Women from an OFP community kitchen in Barrancabermeja [Photo: Sebastian Rötters]
Article published in the special Newsletter '15 years of PBI', October 2009
Manon Schick, volunteer from Switzerland (2003)
Still no convictions five years after the assassination of OFP member Jackeline Rojas’s brother.
«They failed to eliminate me and they killed the only man in my family!» Jesús, Jackeline Rojas’s brother, was assassinated on 3 December 2003. He was a professor in Barrancabermeja; his sister, one of the leaders of the Grassroots Women’s Organisation (OFP), accompanied by PBI on a regular basis. Although the facts remain unclear, the evidence suggests that paramilitaries carried out the assassination 1.
A year after the assassination the police had yet to arrest any suspects. Today, five years later, nobody has been sentenced. Jackeline’s family had already suffered the assassination of two men: «my ex-husband and my father were assassinated by the guerrilla. My father worked as a driver for the military responsible for guarding the oil installations. In Colombia, when you are not on one side, you immediately become the enemy. The government sees us, the OFP, as terrorists because we criticise it»2.
The funeral was dramatic, with hundreds of students in the church crying at the loss of their professor. The whole team in Barrancabermeja accompanied the funeral and as the women of the OFP marched, dressed in black, through the city. They were difficult moments. We were deeply affected by the sadness of Jackeline and her family. It made us feel even more powerless in the face of so much violence. The assassination also served as a further reminder of the danger that women’s rights defenders face every day.
It was very difficult for Jackeline to accept that Jesus died simply because he was the brother of a woman who defended human rights. Jackeline confided in me one year later during a conference tour in Switzerland: «They want to finish us off. They want us to stop fighting. But that is all we know, so we will continue».
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1 CCAJAR communiqué, Bogotá, 11 December 2003
2 «Portrait - Après cinquante ans de guerre», 24 Heures (Swiss journal), 8 December 2004