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Pastors are issued warnings in north; evangelists murdered in southwest. LOS ANGELES, March 18 (Compass Direct News) – Having been sentenced to
die by leftist rebels for holding Christian worship services in 2006, a
pastor in Colombia’s northern department of Arauca took seriously the
death threats that guerrillas issued on Friday (March 13), according to
Christian support organization Open Doors.
The rebels from the National Liberation Army (ELN) phoned a pastor of
Ebenezer Church in Saravena at 5:30 a.m., telling him to meet them at a
site on the Arauca River at 7 a.m. When the pastor, who requested
anonymity, arrived at the landing, the guerrillas took him by canoe to
the other side of the river – into Venezuela – then drove him to a
guerrilla camp some 40 minutes away. For the next three hours, the rebels warned him that area pastors have
three options: cooperate with the revolutionary cause of the guerrillas,
leave or die. They warned him that pastors must not preach to ELN guerrillas – the
Christian message of peace contradicts their military objectives – and
could not support Christian political candidates without their permission. “We do not want pastors and those attending their churches to
participate in politics,” they told the pastor. “We do not want
evangelicals in politics, because you do not support our ideals. We have
nothing in common with evangelicals.” The guerrillas said the ELN does not object to pastors preaching within
church walls, but that the congregation must not talk of politics, war
or peace. Before letting him go, they told him that the ELN will show no
compassion on church members if they continue to disobey those directives. Such threats were not new to the pastor. In 2006, Open Doors sources
said, he and his family had to leave behind the church he pastored in
Fortul village and much of their belongings after guerrillas threatened
to kill him for preaching and leading Christian services in both a home
and a worship building. ELN forces took control of the area in 2007 and quickly declared
Christian worship illegal; by January 2008, the guerrillas had closed
seven churches and prohibited preaching of Christ in rural areas. According to the U.S. Department of State’s International Religious
Freedom Report 2008, the Human Rights Unit of Colombia’s Prosecutor
General’s Office is investigating killings in past years of 14 clergy
members believed to have been targeted because they were outspoken
critics of terrorist organizations. The Presidential Program for Human
Rights reported that nearly all killings of priests by terrorist groups
could be attributed to leftist guerrillas, particularly the FARC. “Catholic and Protestant church leaders noted that killings of religious
leaders in rural communities were generally underreported because of the
communities’ isolation and fear of retribution,” the state department
report notes. “Religious leaders generally chose not to seek government
protection because of their pacifist beliefs and fear of retribution
from terrorist groups.” A human rights organization affiliated with the Mennonite church,
Justicia, Paz y Acción No-violenta (Justapaz), asserted that guerrillas,
former paramilitaries, and new criminal groups equally committed
violence against evangelical church leaders, according to the state
department report. Leftist rebels opposed to Christian peace teachings continue to issue
threats of violence against pastors and Christian leaders in various
parts of Arauca department. On Feb. 28, ELN guerrillas took the pastor
of another church to a guerrilla camp in Venezuela. Upset that pastors
were taking advantage of the presence of the Colombian army to defy the
guerrillas – publicly preaching Christ and using their pulpits for
preaching peace – the rebels accused Christians of not helping with
social projects. “Preach inside churches, but do not let them die – worry how to save
those that are with you,” one guerrilla told the pastor, who requested
anonymity. “We will have to take drastic measures with pastors so they
obey again.” The pastor first had contact with rebels 12 years ago, when Marxist
members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) held him
for several days. In Puerto Jordán, a municipality of Arauquita, last Dec. 9 presumed
leftist rebels gave 40-year-old pastor Rodolfo Almeida eight days to
leave. Open Doors reported that a young man came to his house at 8:30 at
night and asked for his wife. Surprised that stranger would ask for her
at that hour, Almeida asked why he wanted to see her. The young man then
told him that he had eight days to leave town or his life would be
threatened. The stranger refused to tell Almeida what organization he was with. He
only reminded him that he had been warned. The pastor had received
similar threats from ELN rebels in 2007, and by the end of 2008 he and
his wife decided to leave with their three children. Almeida had served
for more than two years as co-pastor of Ebenezer Church in Arauquita. Two unnamed Christian mayors in Arauca have also come under threat from
the guerrillas, and on Feb. 15 a councilman was killed. Since they took
office in January 2008, the mayors of Arauquita and Saravena have been
attacked by ELN rebels several times, according to Open Doors. They have
drawn the ire of the guerrillas because they cannot be bought as their
predecessors were, and they refuse to engage in the rebels’ illegal
activities. “In our lives we have lost the privileges of an ordinary person,” the
mayor of Arauquita told Open Doors. “Now we are military targets. God
brought me here, but sometimes I have wished not to continue, because
being a Christian in a context like this where we live has a very high
price.” Last year, he added, guerrillas killed seven Christians in Arauca
department. “Some of them were public officials, others were leaders or
simply people recognized by their testimony as believers in Christ,” he
said. Open Doors reported that Councilman Francisco Delgadillo, a Christian
who had received threats from the ELN guerrillas, was killed as he
returned to his home on Feb. 15. FARC Territory Across the river, Venezuela serves as a safe haven for the ELN, which
the U.S. Department of State has designated as a terrorist group. With
the approval of Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, the guerrilla forces
use the country as a base from which to move into Colombia’s oil-rich
Arauca department. Although the ELN has been at odds with the Marxist FARC, in Arauca the
two rebel groups co-exist without conflict; from their bases in
Venezuela, according to Open Doors, the two groups amicably share paths
and roads. FARC guerrillas control the southwestern department of Huila, where last
November four Christians were killed. Open Doors reported that all four
belonged to the Alianza Cristiana church of Santana Ramos. Farley Cortés
was killed on Nov. 5 in Plumeros village, Hermes Coronado Granado was
killed on Nov. 8 in Santana Ramos, and 10 days later a married couple,
Dora Lilia Saavedra and Ferney Ledezma, were also killed there. Guerrillas seized Saavedra, 40, and the 35-year-old Ledezma from the
school where Saavedra taught on Nov. 18, bound them on the floor of an
old house and shot them several times. The FARC guerrillas had taken
their three children, ages 3, 5 and 12, along with them and made them
wait at a nearby house within hearing of the shots. The couple, married
for five years, were known for proclaiming Christ in the village that
borders the farm they owned. Their pastor, Hernan Camacho, has moved with his family out of the area
after receiving death threats. The FARC accuses the families of Camacho, his brothers and Saavedra of
refusing to follow its ideology, Pastor Camacho told Open Doors. “[The
guerrillas] say that we, the evangelical ones, are their worst enemy
because we teach the people not to take up weapons,” he said. “They
accuse us of lulling the minds not to claim our rights against the
government … the guerrillas say that it is our fault that the people
prefer to continue with the church and not to join them.” Motives for the killings are still under investigation, but Open Doors
reported that Huila is in a zone historically known for systematic
persecution of the church by guerrillas. In July 2007, pastor Jael Cruz
García, 27, and another pastor, 63-year-old Humberto Méndez Montoya,
were murdered in the village of La Legiosa in northern Huila. In 2002,
two other pastors, Abelardo Londoño and Yesid Ruíz, were shot and killed
in the same area. Having lost three key leaders last year and been pushed out of most
major urban centers by government forces, the FARC has embarked on a
terror campaign to make its presence known in cities, according to The
Christian Science Monitor. In the Huila capital of Neiva, on March 6 a
bomb explosion damaged a hardware store and nearby businesses, according
to the newspaper, and on Jan. 16 suspected FARC rebels were responsible
for a car explosion at a shopping mall.
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