Human Rights Watch recently released a new report about the current rise of paramilitary successor groups. This report has made news here in Colombia. Here in The Magdalena Region we have been documenting this rise. regularly, we hear reports of these groups working in barrancabermeja and in the country side. According to Observatorio de Paz Integal, Last year, there was 35 death threats in the city of Barrancabermeja. There are typically three types of threats, 1)Announcing of presence, 2) Declaration of Social Cleansing campaign, and 3) and a death threat against political activist. The photo here is of a death threat placed in January of this year. All this to say, that these Paramilitary are present here in the region threatening people and killing people.
Here is the full pdf report: http://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/reports/colombia0210webwcover_0.pdf
The report documents multiple examples of successor group abuses, including the following:
* While a human rights defender was providing assistance to a victim of the paramilitaries at the victim's home in Antioquia, members of a successor group calling themselves the Black Eagles broke into the house, raped both women, and warned the rights defender to stop doing human rights work. She eventually had to flee town due to continued threats from the group.
* More than 40 people from the Pablo Escobar neighborhood of Medellín were forced to flee their homes between late 2008 and early 2009 as a result of killings and threats by the local armed group, which is partly made up of demobilized paramilitaries.
* In the southern border state of Nariño, most residents in three communities in the coastal municipality of Satinga were displaced after one of the successor groups (then using the name Autodefensas Campesinas de Nariño, or Peasant Self Defense Forces of Nariño) went into one of the towns, killed two young men, and reportedly caused the forced disappearance of a third.
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