Protect Yolanda Becerra and the OFP

Nov 05
Protect Yolanda Becerra and the OFP
Justice and Peace process, Paramilitarism, Human Rights Defenders, Human Rights Add comments
We are greatly concerned about a serious threat yesterday against Yolanda Becerra, the president of the Popular Women’s Organization (Organización Femenina Popular, or OFP) in Barrancabermeja, Colombia. Ms. Becerra, who figures prominently in CIP’s 2001 report The “New Masters” of Barranca, is one of Colombia’s best-known, most admired human rights defenders.

Ms. Becerra and her organization have persevered in the paramilitary-dominated Magdalena Medio region despite a constant barrage of threats. These threats, though, have rarely been as serious as what happened yesterday.

Here is coverage from today’s edition of the Bucaramanga daily Vanguardia Liberal, and an urgent action from the OFP. Some translated excerpts from the Vanguardia piece detail what happened.

The president of the Popular Women’s Organization, OFP, Yolanda Becerra, suffered serveral hours of anguish and fear on account of three armed men who visited her with no advance warning at her apartment in the Conjunto Cavipetrol I, in Barrio Galán.
The three carried out their incursion at 7:30 in the morning, when the humanitarian organization’s leader had just awakened.

According to Becerra’s account for this daily, the three unknown men abruptly forced their way into her apartment and immediately rendered her powerless.

“One of them aimed a firearm at my head, while the other two dedicated themselves to turning over my bookshelves and any boxes they found along the way. I have no idea what they were looking for,” said the OFP leader.

The men stayed inside the apartment for a half hour, during which they did not cease to shout threats and vulgarities at Becerra.

“The message they expressed to me was very strong: ‘Listen b*tch, your story is over, if you don’t leave Barranca in 48 hours we’ll kill you, and if we can’t, then someone in your family will pay.”

According to the NGO director, “This is a form of intimidation. They destroyed my library, they knocked everything over, the SIJIN [Police intelligence], the DAS [presidential intelligence], the police and the Prosecutor-General’s office [Fiscalía] have all been alerted about this case, as have international human rights organizatons.”

Regarding the case, the Magdalena Medio police commander, Col. Oscar Hernando Torres, said unofficially that he will produce an official communiqué once investigators provide information.
… [Becerra] warned yesterday that the issue of threats in Barrancabermeja “is completely known to the Vice President’s office [which, in Colombia’s government, has responsibility for human rights policy]. Although the government keeps insisting that there are no longer any ’self-defense-groups,’ in Barrancabermeja paramilitarism still has a presence. It must be said, the paras are still existing, the only thing they have done is change their name.”

The OFP alert offers a few clues about the motive behind this serious threat, including this disturbing tie to paramilitary leaders’ confessions as part of the “Justice and Peace” process.

On September 16, 2007, in the city of Medellín, during the confession procedure of paramilitary leader Julián Bolívar, before the Prosecutor-General’s Justice and Peace Unit, he stated:
“Including Señora Yolanda Becerra, sitting in one of the National Police’s armored personnel carriers, went neighborhood by neighborhood pointing out the autodefensas’ guards, whom she knew from back when they were guerrillas.”

“These oeprations you refer to, what did they consist of?”

“They singled us out, they sat in the police armored personnel carriers, and pointed out who were members of the autodefensas.”

It is greatly troubling that the scenario of the confessions for the so-called “Justice and Peace Law,” where the duty of those who have chosen to participate, according to the Constitutional Court, is to tell the whole truth, is turning into a new mechanism to persecute, stigmatize and issue veiled threats against human rights defenders.

Along with hundreds - perhaps thousands - of people all over the world who know and admire Yolanda Becerra, her organization and its courageous work, we are very concerned, and we are watching closely. Ms. Becerra absolutely must be able to continue living and working in Barrancabermeja, with no consequences for herself and her family.
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