Juan Manuel Santos
President of Colombia
Eduardo Montealegre
Attorney General of Colombia
Dear Sirs:
We are deeply concerned for the safety and well-being of Claudia Mabel Palacios of the El Palmar area of Dagua Municipality in the Department of Valle del Cauca. Her son, 19-year old Hafith Rios Palacios, was forcibly disappeared in March 2014. On June 25, a man who called on her mobile phone told her she had eight days to leave the area where she lives. He said “they did not want to see her there anymore” and that she should stop looking for her son if she did not want to suffer a tragedy worse than what had befallen him.
Claudia Mabel Palacios is part of a group of families of people who have been subjected to enforced disappearance in Valle del Cauca. A few days before the threatening phone call, she visited the area of El Palmar where she thought her son might be buried. This may indicate that those responsible for the disappearance of Hafith Rios Palacios are still present, or in control of the area.
This is one of the latest incidents of repeated threats against relatives of leaders from human rights non-governmental organizations (NGOs) who campaign for justice and endeavor to discover the whereabouts of disappeared relatives. As of June 1, 2015 the state’s Unit for Attention and Reparation of Victims (UARIV) had recorded over 45,000 enforced disappearances since 1985.
Because we believe Claudia Mabel Palacios is in serious danger, we strongly urge you to:
- order full and impartial investigations into the threatening phone call of June 25 described above, and take all necessary measures that Claudia Mabel Palacios and her family deem appropriate to guarantee their safety;
- recognize the competence of the Committee on Enforced Disappearances to receive and consider communications on this and other cases from or on behalf of victims or other states parties to the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance;
- ensure that the National Commission for the Search for People Subjected to Enforced Disappearance publishes the results of the implementation of urgent search mechanisms requested by the Office of the Procurator General on January 22 2015.
Sincerely,
Brian J. Stefan Szittai Christine Stonebraker-Martínez
Co-Coordinators
