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SPECIAL REPORTS-
Friday 18 December 2009 |
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VENEZUELA:
Colombian Refugees in Undocumented Limbo
By Humberto Márquez
EL NULA, Venezuela (IPS) - Peasants fleeing
Colombia's armed conflict are still
trickling into Venezuela, joining the
multitude who in the last seven years have
requested refugee status and an identity
document to help them rebuild their lives in
their new country.
One problem is that "we are not out of reach
here of the forces fighting in Colombia,"
Laura (not her real name), a candy seller at
a spot between Guasdualito and El Nula, two
settlements in the border zone with Colombia
in southwestern Venezuela about 650 km from
Caracas, told IPS.
In 2005, Laura and the father of her third
daughter, now five years old, managed a
small restaurant in Vichada, a province in
eastern Colombia near the Orinoco river,
which was then controlled by the leftwing
Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC),
when suddenly the area was overrun by
far-right paramilitary militias.
"Neither side tolerates people having any
connection with the other. That time about
15 people were killed. I came to Venezuela
with my three children, my partner fled and
joined the FARC. We split up. Now he wants
to take our little girl to Colombia: I won't
have it but he's making death threats,
calling me up from a telephone inside
Venezuela," said Laura.
At times when she has gone out to sell
candy, Laura has been accosted by messengers
from the guerrillas and the paramilitaries.
"You never know where the bullet that will
kill you will come from," she says in
distress. She wants to leave the border zone
and go to Portuguesa, 250 km to the north,
to be close to relatives who have lived
there for years.
But she cannot travel. When IPS interviewed
her, permission for herself and her two
younger daughters to go north had been
denied. In contrast, her 18-year-old son,
who wants to study at university, was
granted refugee status. Laura plans to
appeal her case.
Since 2001 when a law on refugees was
passed, until September this year, Venezuela
has granted refugee status to 1,327 people,
who can then get identity documents as
"transient foreigners," said Ricardo Rincón,
the head of the Foreign Ministry's National
Refugee Commission.
There is a backlog of 14,000 pending
applications for refugee status, and over
the first nine months of this year another
2,351 were added. The Commission rules on an
average of 40 cases a month, and between
January and September it approved 183
applications and rejected 221.
The Caracas office of the United Nations
High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)
estimates there are over 200,000 displaced
Colombians in Venezuela who would qualify as
refugee applicants. In the southeastern
plains where Guasdualito and El Nula are
located, there are probably more than
20,000.
In the past 20 years, out of over four
decades of armed conflict in Colombia
between the army, leftwing guerrillas like
the FARC and rightwing paramilitary groups,
some three million people have been forcibly
displaced from their homes.
"The UNHCR and (National Refugee) Commission
take in those who really qualify as
refugees, but our country cannot accept
people who are evading justice or who could
cause trouble," Rincón said.
Angélica Barrera, the Commission's
representative in Guasdualito-El Nula, told
IPS that her office tries to substantiate
applications with detailed statements from
the applicants, but the cases are not
decided locally. Decisions are taken in
Caracas after the government has carried out
further investigations.
Manuel takes a calm attitude toward the
whole procedure. He arrived in El Nula two
years ago. "I raised cattle on a small scale
in Arauca (in northeast Colombia) until the
FARC came and ate all my animals, all of
them! Then they wanted me to wear a uniform,
carry a rifle and join them, but I didn't
want to. So they gave me 12 hours to leave
the area," he told IPS.
When he reached Venezuela he got a job
milking cows. A few months later he brought
over his wife and three children to join
him. "They're still small, they don't go to
school yet. I want get my papers sorted out
so they can study without any problems.
"Here we can eat and live. I'm raising
plantains and cassava on a plot of land. The
soldiers and guards don't bother me, they
can see from my clothes and boots that I'm a
working man," he said.
The case of Pedro, a 57-year-old divorced
man, is quite different. He arrived by
motorbike at the El Nula school, where
officials from the Commission, the UNHCR and
the Jesuit Refugee Service (SJR) are
assisting refugee applicants. They are
working overtime to reach applicants where
they live and make it easier for them to
start the paperwork.
"'Identity document or passport!' they
demand at the checkpoints. I have neither: I
can't get an identity document because all I
have is a paper saying I'm applying for
refugee status, and the consulate won't give
me another passport unless I have a bank
account in Colombia, and how can I open one
there, when I had to flee the country?"
Pedro told IPS.
A small landowner, Pedro had a farm, cattle,
a vehicle and a bank account in Colombia.
The area between Arauca and Casanare, where
he lived, was taken over by the Águilas
Negras (Black Eagles), a mutation of the
paramilitary United Self-Defence Forces of
Colombia (AUC). "In their book, we were all
guerrillas, and we had to flee," he said.
He came to an area close to El Nula and
started to do what he knew best: organise a
farm, raise cattle, market it, sow crops and
sell produce. He got a house, deposited
money in a bank account, and bought a
motorbike.
"But none of this is in my name; it's all
under the names of friends, Colombians or
Venezuelans, whose good faith I am trusting.
I don't even have a driver's licence for the
motorbike, because I need an identity
document to get one. And if I ever have to
leave, for instance because of more trouble
between Colombia and Venezuela, then I'll
lose everything all over again," he
complained.
Tension has frequently arisen between
Colombia and Venezuela as a result of
ideological and political differences, and
in Venezuela this recently led to troop
deployment and restrictions on trade and
civilian movements in border areas.
At army, national guard or police control
points, "they sometimes stop me and ask for
my motorbike documents, and ask me for a
cash 'contribution' in order to let me
through," said Santiago, a Venezuelan who
makes his living from small-scale retailing.
"If that's what they do to a Venezuelan with
his papers in order, imagine what happens to
us," Pedro remarked.
The countryside around El Nula is criss-crossed
with rivers and is rich land for
agriculture, livestock and forestry. The
town itself consists of a few hundred houses
and shops on a handful of streets that soon
peter out into empty fields. There are no
drains, electricity is intermittent and
there are no parks or other places for
family recreation.
A couple of years ago both El Nula and
Guasdualito were frequently the scene of
murders attributed to the opposing sides in
the Colombian conflict. Now and again a
suspicious case still crops up. The
Bolivarian Liberation Forces (FBL), a
Venezuelan guerrilla movement claiming to
support President Hugo Chávez, has also been
active in the area.
"Some young people from this area, out of
immaturity, lack of prospects and tempting
but deceitful offers, have been recruited by
armed Colombian organisations," José Luis, a
community activist, told IPS. "They are won
over by the violence of these groups because
it seems to effectively solve things from
one day to the next."
"Local people in general are welcoming and
tolerant" of the Colombians who arrive here.
"There are no expressions of xenophobia, on
the contrary, they see them as good working
people. The complaints we hear are about red
tape or the authorities, not about the
neighbours," Juan Andrés Quintero, a Jesuit
Refugees Service lawyer, told IPS.
"Also, for years, perhaps for generations,
family ties and bonds of friendship and
trade have been established across the
border rivers, and a shared culture has
grown up based on working the land, and even
the food that is eaten and the music that is
played," Quintero added.
This is the positive side of asylum, as well
as the existence of a law giving refugees
formal protection and participation in
social programmes, such as access to
microcredit from the state People's Bank, or
to make purchases at government subsidised
food markets.
Refugees also have the permanent support of
specialist organisations like the UNHCR, the
Catholic agencies Cáritas and Jesuit Refugee
Service and, most recently, the Hebrew
Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS). |
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