APG’s Letter for Urgent Action to Protect the Life and Integrity of Uriel Chocué Paja, Nasa Indigenous Governor of Honduras, Cauca.

On December 20, 2024, Americas Policy Group emailed this letter to Columbia’s President Gustavo Petro Urrego. We also cc’d Dr. Ivan Velasquez Gomez (Ministry of Defense) Dr. Angela Maria Buitrago (Ministry of Justice) Dr. Juan Fernando Cristo (Ministry of Interior), Dr. Luz Adriana Camargo Garzon (Office of the Attorney General) and Ambassador Elizabeth Williams (Embassy of Canada in Colombia).

Hon. Gustavo Petro Urrego,
President of the Republic of Colombia

Subject: Urgent Action to Protect the Life and Integrity of Uriel Chocué Paja, Nasa Indigenous Governor of Honduras, Cauca.

Dear President Petro Urrego, 

Please accept greetings from the Americas Policy Group, an alliance of Canadian organizations supporting sustainable development and human rights in the Americas. We write to urge your administration to take action to protect the life and integrity of Mr.  Uriel Chocué Paja, governor of the Nasa Indigenous reservation of Honduras, Cauca, and other threatened members of his community in the face of a recent wave of violence suffered by the Indigenous peoples of Cauca.

Mr. Uriel Chocué Paja was the victim of an attempt on his life on November 6. Two bullets hit the car in which he was travelling, fortunately, neither he nor his companions were wounded. The Indigenous governor has received numerous written and verbal threats from armed groups seeking to control the territory, which have been reported to the respective authorities without investigative results. The attack on the Indigenous governors follows the recent murders of Indigenous teacher Emmanuel Occa, community member Evangelina Quiguana and the ancestral knowledge keeper and traditional doctor Gustavo Taquinas.

The ancestral territory of Honduras is located in the area of operation of the La Salvajina hydroelectric dam, which flooded hundreds of hectares of the collective territory of the reserve, isolated the population and caused immense environmental damage. Due to these facts, the Colombian Constitutional Court issued judgment T-462A of 2014, which declared the rights of the Honduras and Cerro Tijeras reserves to be violated. For these same reasons, the reserve turned to the Inter-American human rights system through individual petitions. Currently, the process is being heard by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights under file number P-2030-18.

Governor Uriel Chocué Paja’s work in defense of the territory, human rights and self-government must be immediately protected. His life and the physical and cultural integrity of the community members of the reserve of Honduras is vital for the sustainability of the self-government and the defense of the mother earth, all of which is the right of the Nasa people.

We urge the Colombian government to take action to protect Mr. Uriel Chocué Paja and the members of the Honduran community in Cauca.

Yours sincerely,

Jessica Farias

Silvia Vasquez Olguin

Co-Chairs, the Americas Policy Group