Osiris Bayther (left) with the British volunteer Tessa Mackenzie

Article published in the special Newsletter '15 years of PBI', October 2009

Xabier Zabala Bengoetxea, volunteer from the Basque Country (1994-6)

In the early 90`s the paramilitary pressure intensifies and many human rights defenders seek exile abroad.

Barrancabermeja was experiencing a relatively calm period; one could now say it was the calm before the storm. It was a city with an established equilibrium.  This included a well-defined boundary between the neighbourhoods in the East and the rest of the city, a boundary that separated much more than just districts. Within this context it was difficult to define the work of accompaniment.   Human rights workers didn’t feel the risk. They even made jokes about our impatience to define the work.

We accompanied the Regional Corporation for the Defence of Human Rights (CREDHOS) in their office, as well as accompanying its president Osiris Bayther and the human rights promoters in their trips to Yondó, El Centro and Cantagallo. We had a relationship with the OFP in which we shared analysis, undertook ad hoc accompaniments of young people from the neighbourhoods in the east of the city and sometimes we accompanied them to the municipalities. With the Human Rights Committee of Sabana de Torres, which belonged to CREDHOS, we reached agreements on visits and we travelled to the more remote villages in this municipality, confirming violations of human rights and international humanitarian law by the Los Güanes counter-guerrilla battalion; we witnessed how the paramilitaries would occupy the territory straight afterwards; we witnessed their arrival in Sabana Torres, Yondó and Cantagallo, and we witnessed the siege tightening its grip on Barrancabermeja.