 Photo courtesy of ASOCBARI |
CUCUTA, Colombia - Bari leaders met with Shayda Naficy from our Washington, D.C. office for a human rights training, following two days of meetings with the National Authority of Indigenous Governments (ONIC), international human rights organizations and government officials regarding ongoing threats to the Bari and their way of life.
The meetings were held to prepare testimony for the Permanent Peoples' Tribunal on the extermination of indigenous peoples, held July 2008 in Atanques, Colombia.
| READ MORE |
| ONIC Prepatory Trial press release (Spanish only) |
| Oil development threatens Bari people |
BOMBING, ELECTROCUTION, DISEASE
Bari leaders spoke of egregious human rights violations which drove them off their land: bombing, attacks, intimidation, and construction of electric fences to restrict access to coveted portions of their land.
They testified that many Bari that were killed by attacks, electrocution, disease, and poisoned food dropped from planes during the early years of the colonization, a harbinger of the infamous 'Law 80' which placed a price on each Bari.
In the 70 years since colonization, the Bari population has dropped dramatically from a population of 16,000 to 3,129.
THE NEW BATTLE
Now, faced by modern technology, increased access to their territory, and reduced numbers, Bari leaders have decided that it is no longer possible to fight for their lands with arrows and spears as they would have in the past.
Bari leaders explained that a new battle is being fought with words, politics and law, a battle being pioneered by Bari youth, guided by the words and visions of their elders. The Bari presented their history of genocide because it is time that their story is told and time for these abuses to come to an end.
HUMAN RIGHTS TRAINING
In order to evaluate the legal options available to address these threats to Bari land, security and survival, Naficy - a human rights specialist with the Center's Washington, D.C. office - and Bari leaders conducted a two-day human rights training.
Naficy led presentations on how to use the Inter-American System of Human Rights to resolve disputes over land and resources, and about Multilateral Development Banks and their internal inspection mechanisms.
Naficy focused on the requirements and procedure for taking a case to the Internal Inspection Mechanism of the Inter-American Development Bank. The mechanism reviews the bank's fulfillment of its own policies and safeguards rather than its compliance with international law, but can still be a useful tool for compelling the bank to review projects with negative impacts.
Bari leaders spoke about the continuing threats to their communities, including oil exploitation and plans to develop a massive open-air coal mine adjacent to their territory. These presentations formed the basis for a dialogue on possible legal recourse and strategies for defending Bari rights and lands from expropriation and harm.
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Human Rights Training in Colombia. Photo courtesy of ONIC
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The Bari people live on lands that lie along the border between Venezuela and Colombia, south of Lake Maracaibo in Venezuela and along the Catatumbo River of North Santander Department in Colombia. The Motilon Bari, as they are known, are part of the Arawak language family which extends from the Caribbean south to Brazil. The Bari are hunters who practice rotational, or slash and burn, agriculture. As late as the early 18th century, their lands encompassed some 25,000 square miles. As with most other indigenous peoples of Colombia, non-Indian settlers encroached upon their land. By the 1980s, they had been restricted to a 1,900 square-mile parcel of land while the rest of their lands had been deforested and turned into pasturage. The population of the Bari has experienced steep losses as well. Their population in the early 18th century was estimated by the Bari at about 16,000 but that dropped sharply to about 1,100 by the middle of the 20th century as massacres and disease took a heavy toll. Their population continued to fall until the mid-1960s to fewer than 1,000. With the demarcation of a reserve, the Bari population stabilized and began to grow. Today, it numbers well over 3,000 people living on less than one-tenth of their former land base. Since oil was discovered in the area in 1904, the Bari have been subjected to repeated incursions by oil companies. The fragile lands upon which they depend for their subsistence lifestyle have suffered degradation and, at times, irreparable harm from hydrocarbon spills.
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