Mining Corporations Funding Bolivian Paramilitary, Says Report

Eight delegates representing some 5,000 displaced people, mainly refugees in the northeastern city of Barrancabermeja, met Pastrana to explain the situation they had been suffering for the last two months.

The rural people, from the northern department of Bolivar, said they were forced to leave their homes under threats from paramilitary groups who considered them guerrilla collaborators.

After a two-hour meeting, agreement was reached to start a process to document complaints and proposals from the displaced people.

Pastrana asked the representatives for "a little patience," saying the problem they faced would not be easy to solve.

Internal displacement is one of the main problems caused by the conflict, said Almudena Mazarraza, director of the U.N. High Commission for Refugees office in Colombia.

Various reports state more than a million Colombians have been forced from their homes by war in the last decade.

According to Colombia's Silent Crisisa, a report released in April by the U.S. Committee for Refugees, all of the displaced, mostly women and children, are victims of one or more of the three major armed groups in Colombia -- the military, paramilitary forces which have been linked to the army and the land-owning elite, and the three guerrilla groups.

"Colombia is being ripped apart, its people butchered and uprooted, but sweeping brutal violence associated with multiple conflicts, rampant institutionalized human rights abuse, impunity, and efforts by private groups, including narco-traffickers to expand their economic power and lawlessness," says the report's author, Hiram Ruiz.

While the commission was meeting Pastrana, another 250 displaced people occupied Bolivar Square in Bogota, asking Congress opposite for an audience in order to discuss their situation.

Church authorities ordered that the cathedral, on one side of the square, be closed in order to prevent it from being occupied.

The rural people complained that multinationals running gold mines were responsible for creating and funding the paramilitary groups which expelled them from their homes.

The delegation provided no names, but indicated that U.S. and British companies were backing the paramilitary groups in order to take over the mineral-rich lands of local people by intimidation.

"We have come to Congress to tell the government once more that we have been in this situation for two months and have not been given any attention," said Edgar Quiroga, leader of the displaced people.

Quiroga said the displaced would not leave the capital until minimum security conditions are guaranteed.