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Violence May Wipe Out Some Colombian Indians - UN |
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| SWITZERLAND: April 26, 2005 | ||
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GENEVA - Some Colombian Indian groups may face extinction because of political violence which is forcing them to flee their ancestral homes, the United Nations refugee agency warned on Friday.
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Fighting between the Colombian army and guerrillas from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, better known as FARC, had caused some 3,500 members of the Nasa people to flee this week from around the southwestern village of Toribio. In the northwestern province of Choco, some 4,000 indigenous Embera people could soon be driven from their homes because of fighting between guerrillas and paramilitary groups in the Bojaya area, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said in a statement. "UNHCR is concerned about the growing impact of forced displacement and violence on the indigenous people of Colombia," it said. "There are even fears that ... some of the smaller and more vulnerable groups and their cultures may disappear as they are driven from their ancestral lands and disperse," it added. Colombia's native peoples have suffered heavily during the country's internal war. Illegal armed groups have killed their leaders and forced young people to join their ranks. Thousands of people are killed every year during Colombia's conflict. According to the National Indigenous Organisation of Colombia (ONIC), more than 20 indigenous leaders have disappeared or been murdered so far this year, the UNHCR said. Although Colombia's one million indigenous people account for only two to three percent of the country's population, they make up as much as eight percent of the some two million internal refugees, or internally displaced.
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REUTERS NEWS SERVICE
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