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collective dimension of the problem, knows which people to protect,
understands the geographic limits and the element of belonging to the
Community, as well as the functioning mechanisms;
l)
there has been moving of the inhabitants of the Community to other
areas of the country due to violence; and thus, it has been necessary to start
a process of return of said families to the Community. In this way, there was
a return to La Unión Trail that started with 25 families. Every year, there has
been a return and almost all of them have been done by the Community
itself, without the support of the State, and the results have been successful.
In the case we are now dealing with, a group of inhabitants of the
Municipality of Apartadó chose to exercise their right not to move to their
place of origin, which is a right recognized in International Law and stipulated
in the governing principles of the internal moving collected by the
representative of the Secretary General of the United Nations for internal
movings;
m)
the Commission requested the Court to require the State:
i)
to adopt the necessary measures to repel and neutralize the
paramilitary groups acting in the region, since of the elements of the violence
that has affected the Community is the free, public and open presence of
paramilitary groups, which have been the main harassing elements of the
Community because of its close bond of acting with agents of the Colombian
State;
ii)
to arrange for vigilance of the surrounding area of the
Community of Paz de San José de Apartadó in order to guarantee that no
group will act on the fringe of the law, and particularly, to carry out effective
operations in order to repress the action of paramilitary groups in the region,
and to order the State’s agents to protect the Community of Paz de San José
de Apartadó and not to make any statements or other stigmatization actions
that may endanger said Community;
iii)
to arrange for all means within its reach to carry out effective
investigations of the claimed facts; and particularly, in order to facilitate the
development of the investigations, to separate or suspend from their
positions the State’s agents with respect to which there may be some serious
evidence of complicity with paramilitary groups. Furthermore, to investigate
and timely punish the members of the 17th Brigade of the Army and the
police de Urabá involved in the facts.
On the other hand, that the
investigation be developed by ordinary justice and suspend investigations
through military justice, and that, for the effective development of these
investigations, these be accumulated, so that they are not treated as
fragmented facts as if they were 83 different acts of violence;
iv)
to adopt the physical measures of protection of the Community
of Paz de San José de Apartadó which have been recognized as necessary in
the commitment assumed by the Vice-presidency of the Republic in order to
allow the Community to ask for help, solve emergency situations and prevent
that violent acts from taking place “under the protection of darkness”. These
physical measures are now in the implementation process, and among them
are the supply of short wave radios, repair of the telephone system of the