Colombia must dismantle criminal networks, corruption in port city: U.N
MARCH 19, 202112:44 PMUPDATED 5 HOURS AGO
By Luis Jaime Acosta
2 MIN READ
BOGOTA (Reuters) - Colombia must dismantle criminal networks and corruption in the Pacific port city of Buenaventura via its legal system and social investment to reestablish security and guarantee human rights for its residents, a United Nations agency said on Friday.
Buenaventura, with a population of 432,000, is marked by regular clashes between armed groups fighting for control of the country’s main Pacific port and drug trafficking routes, with poverty-stricken civilians getting caught in the middle.
“The violence is destroying the culture and social fabric of the black and indigenous communities who live in the region, who represent more than 90% of the population,” said Juliette de Rivero, representative for the U.N. High Commissioner on Human Rights, in a statement following a trip to the city.
So far this year Buenaventura has seen 41 homicides, 13 forced disappearances, and the forced displacement of more than 8,000 people, on top of threats to local activists and human rights defenders, the U.N. Office for Human Rights in Colombia has found.
More:
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-colombia-conflict/colombia-must-dismantle-criminal-networks-corruption-in-port-city-u-n-idUSKBN2BB236
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Colombian port city where body parts wash up following screams in the dark
This article is more than 6 years old
Despite efforts to demobilise militias in Buenaventura, many ex-fighters still live by the gun in growing bands of torture gangs
Sibylla Brodzinsky in Buenaventura
Sun 12 Oct 2014 12.07 EDT
So many different criminal groups have terrorised the slums of Colombia’s main Pacific port that residents rarely bother to learn the name of the latest clan in control. They simply call the warring gangs los malos or the bad guys.
The rival factions fight for control of some of the poorest neighbourhoods of Buenaventura, a city of 290,000 people that serves as the country’s gateway to the Pacific and handles about half of the country’s cargo. Many of the barrios are major routes for drug trafficking. They also happen to overlap with areas where the government and private investors are planning big infrastructure projects.
The criminals recruit children, extort businesses, force people from their homes and dismember live victims, scattering their remains in the bay or surrounding jungle. Dozens of wooden huts balanced precariously on stilts over the bay have been abandoned by terrorised citizens and taken over by the gangs for use as casas de pique, or chop houses, where they torture and murder their victims.
The chop houses are the most gruesome consequence of a deeply flawed attempt to dismantle rightwing militias, which originally emerged to combat leftwing guerrillas, in collusion with state security forces and drug traffickers. These paramilitary groups were gradually demobilised from 2003, but many former fighters neither went to jail nor joined the reintegration programmes, choosingto by the gun as part of new criminal groups.
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The reasons behind the violence in Buenaventura are not easily pinpointed. Officials say it is all about controlling routes for cocaine, Colombia’s biggest illegal export. Local police say there is some evidence that Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel is trying to take direct control of exports. But community leaders say that while that was largely true a decade ago, it is far less the case today. “They don’t move drug shipments through here any more,” said Valencia.
More:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/12/colombia-violence-torture-gangs-buenaventura
