Drug fighting drives 270,000 Colombian from homes

[AlphaCentauri]

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) — Human rights activists say armed groups forced at least 270,000 Colombians to flee their homes in the first half of this year.

The director of Bogota's CODHES human rights group says leftist guerrillas, right-wing paramilitaries and drug traffickers are pushing people from their homes as they fight over land to grow cocaine.

CODHES director Jorge Rojas said Tuesday that 41 percent more Colombians were displaced this year than in the first half of 2007.

About 3 million Colombians have been forced from their homes since the 1980s.

According to the U.N., that gives Colombia the second-highest number of internally displaced citizens after Sudan
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5hXvAco3JHqkGtayBWfSPNKxNv_ggD93H91481

[Judi Lynn]

1. THREE MILLION people driven from their homes in almost 30 years. Horrid. Hideous.

They couldn't have done it without the death squads, either.

Hope we live long enough to see it all blow up in their faces.

2nd largest humanitarian disaster in the world, outside Sudan, and our own media can't be bothered to revel in it, since Colombia is a little fascist feudal state just entering the phase already repudiated by Argentina and Chile and Brazil, Uruguay, and Paraguay, etc.

[Bacchus39]

2. "2nd largest humanitarian disaster in the world"

not quite. perhaps one of the reasons the media doesn't bother to revel in it is because there is no where near the level of human suffering and abject poverty of a place like Sudan. Or Haiti, or Bangladesh, or Bolivia or Guatemala even Peru for that matter.
I keep hearing about these innumerable "displaced" in Colombia but I believe it simply means people have moved away. There are no massive refugee camps in Colombia as in many parts of Africa, or Colombians waiting and begging for the next UN relief shipment.

of course I don't blame you for thinking of refugee camps or Save the Children videos since you don't have any context of the situation in Colombia.

[EFerrari]

3. Amy reported this story today. I think we're going to be hearing more

soon about these poor people. It's probable that many executions have gone uncounted simply because the displacement obscures them. :(