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

Nuria Tellería and Iñaki Markiegi (Paz y Tercer Mundo-Mundubat)

Spanish aid worker and a clergy member are murdered by paramilitaries during a humanitarian mission in Chocó Department 1.

«The incidents took place on 18 November 1999. The accompaniment commission to the communities in resistance in the Lower Atrato had just carried out the Paz y Tercer Mundo programs in this region. We left by boat from Murindó at 5:30 in the morning […] when we arrived to Las Mercedes, some 45 minutes before Quibdó, it began to rain. During this trip we were surprised there had not been any paramilitary checkpoints. Having passed Las Mercedes we felt calm, since it was the last reference we had of paramilitaries on the river. As we arrived, I sat next to Iñigo and Jorge Luís. Iñigo acted like a winger, giving instructions. I was told he was an old sea hand. I said: Exactly, the sea! Because he doesn’t know anything about rivers. We started to laugh and talked for a bit. Just when we were arriving to Quibdó, we were overwhelmed by a speedboat that suddenly put itself perpendicular to our boat, breaking the wooden bow and expelling Iñigo Egiluz, the PTM delegate, and Father Jorge Luís Mazo, the parish priest from Bellavista, Bojayá»2  –both of whom died.     

An important dimension of the work carried out by Paz y Tercer Mundo (PTM, presently Mundubat) since its arrival to Quibdó in 1998 has been the defence of human rights, especially for Afro-Colombian and indigenous communities, always in coordination with the Dioceses of Quibdó and other Colombian organisations. At the time of the incidents, the work consisted in travelling to different communities and gathering testimonies from the inhabitants of the Middle Atrato. Over the last years, these people had been witnesses to paramilitaries carrying out forced displacement, summary executions, forced disappearances, and restrictions to the circulation of persons and food. Through these reports, PTM wanted to show the reality concealed and distorted by the official media, and which the judicial authorities did not investigate or punish. With the intensification of the violations to their rights, resistance processes emerged and strengthened as the only alternative remaining for the physical, territorial and cultural survival of these people. This is why international solidarity has been –and continues to be- needed as a watchdog to stop the barbarity and horror of paramilitary violence.

In that time, PTM and PBI had met on different occasions and always wished to do more together as they shared many aspects in common. Paradoxically, the first time the organisations jointly carried out a mission was for the International Observation for the murders of Iñigo Egiluz and Jorge Luis Mazo.

The perpetrators of the double murder were the self-defence forces of Carlos Castaño 3, although only the direct perpetrator has been convicted. At this same time, these paramilitary groups also gravely affected the work environment and lives of the NGOs and the communities that had organised themselves as «Peace Communities» in the region of Urabá. «The national and international non-governmental organisations that work in the region of Urabá are on high alert, since they have become a clear objective of the paramilitaries»4. This is the environment in which these paramilitaries also perpetrated several massacres throughout the region, especially in 1999, in the Peace Communities of San José de Apartadó 5 and San Francisco de Asís 6.

1  Jorge Iván Castaño, bishop of Quibdó

2  Witness report 

3  «Son responsables de Muerte de Español», El Tiempo newspaper, 25 November 1999

«Condena Europea por muerte de Cooperante Español», El Tiempo newspaper, 3 December 1999

 4«Alerta Roja para ONG en Urabá», El Tiempo newspaper, April 2000

5 «Paras atacan Comunidad de Paz», El Tiempo newspaper, 6 April 1999

6 «Nuevo Atentado a la Paz», El Espectador newspaper, 9 April 1999