8. On August 28, 2003, the Commission received a request for precautionary measures to protect the life and physical integrity of Mrs. Yelitze Moreno de Castillo, and her son, Cesar Luís Castillo Moreno. 9. On August 29, 2003, the Commission, in accordance with Article 25(1) of its Rules of Procedure, requested that the State should adopt precautionary measures to protect the lives and physical integrity of the persons named in paragraph 8 of this report. The Commission required that the State: 1. Provide the protection necessary to protect the lives and physical integrity of Yelitze Moreno de Castillo and her son Cesar Luís Castillo Moreno, in accordance with Articles 4 and 5 of the American Convention on Human Rights. 2. Conduct an exhaustive investigation in order to bring to trial and punish those responsible for the death of Joe Castillo González, as well as those who were responsible for seriously wounding his wife and son. 10. On September 26, 2003, the State sent the Commission a report on initial steps taken to comply with the precautionary measures requested, and this was transmitted to the petitioners on October 1 of the same year. III. POSITIONS OF THE PARTIES A. Petitioners 11. The petitioners state that Mr. Joe Castillo worked as the coordinator of the Office of Social Action and Human Rights of the Machiques Apostolic Vicariat. In such office also worked his wife Yelitze Moreno de Castillo. Among other things, they were responsible for providing legal assistance, monitoring, and helping prepare local laws on migration, asylum, and refugee issues; education and training on human rights with the indigenous communities of the Perijá Mountains, and legal assistance for small farmers (campesinos) involved in land recuperation lawsuits. 12. As background to the events surrounding the murder of the human rights activist Joe Castillo and the failed gunshot attack on his wife and son, the petitioners state that one of the main roles carried out by Joe Castillo was to assist persons who were refugees, or seeking asylum, in the frontier area between Venezuela and Colombia. He carried out this work under the aegis of projects run by the Machiques Apostolic Vicariat in the State of Zulia, and by the Regional Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). The petitioners state that in an attempt to protect the rights of asylum seekers, Mr. Castillo had requested precautionary measures from the IACHR on behalf of several persons, some of whom were subsequently murdered by alleged paramilitaries. Furthermore, they state that one of the main problems in the State of Zulia, on which Joe Castillo had also been working, is the issue of ownership and use of land, and the struggle of the campesinos for land. On January 31, 2003, in application of the 2001 Land and Agrarian Development Law, the government issued Decree No. 2,292, which authorized the granting of agrarian permits to farmers occupying public lands for agricultural purposes. They state that the process used for allocating lands was rejected by the previous owners and by the cattle ranching associations and resulted in violence erupting when lands were occupied. They state that during 2003 the levels of tension escalated to a point at which several campesino leaders were killed by hired murderers. 2 2 The petitioners quote a PROVEA report which states that the National Agrarian Coordinating Office reported that 20 campesino leaders were murdered, while CICPC (the Criminal Investigation police) reported that 56 campesinos had been murdered in the States of Zulia, Ampure, Barinas, Guarico, Portuguesa, and Táchira. 2