Raped for speaking out against rape

A Colombian lady who denounced armed corporations for sexually abusing women and women was once abducted with the aid of the militants and subjected to a terrible punishment. Her story illustrates simply how so much vigour lies in the palms of armed guys in Colombia - regardless of a ceasefire by way of the left-wing Farc rebels - and how lawless some constituents of the country stay.
A statuesque Afro-Colombian girl sporting a vibrant turban and free flowing robes hovers over her sufferer and gently prods his stomach.
"where does it damage?" she asks the man who is lying on his back in a room filled with crops and brightly colored posters. She makes use of average treatment created from roots and seeds to heal her sufferers on the Armed clash Victims Centre in a rundown suburb of Bogota.
People come to this state-run sanatorium to share their reports and get some comfort from the struggling they've endured in a battle between left-wing guerrillas and the military, which has lasted for more than half of a century.
Maria, the healer within the turban, is herself improving from a horrible ordeal, which resulted in her being driven from her house.
The market in Quibdo
Like one in every 10 Colombians, she has end up a refugee in her possess nation. Close to seven million humans have been uprooted and more than 220,000 killed due to the fact 1964 when the innovative armed forces of Colombia (Farc), took up hands in opposition to the state to demand social equality and land reform. And despite the fact that the Farc has agreed a ceasefire and there is a hope for an end to the insurgency, other armed agencies, including proper-wing paramilitaries, nonetheless terrorise tremendous areas of the nation.
I climbed into his truck suspecting nothing... Someone pointed a gun at me and pulled a hood over my head"
Maria
At her small flat over a vehicle repairs retailer Maria tells me her story. Six years in the past she was living 400 miles away in Quibdo, capital of the department of Choco, within the west of Colombia, one of the poorest areas of the country the place many of the population is descended from African slaves introduced over by way of Spanish colonisers.
Maria was once a chief in a ladies's crew known as AfroMuPaz which helps households displaced by conflict. She additionally campaigned in opposition to the recruitment of baby soldiers via the many armed groups lively within the vicinity and denounced them for subjecting ladies and women to sexual abuse.
Criss-crossed with rivers and bordering each the Caribbean and Pacific coasts, Choco has long been a battleground for these fighting to manipulate drug-trafficking routes and access to unlawful gold mines, and they've preyed on local females. AfroMuPaz was some of the few organizations talking out in regards to the main issue and calling for it to discontinue.
In July 2010, a person came to peer Maria and mentioned he desired to donate some kid's garments and shoes to her workforce. He offered to take her to a different neighbourhood to collect them.
"So I climbed into his truck suspecting nothing," she says. "however when we began driving out of the town I felt uneasy and requested the place the donation was once. At that point someone pointed a gun at me and pulled a hood over my head."