24 November 2009 | Interviews | Human rights
The most vulnerable
Iván Cepeda, of the Movement of Victims of State Crimes in Colombia
length: 1:35 minutes
Download: MP3 (1.1 Mb)
Ivan Cepeda, from the Movement of Victims of State Crimes of Colombia was persecuted and censured by the state, his father was a leader of the movement Patriotic Union and, as many others, was executed by paramilitaries with ties to state agents.
He participated in the International Meeting for the Humanitarian and Peace Agreement in Colombia, organized in Cali by organizations like the University Students Federation, the National Coordination of Agrarian and Popular Organizations, and the Initiative Colombian Women for Peace.
The meeting was sabotaged by the Colombian intelligence services.
Before the forces of the feared Colombian DAS – infiltrated in the meeting – stormed with the excuse of arresting one of the participants, Cepeda told Real World Radio and other alternative media about the difficulties to fight for the rights of thousands of victims in the country.
“We have to organize because the humanitarian agreement (of exchange of prisoners of the armed conflict) is a step prior to the political solution and peace. That is why we have worked so much for this” says Cepeda, who defines Alvaro Uribe’s administration as fundamentally belligerent.
Cepeda warns about a possible armed conflict with the bordering country Venezuela, as a “historic attack on the Latin American integration”.
