118 death are being called "act of genocide" by colombian president. Critics say government is responsible for letting things worsen.

Colombian president Andres Pastrana, now almost at the end of his mandate, is calling the latest deaths in the Chocó an act of "genocide" that should investigated by the UN. Since Saturday, when it became evident that innocent children had died in a church after a gas-bomb exploded, Pastrana has been saying that this shows how the Colombian Rebel Armed Forces (FARC) act, and he's been adding emphasis to the fact that these are clearly "terrorists" that should be considered as such; evidently referring to the fact that the European Union, a few days ago, refused to put the FARC and ELN on its list of terrorist groups.

But what Pastrana calls a terrorist attack, looks more like the result of his own unwillingness to respond to a situation that was getting worse since a long time. In fact, as just about all human rights groups that have led investigations into the area say, the new round of combats that ended up with the deaths of 118 people was foreseeable and had been announced by just about everybody who knew what was going on in the Chocó. This is undoubtedly one of the worst massacres of innocent civilians in the whole Colombian war.

The Colombian media has done a lot of coverage of this event, making it a national headline for the past few days.

According to reports, over 50 people have been buried so far and the city of Bojayá reeks of dead bodies. It's almost impossible to live there now and people are walking with disgust trough the streets. A witness said that after the bomb exploded some people were running in the streets with one arm or with their head half open. The local governor of Chocó, Joaquim Palacio, who originates from the city, says he lost almost all the members of his family when the gas-bomb hit the church. He also added that the town had been taken over by paramilitaries and that twice, when he tried to talk to the political authorities of Bojayá, a member of the AUC responded and said "fighting was fierce".

The testimonies of the people living in the area all mention that they have been guessing that something like this was going to happen. Like many massacres in the past, the advance warnings where numerous.

On the 24th of April the "peoples Ombudsman", Eduardo Cifuentes, says he sent a letter urging authorities to react to a situation that was going to lead to a major massacre. "Once there is an alert, the state should be obliged to react" he said during a special TV broadcast on Monday night. The archbishop of Quibdó commented that this situation is due to the lack of the government's presence, that has "totally forgotten them".

Gustavo Bell, the minister of Defense claims there was just no way of acting in the area since the high level of the river, and the unsafe and unclear situation in the combat area, made everything unsafe and unpredictable.
Moreover, he said that since "none of the combatants [paramilitaries and guerillas] respect humanitarian law" --that says that armed groups should not attack civilians or civil society's structures--, half of the soldiers in the Colombian army actually guard bridges and other urban structures, so that there are just not enough soldiers to patrol every part of the country. Bell claims that there was just nothing that the military could do. "When the FARC took over Vigia del Fuerte [next to Bojaya] in 2000, they killed the 9 policemen that where there, along with the mayor, and no civil authority has managed to go back", says the minister of defense.

The executive secretary of the Colombian Federation of Municipalities says that 450 of the later either have no civil authorities or are the center of combats between guerillas and paramilitaries.

Putting emphasis on the fact that a lot of deaths caused by the paramilitaries or by the army go unnoticed, an Amnesty International's spokesperson said that its been getting common to hear about 10 or 25 daily extrajudicial killings ithout anybody acting. He also blamed the government mentioning the fact that "its well known that paramilitary groups have direct links to the military". And he blamed "the inaction of the international community."

During the peace talks that where broken off by the government, the FARC had said that they would stop using the gas-bombs since these were not very precise devices.

The city of Bojayá has been in the middle of the battle for control of the territory ever since the FARC won over some of the territory they had lost. The main issue is the Atrato River, an important commercial route, especially for
drugs and arms.

In 1996 the paramilitaries entered the Chocó and started a major military campaign. Long time a FARC stronghold, for the first time they where set back; this led to a war for the control of the territory that has been going on since. In march 2000, the FARC regained ground and took back the territory they had lost. Now it seems the paramilitaries are attacking again, but at this moment nobody really seems to know who controls what area. Reports say that the FARC control around 100 km along the Atrato River.

The paramilitaries of the AUC appeared in the Chocó after winning major battles over the guerillas in Uraba and Cordoba (on the north cost of Colombia). The AUC actually started out in those departments before opening up fronts in Antioquia, and making it more recently into the southern departments of Valle del Cauca and Cauca, among others. Everywhere they have deployed the same strategy: entering slowly while building a base of support (often local businesses), then taking military and social control of the towns and villages.

The process includes ruthless killings, massacres and disappearances that have been documented.

So far, the Colombian government has been widely criticized for not doing anything against the paramilitaries. This latest event is being showed to the world as proof of the guilt of the guerillas. Yet it should not be forgotten that the military and paramilitary are among the worst human rights offenders in the world and most of their daily killings go unnoticed.

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