" of being "pupils of Timochenko". In May 2016, the former congressman of the Democratic Center Samuel Hoyos pointed to the association of being "(an) organization of the Farc".By similar accusations, the organization has initiated criminal actions against the members of the government party: María Fernanda Cabal, Paloma Valencia, Diego Villamizar and Juan Carlos Capacho. "When someone irresponsibly makes a comment that affects the security and risk situation of these organizations," explains Ocaña regional ombudsman, Diógenes Quintero, who shares that stigmatization has worsened the persecution.
When asking Juan Quintero if this involvement existed at any time, he says that what has existed are "judicial statements and assemblies." He recalled that in 2010 the capture of 17 members of Ascamcat was given and arrest warrants were issued against 68 more. None were convicted, all recovered freedom . "In these 15 years we have suffered judicial assemblies from the Prosecutor's Office in which we have never verified anything that involves us with any illegal armed group. On the contrary that became a very dangerous smear propaganda because then it went to a second stage, which were the threats, and triggered in homicides, "he stressed.
Another important risk factor is that Acamcat fully bets on the implementation of the Peace Agreement signed between the State and the Farc. That has generated problems with the insurgencies that persist in the region: the Eln, the Epl and a dissent from the Farc front 33. "They consider it a maneuver of traitors or people who can be servile to the class enemy," explains Juan Quintero.
The regional defender complements that "(betting on implementation) has also generated a political cost in the sense that communities do not see the progress of the implementation of the Agreement". An example of this is the National Integral Program for the Substitution of Crops for Illicit Use (Pnis), says Juan Quintero :. Ascamcat urged coca growers to take advantage of the program and today that same organization denounces noncompliance. "What happens when the government fails to comply is that there are actors who say: 'you are the ones who go around with the Government cheating people, then we threaten or peel it'," emphasizes the leader, who denounces that the Government has modified "unilaterally the times raised in the execution of the Pnis timeline and there is also a Duke refusal to include the other municipalities of the country, especially those of Catatumbo, in the program ". Only the municipalities of Tibú and Sardinata are included in that region.
The Government, for its part, defends its actions against Pnis. "At the beginning of the Government of President Duque we received a program without planning, without administrative strength and without a budget to meet the commitments made," said Emilio Archila, presidential adviser for stabilization and consolidation. "There was no operational structure or information management model. We had to review, adjust and establish times, processes, procedures and operation of the different components of the Pnis, determining the minimum realistic route of intervention, which could never have been less than 29 months, "he complemented. In addition, he assured that 11,836 million pesos have been invested for registered Catalan families.
Other risk factors mentioned by Juan Quintero is the opposition that the organization has made to the mining projects. They also associate some threats with the allegations they have made for human rights violations committed by irregular armed groups operating in the region.
The solutions
Juan Quintero asks for substantive solutions: "the tool is in the Peace Agreement in all matters". He said that the implementation of the agreement would have a positive impact on the security situation of Ascamcat. He also asked for progress in the dialogues with the Eln because as long as that conflict is not resolved, the public order situation in the Catatumbo will remain critical.
We tried to contact the governor of Norte de Santander, Silvano Serrano, to learn about his plans for the protection of social organizations in Catatumbo, but at the time of publication of this article we did not get an answer. His press officer, Heider Logatto, sent us an audio of a press conference given by the president last Friday in which he promised to advance a security council for next January 20.
Diogenes Quintero said that "communities through self-management have taken measures of protection, self-protection, which are communal, some within the framework of collective protection measures. It is important that these measures be strengthened from the State so that they are more effective in the territory. "
Meanwhile, the leaders of this organization will continue to resist. For them, Ascamcat is very important for a region that remains at war and a civil society tired of confronting the humanitarian costs it generates. "In regions such as Catatumbo where there is a lack of institutionality, it is important that there are such organizations that defend human rights, which strengthen communities, and community action boards," said Diogenes Quintero. The members of that organization hope that the State will provide guarantees and that the armed groups will not stigmatize them for fighting for the implementation of agreements that would improve the quality of life of the farmers in the region.
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