Peace should not cost us our lives
ASIMTRACAMPIC Communique
March 1, 2022
Since our creation in mid-2012, one of our ongoing purposes as a peasant organization that has been victim of Colombia´s socio-political armed conflict has been the struggle for peace with social justice – not the peace of graveyards, which characterizes the Colombian State through its governments that it has historically imposed. Today, when the current government has fulfilled its promise to “tear the Peace Accord to pieces”, giving way to intensification of the armed conflict, we wish to ask the international community and international organizations charged with watching over human rights to intervene to put a stop to this barbarousness against the Colombian people, and particularly the peasants. This, given that we feel totally defenseless and unprotected by the State institutions which should supposedly watch over and protect our lives.
We profoundly reject the threats being committed against our comrade MAYDANY SALCEDO by armed actors present in our territories. On Wednesday, February 11th, 2022, in a meeting with the community, armed men threatened to kill our president.
As the Municipal Association of Peasant Workers of Piamonte Cauca, we express our sincerest solidarity with the family of the leader in the process of reincorporation, JORGE SANTOFIMIO, cowardly assassinated before his family and comrades of the Cooperative (COMUCCON), and we pray for the swift, full recovery of his son. Similarly, we express our solidarity with the family of LORENZO HIDALGO, who was also in the process of reincorporation, assassinated in the rural demarcation Cofania Jardines of Sucumbíos. These assassinations occurred in one of the most militarized departments of the nation, reflecting poorly upon the Public Forces that are more concerned with protecting transnational companies that pillage and destroy the life of our Mother Earth than with safeguarding the life and honor of the people who inhabit this marvelous Amazonian territory.
We profoundly reject the violence which is occurring in the region of Putumayo, Baja Bota Caucana and Cofanía Jardines of Sucumbíos, and we press for a dialogue toward a political solution to this humanitarian crisis that we are experiencing in our territories. We make an urgent call for a Humanitarian Accord, Ceasefire, and End to Hostilities which pillage once and for all the civilian population of this cruel fratricidal war.
Board of Directors
Municipal Association of Peasant Workers of Piamonte Cauca, Colombia (ASIMTRACAMPIC)
Phone: 900-953-7792
Cell: 312-442-1855; 311-812-5003; 322-702-5970
We defend our sovereignty and our “Pacha Mama” (Mother Earth), NOT the transnational corporations that pillage our Natural Resources and Goods.