Tactics and tools for the protection
of Human Rights Defenders

We had taken time with all of the community together to reflect on our fourteenth anniversary: about our decisions, where we have said yes to life and no to death. On this anniversary we are faced with a new murder perpetrated by the paramilitaries with the complicity of the State security forces. The audacity of all that is happening is so evident that those who have at least some ethical principles can’t avoid feeling profound anger and pain when faced with so much hypocrisy from a government and a State that talks one way and acts completely differently.

The acts that we are documenting for the world are so clear that they do not require any type of commentary or analysis. So many times the paramilitaries, in close collaboration with the State security forces, announced the murders they would commit, using lies to distort everything as they have always done. What was previously described is now being carried out.

We believe that those who, from many different places, walk side by side with our community, repudiate this horror and, just as we do, believe in standing up for life without backing down.

 -     March 22, 2011, at 6:20pm, a motorcycle with two armed paramilitaries followed the car in which Jesús Emilio Tuberquia was traveling from Apartadó. They came close to the car several times and looked at him, they saw that he was accompanied by international people and they stayed in Tierra Amarilla. In that place they waited for BERNARDO RIOS LONDOÑO, who had met with Jesús Emilio minutes before in the bus terminal of Apartadó and was traveling by bicycle. The paramilitaries detained him in Tierra Amarilla and they murdered him at about 6:30pm. At that time there was an army checkpoint five minutes away, as well as two other State security forces checkpoints on that road.

BERNARDO was 27 years old, he had been in the community months before and he had left in order to live in the rural district of La Miranda where he resided and worked as a sawyer; his children and partner live in and are part of our community.

When the community found out about this murder, we went to retrieve his body so that we could hold his wake and burial in our community.

Those who sow death have tried to do away with us during these fourteen years and our stubborn struggle for life means we don’t give in to them; with fear, powerlessness, fury at such impunity and complacency by the State in the face of so much horror, we take the position of building a different life now and in our community. As we celebrate fourteen years of civil resistance at Bernardo’s funeral, his memory and those of so many others who have been murdered will give us the light that will help us continue on a path of hope, not bought off with payments but rather in dignity and commitment to life.