2 provides a generic regulatory framework to protect the right to property and the cultural identity of the communities of African descent of the Pacific watershed, including the communities of the Jiguamiandó and the Curbaradó, and establishes that, once awarded to a community, the lands for collective use are "inalienable, imprescriptible and may not be embargoed”, and that “the State shall punish and prevent any act of intimidation, segregation, discrimination or racism against the black communities […] and shall ensure that the principles of equality and respect for ethnic and cultural diversity are enforced”; c) For several years, the members of the Communities have been the victims of acts of harassment and violence designed to cause forced displacement from their territory; d) In February 1997, as part of a military operation against the Colombian Armed Revolutionary Forces (FARC), the Army’s Seventeenth Brigade and armed civilians belonging to the United Self Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), caused the displacement of inhabitants of the Bajo Atrato region to the jungle, where they hid for a year and a half; e) Since 2001, the company URAPALMA S.A. has initiated cultivation of the oil palm on approximately 1,500 hectares of the collective land of these communities, with the help of “the perimetric and concentric armed protection of the Army’s Seventeenth Brigade and armed civilians in their factories and seed banks.” The goal of the armed raids and operations in this territory has been to intimidate the members of the Communities, so that they either join in the production of oil palm or evacuate the territory. The company’s preparation of the land in order to expand the crop continues to advance toward the community of Nueva Esperanza, near the place chosen by the members of the Communities to set up their “humanitarian refuge zones.” Moreover, under these circumstances, the cultivation of African palm and the exploitation of the natural resources on the Communities’ territory endanger the lives and survival of these families; f) Between January and October 2001, there were more armed raids that resulted in 13 deaths, the looting of provisions held to provide humanitarian assistance, and the displacement of nine communities that inhabited the basin of the Curbaradó River. In consequence, the original villages were abandoned and the Communities reassembled in five sites near the collective territory of the Jiguamiandó. During a visit in loco in December 2001, the Commission received statements from several members of these Communities; g) In 2002, armed paramilitary activities increased. On September 22, 2002, military units from the Army’s Seventeenth Brigade entered the center of the municipality (corregimiento) of Pavarandó. Members of paramilitary groups who, on September 12, 2001, had stoned and stabbed two persons in Puerto Lleras, and cut the throat of another person, as well as assassinating a disabled peasant and a pregnant woman in Pueblo Nuevo, were recognized among them. On the way to Jiguamiandó, these soldiers detained a group of members of the Communities who were going to Mutatá to buy food and threatened to kill them if they returned to their community. Two of those persons have disappeared;