Latin America News Dispatch

Internally Displaced Indigenous People in Riosucio, Colombia. Photo by Mark Garten.

Colombia, Dispatches

WOLA Announces Second Death Threat From Colombian Paramilitaries For Working With Displaced Peoples

June 18, 2010 By Mike Samras

Internally Displaced Indigenous People in Riosucio, Colombia. Photo by Mark Garten.

WASHINGTON – The Latin America News Dispatch reported on Monday about the status of internally displaced persons in Colombia. Marco Romero, of the Consultancy for Human Rights and Displacement, spoke at the Washington Office on Latin America in Washington last Thursday to raise awareness of these people in Colombia and increase support for a Resolution in the U.S. House of Representatives expressing official support of Colombia’s Constitutional Court.

The Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA) announced in a press release Tuesday that following Romero’s talk, their office received its second death threat since May. The threat is allegedly from the Colombian paramilitary group, “Black Eagles,” and was sent because of WOLA’s work with the internally displaced in Colombia.

In a report released in February, the nongovernmental organization Human Rights Watch identified the Black Eagles as one of several successor groups that have formed since the 2006 demobilization of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC, in Spanish), once the country’s largest paramilitary group.

The email message named WOLA along with 70 Colombian organizations as “military targets” and threatened to “kill and disappear without a trace,” activists involved in the field.

“WOLA will continue to raise the critical plight of more than 4.5 million internally displaced Colombians,” said Gimena Sanchez, Senior Associate at WOLA.

Several of WOLA’s partner organizations were included on the list, including Romero’s Consultancy for Human Rights and Displacement.

Photo: Mark Garten of United Nations Photo @ Flickr.

Mike Samras

About Mike Samras

Mike earned degrees in political science and journalism from the University of Pittsburgh. After graduating from college in 2006, Mike joined the Peace Corp and spent two and half years living and working in El Salvador. He is currently pursuing a master's degree in political management at George Washington University.