FOUR INDIGENOUS KUNA LEADERS ASSASINATED BY COLOMBIAN PARAMILITARIES ON PANAMA BORDER AND TWO US AND ONE CANADIAN REPORTERS KIDNAPPED
Translated by ASEJ/ACERCA From La Prensa, Panama 1/21/03
http://www.prensa.com/hoy/portada/853397.html
Fear and Pain in Paya, Attack Leaves Four Dead
Four Kuna indigenous authorities were assassinated this weekend and two U.S. and one Canadian reporter were kidnapped by a Colombian paramilitary group that attacked the villages of Paya and Pucuro, in the Darien, this past weekend. A group of 150 paramilitaries assassinated the leaders of the Kuna Paya village Ernesto Ayala, mayor; San Pascual Ayala, second mayor, and Luis Enrique MartÃnez, village commissioner. One of the U.S. reporters is Robert Pelton of the Discovery Channel.
According to local witness Luis Caicedo, "We found three corpses chopped up by machetes with bullets in their head in the mountains so we couldn't take the corpses back because the land was still being guarded by the paramilitaries."
Gilberto Vasquez, mayor of Pucuro, was also murdered. His body was found with a bullet in the back of his head inside his house in the village.
This same paramilitary brigade had captured, just hours before, the U.S. Discovery Channel reporter Robert Pelton and two other reporters, Marc Wedever of Canada, and another U.S. journalist that is unidentified.
Translated by ASEJ/ACERCA From La Prensa, Panama 1/21/03
http://www.prensa.com/hoy/portada/853397.html
Fear and Pain in Paya, Attack Leaves Four Dead
Four Kuna indigenous authorities were assassinated this weekend and two U.S. and one Canadian reporter were kidnapped by a Colombian paramilitary group that attacked the villages of Paya and Pucuro, in the Darien, this past weekend. A group of 150 paramilitaries assassinated the leaders of the Kuna Paya village Ernesto Ayala, mayor; San Pascual Ayala, second mayor, and Luis Enrique MartÃnez, village commissioner. One of the U.S. reporters is Robert Pelton of the Discovery Channel.
According to local witness Luis Caicedo, "We found three corpses chopped up by machetes with bullets in their head in the mountains so we couldn't take the corpses back because the land was still being guarded by the paramilitaries."
Gilberto Vasquez, mayor of Pucuro, was also murdered. His body was found with a bullet in the back of his head inside his house in the village.
This same paramilitary brigade had captured, just hours before, the U.S. Discovery Channel reporter Robert Pelton and two other reporters, Marc Wedever of Canada, and another U.S. journalist that is unidentified.