BOGOTA (TrustLaw) - Seventeen years ago, an armed gang chased the Moreno family off their small farm in northwest Colombia at gunpoint.
Now, once again, death is a real risk for people campaigning to return stolen land to the millions of Colombians displaced by illegal armed groups.
In the last 30 years, Colombia's armed groups, mostly right-wing paramilitaries, have snatched an estimated 4 to 6 million hectares of land to use as drug-smuggling corridors, or to pass on to palm oil producers, logging or mining companies for a fee or a cut of the business.
Corrupt notaries falsified deeds, or villagers were forced to sign away title deeds and communal land titles, sometimes at gunpoint, or to sell their land at prices well below market value.
The land grabbing is part of an on-going conflict, dating back to the mid-1960s, whose main players are left-wing guerrillas, right-wing militias initially formed to protect landowners from the guerrillas, national security forces and cocaine cartels.
"Getting back those lands stolen by the paramilitaries is the most dangerous thing a community leader can do," said Jorge Rojas, president of a Bogota-based rights group, the Consultancy for Human Rights and Displacement (CODHES). Land rights activists regularly receive death threats via letters, emails and burial wreaths, he added.
Last month alone, three community leaders campaigning to get land returned were gunned down in Colombia. A total of 37 such land campaigners have been murdered since 2002, according to CODHES.
Most of the right-wing paramilitaries laid down their arms under a 2003 peace deal with the government, prompting thousands of displaced villagers to lodge claims for the return of land stolen from their families.
"When they demobilised, we, local communities, started to come together to claim back what was ours. The government said they would help us and give us money. But we haven't seen a penny or any land returned," said 38-year-old Gustavo Moreno - not his real name - whose family eventually settled in the hillside slums of Medellin, Colombia's second city, after losing their farm.
RED TAPE AND THREATS
People like Moreno face multiple obstacles in recovering their land. Colombia's judicial system is swamped with hundreds of thousands of land claims. Few farmers own land titles, and in some cases land has been bought and sold several times, often through middlemen, making it difficult to determine who the original landowners were.
Juan Rivas, a young lawyer who works for a rights organization, the National Association for Solidarity Assistance (ANDAS), knows only too well how difficult it is for displaced families to get their land back.
Every day, he helps dozens of such families streaming through the offices of ANDAS with their land claims. The organisation receives regular death threats by email signed by paramilitary groups, and during the last decade eight of its members have been killed and several forced into exile.
"My clients are often shooed off by public officials who don't want to help or don't know how to. I've been working on land claims for the past four years and I've never seen any type of reparation being given out by the government, not land or money," said Rivas, as he helped an old woman fill out yet another land claims form.
The government says it is committed to helping displaced villagers recover their land. Twelve special regional land commissions have been set up recently, and some land has been formally handed back to displaced communities, usually to around one hundred families at a time, during high-profile public ceremonies across the country. But that is a drop in the ocean, says Rivas.
"There's a lack of political will," he said. "It's been over six years since the paramilitaries demobilised and only a very small percentage of the land seized has been returned."
IMPUNITY
Moreover, crimes against land rights defenders go unpunished, according to campaigners. "There's little protection for people fighting to reclaim land. No-one ever gets arrested and charged with any crimes," Moreno said.
The government, however, says it is addressing the dangers faced by rights campaigners. It runs a witness protection programme and provides bodyguards and mobile phones to some 215 community leaders who receive constant death threats.
But possibly the biggest problem is the fact that, despite the peace deal, part of Colombia's 31,000 paramilitaries remain active, rights groups say. Some have morphed into criminal gangs bent on maintaining control in their fiefdoms and along cocaine-smuggling routes. And while that lasts, little land will be returned.
"The truth of the matter is that the old paramilitary structures were never totally dismantled even though the paramilitary bosses were extradited and put in jail," said Rojas.
"The middlemen and the proxies of the paramilitaries left behind don't want to give up control of the land. There are vested interests among big landowners and local businessmen not to return land."
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