People's Right to Move - Voices From Colombia's Confined Communities
Women Face a Climate of Fear and Violence
Fear is one of the most effective instruments for social control. The guerrilla, the paramilitaries and the army all establish "codes of conduct" for every aspect of people's lives. There are curfews. People are told how to dress and even how to cut their hair. Selective killings set an example of what will happen if people don't obey the rules. The threat of violence maintains their control.
Here people are very afraid to talk about things that happen because they know they will pay the consequences. I could tell you about the abuses [the paramilitaries] carry out, about the blockades and all the other things, but if they find out, it is me that will have problems. If you make any noise you know what will happen. (Female resident of Sur de Bolivar)
You have to go into the bush to relieve yourself, so I always take my husband, because, my God, I get scared thinking that some armed group is hidden there, waiting. I must have a terribly inflamed colon; and if you ask the great majority of women from here, they're suffering constipation and colon problems because of that fear. (Female resident of Sur de Bolivar)
In the zones of confinement, armed actors have very repressive attitudes towards women and the controls they impose are more and more exhaustive and humiliating.
They (the paramilitaries) are abusing the women a lot, every time we pass the guard posts - when we leave the community and when we come back. Once I was at a guard post where they made us drop our pants down to the knees and bend over to see if we were carrying something. (Female resident of Sur de Bolivar)
Cases of violence against women are rarely denounced. Many women do not talk about what they have suffered, out of shame and out of fear that if they do it will result in further attacks.
Once they came to a house, tied up the man, grabbed the woman and a daughter and raped them in front of the husband and other children. She says that filing charges and saying the army did that to me is like saying "I'm looking to die", because if I do that, I can never leave town again. (Displaced woman from the Catatumbo region)
If [the paramilitaries] find a woman on the road they frequently grab her, and beat and mistreat her, and many times they try to rape her. They have tried to rape many women, saying that they sleep with the guerrilla and so why not with them. (Displaced woman from the Catatumbo region)
| Reviewed July 31, 2009 |  |
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