Tribes suffer as ex-militias move in

Colombia’s indigenous tribes are being surrounded and cut off from food supplies by criminal gangs made up of members of right-wing paramilitaries that disbanded under a government peace plan, rights experts said.

To control lucrative cocaine-smuggling routes, new gangs with names like the Black Eagles are blocking access to and from indigenous communities around the country, tribal leaders told a United Nations forum.

More than 31,000 paramilitaries have turned in their guns over the last three years, but the government admits that thousands of former militia fighters have regrouped into drug and extortion gangs.