CRISIS IN COLOMBIA
DIARY OF A HUMAN RIGHTS INVESTIGATION
JANUARY 20, BARRANCABERMEJA:
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Human rights defenders like Régulo Madero tried to prompt action by the Colombian security forces by providing detailed information about the paramilitary advance.
Photo © Robin Kirk/Human Rights Watch, January 2001.
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When we arrived in Barrancabermeja today, we unknowingly walked into another of the hottest spots in Colombia's war. Here, the paramilitaries and guerrillas have taken their battles out of the fields and forests and onto the streets and into the neighborhoods of this city of 300,000.
Régulo Madero, the president of CREDHOS, one of Colombia's most important human rights groups, was receiving calls constantly about a paramilitary attempt to take several streets. First, the report came in that paramilitary fighters were on a certain street and had taken several people hostage. Then, an associate of CREDHOS was reported missing. By lunch, someone had rung this person's cell phone only to have a paramilitary answer it. As we walked with Régulo, hopes were evaporating that this person would be found alive. At 4 p.m., there was good news. The army had finally responded, and had found the CREDHOS colleague bound and tied in a house. The cell phone was next to him, dropped by one of the two paramilitary guards now under arrest. Unfortunately, good news was followed by bad - at least ten other people had perished that night, three murdered after being bound just like the man who survived.
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