The conflict between the Venezuelan Army and armed groups intensifies on the border with Colombia

Displaced Venezuelans arrive in Colombia after the clashes.DANIEL FERNANDO MARTINEZ CERVERA / AFP

Venezuela's border with Colombia, in the Alto Apure region, is a war zone.

The violence worsens when a week of fighting has been completed between the military of the Bolivarian Armed Forces and Colombian irregular groups, made up of alleged members of the dissidents of the former FARC guerrilla.

From Colombia, displaced residents of border towns such as La Victoria and El Ripial have reported robberies in homes by security officials and the execution of four members of a peasant family.

In videos that have circulated on networks these days, combat planes are observed flying over the area, deployment of military vehicles and facilities destroyed by explosions.

The Venezuelan Government has deployed all its military force in the area, together with commissions from the Bolivarian Police Special Action Forces, a security body that has been accused of the murder of the peasant family.

The corporation accumulates a file of abuses and extrajudicial executions that in 2019 led the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, to urge the Maduro government to dissolve it.

In a recording that has been disseminated on social networks these days, Raiza Remolina, niece of the murdered peasants, tells a local journalist that her relatives were taken from their homes on Thursday, located in the July 5 sector of La Victoria, of the Venezuelan side of the border, when they were making searches in the sector, supposedly looking for guerrillas.

“My relatives were taken away and appeared in El Ripial, a little further from where they were.

They appeared lying in the field, uniformed with what the irregular groups use.

They tied a pair of pants to my cousin, they put boots and a gun next to him.

They put guerilla boots on my aunt.

Her husband also and her brother-in-law, "said the young woman in the video.

Other testimonies collected by the deputy of the National Assembly of 2015, Delsa Solórzano and FundaRedes - NGO that has documented the incursion of irregular groups on the border -, in addition to photos disseminated on social networks of the bodies of the peasants, with firearms and a grenade near the hands seem to confirm the story.

Emir Remolina, son of the victims, said in one of the recordings that his mother, Luz Remolina, was a housewife and his father, Emilio Ramírez Villamizar, worked on a farm.

His brother and uncle, also murdered, had no occupation.

He found out what happened when the photo of the corpses ran through WhatsApp groups of neighbors in the area.

After three days of waiting, this Monday the bodies of the Ramírez Remolina family were buried in Arauquita, already in Colombia.

On Sunday, residents of La Victoria and displaced relatives held a protest vigil.

They went through the streets of the municipality with candles, white flags and banners with messages such as “We want to return to our homes”, “We want peace and tranquility”, “Justice for the Ramírez Remolina family”.

The conflict, however, has not stopped.

At dawn on Monday, a new attack with explosives occurred against a Venezuelan military post, according to reports from FundaRedes, an NGO that has documented the presence of irregular groups on the Colombian-Venezuelan border and is providing support to the victims of Apure.

Given the facts, the Venezuelan prosecutor, Tarek William Saab, announced the dispatch to the area of ​​a team of experts from the General Directorate for the Defense of Human Rights and the Criminalistics Unit of the Public Ministry to support the investigations.

"In case of finding evidence of the commission of punishable acts committed by state security officials, the investigation and corresponding sanction will begin," he wrote on his Twitter account on Saturday.

The conflict in Apure has ignited for the umpteenth time the narrative of the war by Chavismo.

In a statement, the foreign policy chief of the Maduro government, Jorge Arreaza, blamed the episode on the Colombian Foreign Ministry, which this week expressed concern about the clashes in Venezuelan territory and the displacement of people that they have generated.

"The abandonment of the borders by the Colombian State is a proven fact, granting a more than tacit consent to the actions of various criminal groups that operate in the area," says the Arreaza text, which also ensures that President Iván Duque , with the support of the United States Southern Command, "they have installed a corridor of illegal activities such as human trafficking, illegal exploitation of minerals and drug trafficking, aimed at financing the instrumentalization of these armed groups against Venezuela."

And he adds: "When they are defeated, these armed groups have used the population as a human shield to flee to Colombia, where they are not persecuted."

Venezuelan Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino also made statements in the same vein this Saturday.

"The incursions into the Venezuelan geographic space should be considered as an aggression sponsored by Iván Duque," he said at a press conference.

"We have seen how, from WhatsApp, the subversives, the irregular and the terrorists have caused psychoterror to the population," he said.

The official gave the part of the operations: “six neutralized terrorists, twenty-seven suspects placed at the order of the Military Court 14 of Control, another twelve detained yesterday and the seizure of weapons, grenades, ammunition, explosives, military clothing, vehicles, drugs and technological equipment with information related to their activities ”.

Meanwhile, in about 15 shelters in the town of Arauquito, a Colombian border municipality, more than 3,000 people have arrived, including Colombians and Venezuelans displaced after the clashes that began last Sunday.

Subscribe here

to the

newsletter

of EL PAÍS México and receive all the informative keys of the current situation of this country