Human Rights and Democracy - Official Documents

infrastructure mega-projects. As a result, the Awá were subject to violence, threats,
disappearances, forced displacement and massacres. On 9 November, a judge in
Tumaco sentenced three alleged members of a criminal gang to 52 years in prison
for the massacre in 2009 of 12 members of the Awá community. The victims
included a three-year-old child and an eight-month-old baby. Whilst it is encouraging
that the state is investigating crimes against the Awá and that perpetrators are being
brought to justice, the violence continues. A further four members of the community
were reportedly massacred five days before the verdicts were handed down. Official
data showed that massacres increased by 41% in 2010.
The new Colombian government committed itself to tackling forced displacement
and started work on a new Land and Victims Law which will provide for the restitution
of land to displaced individuals and communities. In advance of the new law the
government began using existing legislation to implement an accelerated restitution
programme, “el plan de choque”, in certain areas of the country. On 17 January
2011 President Santos announced that 121,000 hectares had already been
restituted to 38,000 families. However, a huge challenge remained and there were
fears that violence would increase as beneficiaries began to return to their land.
These fears were realised on 24 November with the brutal murder of Oscar Maussa,
leader of the Blanquicet Farmworkers’ Cooperative and beneficiary of protection
measures granted by the Inter-American Court on Human Rights.
In August, Mr Browne met representatives of Plan International in Cartagena to raise
awareness of the internally displaced population, with a particular focus on the
plights of over 2 million forcibly displaced children in Colombia. Our Embassy, in
coordination with like-minded embassies and international organisations, visited a
number of communities under threat to show solidarity with displaced and threatened
people and draw attention to their plight. In December, an embassy official visited
the Las Camelias humanitarian zone in Urabá to meet representatives of several
displaced communities. On the day of the visit so-called “invaders” arrived to
establish a new settlement on collective land. The “invaders” are allegedly part of a
strategy by powerful economic entities to exploit the communities’ land commercially.
Our embassy representative raised the case with the commander of the army
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