People's Right to Move - Voices From Colombia's Confined Communities
Voices from Confinement
In zones where the guerrilla or the paramilitaries have established their control it is impossible for people to move about freely. Roads and rivers are blocked by guard posts, where people are stopped and interrogated, and often turned back at the point of a gun. Every movement is controlled.
The controls by the army and the guerrilla have made it impossible to move about freely. You have to tell them where you are going, for how long, what you are doing and when you will return. If someone from outside wants to come in they must be presented by someone who lives in the community. (member of the Parish of Caquetá)
The army and paramilitaries frequently restrict the amount of food people can bring into the community, claiming that it will be sold to the guerrilla. The consumption of non-substitutable basic foods such as salt, sugar and oil is restricted. Powdered milk is also controlled, which mainly affects infants. In many places women eat so poorly that mothers cannot breastfeed their children.
There was an experience with a woman who brought three bags of milk and had five children. Imagine three small bags for five children! The paramilitaries told her she could only take one bag and so she said to them, "But the doctor had ordered me to give milk to the children." They became angry and told her to watch out or they'd kill her. They pulled her out of the launch and started hauling her away. They were going to kill her for three bags of milk. In the end the children began to cry so they told the woman that because of them they weren't going to kill her, but that she was asking for it. (Female resident of Valle del río Cimitarra)
Frequently, it is impossible for people to go about their everyday activities such as fishing, hunting and working their fields. They are told that if they leave it is because they are going to help the enemy.
There are some days when we eat OK, when we are allowed to fish on the river. But we can't fish at night the way we used to and we are too afraid to go hunting in the forest, so there are many days when you only eat once and you just have to go hungry - it's the children who suffer the most. In this region all of the stores have had to shut down. (Male resident of San Juan, Chocó)
| Reviewed July 31, 2009 |  |
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