Via e-mail from Ruta Pacifica:
Ruta Pacifica of Women categorically rejects the threats, the pursuing and the harassment maintained by unknown persons against the indigenous director of the Cauca Aida Quilcue and her family. In December of 2008, her husband Edwin Legarda, was murdered by troops of the National Army attached to the Third Brigade. Now the harassment is aimed at her 12-year-old daughter.Once again, the degradation of the armed conflict in Colombia is apparent. After being confronted with the death of her father only five months ago and the constant threats against the life of her mother, the indigenous child Mayerli Alejandra Legarda Quilcue is the military objective of armed actors in the Cauca.
This minor child, daughter of the former head adviser to the CRIC, Aida Quilcue, was the victim of an assault in her own home in the neighborhood of Clarete de Popayan.
This event demonstrates the constant persecution of which Aida Quilcue has been a victim ever since becoming leader of the Minga Indigena the previous year, when more than 25,000 indigenous women demanded that the State comply with the agreed accords and respect the lives of its leaders and officials, its organizational processes and an end to the threats in their ancestral territories.
Seeing the assault against the child Mayerly, Ruta Pacifica reaffirms that this violent action shows the ignominy of the armed conflict and the total transgression of the rights of the children and women to a life free of violence.
Ruta Pacifica demands that the State offer guarantees of protection for the indigenous leader Aida Quilcue and her family, as well as fulfill the legal mandate of special protection that the State itself must grant to children.
Likewise, we reiterate the necessity for a negotiated solution to the armed conflict, an end to the war and intimidating actions of the groups outside the law, of the Public Force and the State agencies of security.
Ruta Pacifica demands respect for the life of the women who work for human rights and the just cause of the indigenous people in Colombia.
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