COLOMBIAN CIVILIANS AIDING GUERILLAS SAY PARAMILITARIES WANT THEM DEAD

LA PISTA, Colombia -- A death sentence hangs over this small village of dirt streets and wooden shacks along the banks of the Rio de Oro. The inhabitants know the executioners may arrive at any moment.

"When they come, it is always unexpected," said resident Fredy Quintero, 23. "They want to destroy the village, finish it off."

"They" are the right-wing paramilitary forces vying for control of the Catatumbo River valley, which is governed by the leftist rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces (FARC).

For the past 16 months, these death squads have attacked civilians suspected of aiding the guerrillas in the remote jungle area in northeastern Colombia that borders neighboring Venezuela. As a result, thousands have braved rough terrain to stream across the border.

The exodus underscores how the effects of Colombia's worsening 35-year-old civil war have begun to spill into neighboring countries, despite renewed efforts to start the peace process.

In response, Venezuelan authorities have continually denied the refugees asylum, according to reports from human rights groups and testimony of the victims. It is a policy that has led to the deaths of at least 100 deportees at the hands of paramilitaries, according to FARC commanders, who have been the de facto government in the region for years.

Critics say Venezuela is violating its obligations as a signatory to the U.N. Refugee Protocol of 1967 by refusing asylum to those who have a "well-founded fear of persecution."

Late last month, Quintero and two of his brothers were chatting with La Pista store-owner Henry Hernandez when paracos - a disrespectful term with no particular meaning used by their opponents - shot Hernandez three times in the head.

They also fired at the Quinteros as they sprinted for the safety of the Rio de Oro. The three young men eventually reached the Venezuelan side.

"Those bullet holes you see are from the shots fired at us," Quintero said, pointing to a shack riddled with gunfire. "It is a miracle they didn't kill us."

When the shooting stopped, the paramilitaries, who most villagers say are typically soldiers dressed in civilian garb, rounded up the several hundred remaining La Pista residents - last year there were some 1,000 inhabitants-and gave them an ultimatum.

"They warned us that the next time they came and found stores open for business, the same thing would happen to us as to the man they had just killed," said Maria Teresa Montagu, a 40-year-old store owner.

When the paramilitaries left, Montagu closed her looted store, gathered up her eight children and headed for Venezuela along with 500 others. It was the second time she had crossed the river. Last year, Montagu survived a massacre by paramilitaries in the nearby town of La Gabarra.

Inside Venezuela, she and others were interviewed by representatives of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and Provea, a Caracas-based human rights group. "What we want is a defense of the principle of asylum," said Merida Morales, UNHCR regional representative in Venezuela.

"We want the government to apply a procedure of case-by-case analysis."

Officials of both groups found the refugees fearful for their safety and eager to receive protection from Venezuela. But even though President Hugo Chavez has called Catatumbo a "mini Kosovo," his government has publicly disagreed with the UNHCR that the Colombians should be designated as refugees.

Foreign Minister Jose Vicente Rangel has called them "displaced people in transit"-a term that does not exist in international law. Interior Minister Luis Alfonso Davila has described the UNHCR's description of the Colombians as refugees as an attempt "to justify its presence in the country."

Last year, when nearly 4,000 Colombians from Catatumbo fled across the border, Venezuelan officials said the refugees later returned voluntarily after Colombia agreed to provide them with protection.

But a Provea report says La Pista refugees were "handed over to the (Colombian) authorities without any guarantee for their lives and physical integrity."

Groups such as Provea argue that since many refugees say the Colombian army has done nothing to protect them, and the armed forces have even assisted the paramilitaries' offensive, they will not be safe if they return.

Indeed, in recent months the paramilitaries have terrorized the region, even using machetes to cut their victims into pieces.

"Chango Quintero used to live in that shack," said Aldemar Pinilla, a 25-year-old La Pista farmer. "They chopped him up and threw the pieces in the river. His head floated down to the military base on the Venezuelan side."

When store owner Montagu recently fled to the other side, she encountered the Venezuelan army, whose officers told her to return "because of a law that says no Colombians are allowed"(in Venezuela), she said.

Now back in La Pista, she is trying to sell what she can to get out, but she is running out of options. "What can I do?" she asked. "The paracos kick me out and the (Venezuelan) soldiers send me back. I have nowhere to go."

Martin Gottwald of the UNHCR said, "The concept of voluntary repatriation implies that there are options. On the border, people are often not told that the concept of asylum exists."

At present, all is calm in La Pista after the recent return of FARC forces. Local FARC Commander Ruben Zamora says that since President Hugo Chavez came to power in Venezuela last year, the treatment of Colombians has improved. He said harassment by Venezuelan troops has waned, and refugees are now housed and fed before being loaded onto buses for the short ride home.

Zamora attributes reports of hostility toward refugees to junior officers rather than government policy, and he blames the Colombian government for the deaths of 600 civilians in the Catatumbo region since May of last year.

Zamora predicts that the situation will deteriorate with the implementation of the $7.5 billion Plan Colombia, a U.S.-sponsored initiative to destroy the cocaine industry. He argues that although the initial target of the plan is the country's main coca-growing area along the southern border with Ecuador and Peru, the campaign is bound to reach Catatumbo, where the rebels charge taxes on each pound of harvested coca leaf.

"If Plan Colombia is implemented, up to 60,000 refugees could be heading for Venezuela," from the region alone, he said.