Parties to Colombia conflict raped almost 15,000 women in 2001-09 - study

[Judi Lynn]

Source: AlertNet

Parties to Colombia conflict raped almost 15,000 women in 2001-09 - study
Source: AlertNet
Date: 14 Dec 2010

BOGOTA (AlertNet) – Colombia's armed groups and, to a far lesser extent, its army raped 14,779 women between 2001 and 2009 - or five women a day on average - and forced hundreds more into prostitution, a study has found.

Based on existing data and its own interviews with 2,700 victims of sexual abuse, the report by Intermon Oxfam, a member of international aid group Oxfam, estimates that rebels were responsible for rapes of 12,809 girls and women and the armed forces committed the rest of those crimes during the nine-year period.

"Sexual violence constitutes a common and frequent practice in the context of the armed conflict," Intermon Oxfam said in a statement after the launch of the report earlier this month.

For more than four decades Colombia has been mired in fighting between government troops, leftist rebels, cocaine smugglers and far-right paramilitary militias. The accompanying lawlessness is a key driver of sexual crimes. Armed groups also rape to punish and intimidate enemies and to instill fear among communities.

Read more: http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/rwb.nsf/db900sid/VVOS-8C5R9Z?OpenDocument

[justinaforjustice]

1. Thanks for Posting This, J.L. Too Little is Known About Colombia's Reality.

This article is the first I've read about systemic rape of Colombian women by paramilitaries. It is as horrendous as the thousands of trade unionsts and human rights workers who have been assassinated there.

Here in Venezuela, there are hundreds of thousands of Colombians who were forced to leave their homes to seek refuge due to the invasions of land and violence of the paramilitaries. The posted article reports a heretofore hidden aspect of the extreme violence. This is not just a thing of the past, it is still going on.

In many cases, paramilitaries are working for companies and large land owners, as well as drug traffickers, who use the paramilitaries as their private armies to steal villagers land and to terrify residents into fleeing their homes. The number of people who have been thus displaced runs into the millions.

More and more is being revealed about the connection of former President Uribe and his family to drug trafficking and the use of paramilitaries to steal land. Uribe was a close ally of President Bush, who fed Uribe billions in U.S. taxpayers' money. Thus we were feeding the violence.

One hopes that the current president, Santos, will allow investigations to continue and prosecutions to take place, and that President Obama will not seek to interfer with any prosecutions, as he did in Spain and Germany.

[COLGATE4]

2. Let's not forget the hundreds and thousands of Colombians in

Venezuela 1) for better salaries and living conditions and 2) because of guerrilla activities (i.e. FARC).