BOGOTA, Feb 26 (IPS) - Six months after human rights defender Julio Avella was put behind bars, a prosecutor reviewing the case threw out the charges against him, which were based on the testimony of former guerrillas and police and army reports, on the grounds that they were "contradictory, incoherent, inconsistent and illogical."
"Washington, D.C., February 24, 2009 — The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) condemns the murder of Raúl Lucas Lucía and Manuel Ponce Rosas, defenders of the rights of indigenous people in the State of Guerrero, Mexico, and urges the authorities to investigate and punish those responsible.
New York and Bogotá - Malicious criminal investigations by prosecutors are endangering Colombian human rights defenders and undermining their work, according to a new report by a leading human rights organization, Human Rights First.
"Manuel Ponce Rosas and Raúl Lucas Lucía were abducted on 13 February in Ayutla de los Libres municipality, Guerrero State by armed men who local human rights organizations believe may be connected to the authorities. Their whereabouts remain unknown and Amnesty International is concerned that they may have been subjected to forced disappearance.
Campesino leaders from various organisations (CUC, CNOC, Waquib Aquib Kei, CLOC and Via Campesina), in a press conference in the offices of the Committee of Campesino Unity of Coatepeque, strongly denounced the murder of the lawyer and defender of street traders, Armando Donaldo Sanchez.
For Afro-Colombians evicted from their land in north-western Colombia and along the Pacific coast, the loss of familiar surroundings of lush jungle and rugged mountains can be devastating.
Take Yajaira, a slender 18-year-old, one of four children whose family was displaced from a settlement in the Cacarica river basin just south of Colombia's border with Panama.