Скачать или смотреть Catatumbo Resiste: Colombian Farmers Demand Their Rights

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June 2013: In northeast Colombia, thousands of small-scale farmers are calling for greater investment and economic justice from a government they say has abandoned them. Among their demands are social investments, security from paramilitary forces, and the ability to continue to plant coca crops.

While the state has recently engaged in a major coca eradication campaign in the Norte de Santander region, farmers say they are being stripped of their land and livelihood. This has been a nationwide struggle for poor farmers in major coca-producing zones.

In the Catatumbo region of Norte de Santander, activists say the government, which signed a free trade agreement (FTA) with the United States last year, is interested in giving over their farmland to multinational companies for use in palm production and resource extraction. It is these battles over land appropriation that has driven decades of violence in Colombia's hinterlands, and the community of Catatumbo has found itself in the middle of the bloody conflict.

Catatumbo's farmers began demonstrating in early June, calling for a semi-autonomous agricultural zone where they can cultivate coca and other crops free of harassment from police and paramilitary forces, as well as investments in education, healthcare, and housing. The rallies multiplied after news that riot police shot and killed two protesters early this week. Citizen, advocacy, and alternative media such as Prensa Rural have documented the protests, the violent police response, and the demands of the campesinos. Thousands of farmers and other Colombians have joined in solidarity, as we see in a video of a solidarity protest in Bogotá.

The campesinos of the region have a long history of injustice and poverty resulting from armed conflict. Paramilitaries, guerrilla forces, and the army have battled for the past ten years, damaging the local infrastructure and leaving thousands of innocents dead. In the ten months before the signing of the FTA last year, approximately 100 labor and human rights activists were murdered by paramilitaries and death squads due to their opposition.

FOR MORE INFORMATION:
Bernama
"Protests Worsen in Northern Colombia"
http://bit.ly/18g8adE

El Colombiano
"En El Catatumbo protestan contra el abandon y el olvido"
http://bit.ly/1a9sRZs

KienyKe
"La coca es lo único rentable en el Catatumbo"
http://bit.ly/16xbwVF

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