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Civilians or guerrillas: doubts about the military operation that left 11 dead in Colombia

2022-04-01T17:43:18.929Z


The Army says it was an operation against FARC dissidents, but the community denounces that it was an extrajudicial execution and the victims were civilians


Photo provided by the Ombudsman of inhabitants meeting with members of the Ombudsman in Puerto Leguízamo (Colombia). Ombudsman (EFE/Ombudsman)

The different versions of an operation by the Colombian Army that left 11 dead in a border town with Ecuador have all eyes on national and international human rights organizations.

The UN, Human Rights Watch, the Ombudsman's Office and the Attorney General's Office have requested an "clarification" of the operation that the Government of Iván Duque presented as a security achievement, but about which there are many doubts.

At the beginning of the week, both Duque and the Minister of Defense, Diego Molano, announced that operations by the Public Force "neutralized 11 members of FARC dissidents and captured four more criminals in Puerto Leguízamo (Putumayo)."

However, voices were quickly raised from the community, located in the south of the country, and from social organizations that assured that the dead were civilians and denounced the event as a "false positive", as extrajudicial executions of civilians are called in Colombia. at the hands of the military.

The Ombudsman's Office joined the alert, confirming that among the 11 people there were several civilians, including recognized social leaders in the community, such as the president of the community action board, Divier Hernández and his wife, Ana María Sarria;

the governor of the indigenous town of El Bajo Remanso, Pablo Panduro Coquinche, and Brayan Pama, 16 years old.

The rest of the names have not been released.

“I was with my son until about 15 minutes before the massacre and he offered me food.

It was a sidewalk festival that took several days to collect money for works and there were people dancing and drinking.

I said goodbye, I went to the farm and when I arrived, I heard the explosion bombs, ”Argemiro Hernández, Divier's father, told EL PAÍS hours after the funeral.

“I immediately took the motor (boat) and returned through the river but the Army already prevented us from passing.

They had more than 60 people detained in the square”, he narrated.

His account coincides with that of other witnesses who speak of the arrival of soldiers "disguised in black", of shooting at close range and weapons placed near the bodies, which recalls the ghost of false positives, the practice that left at least 6,402 civilians killed between 2008 and 2008 in the country.

Mr. Hernández affirms that, after almost eight hours of waiting, he rebelled against the soldiers and accessed the place where his son lay.

“I managed to see him dead and hugged him.

He had shots of grace in the face.

It is an offense that the Government comes to pass them off as if they were guerrilla dissidents”, he denounces.

According to his account, a neighbor who was saved by jumping into the river tried to help Didier's wife, who was also hit by the shots.

“She professed a religion and carried the Bible in her bag.

But instead of her, they put a radio on her,” she said.

While several of the relatives claimed the bodies in different departments in the south of the country, the Government responded to the criticism through Twitter.

Defense Minister Diego Molano released videos showing a group of armed men and insisted: “The operation was not against peasants, but FARC dissidents.

It was not against innocent indigenous people, but drug dealers.

It was not in a bazaar, but against criminals who attacked soldiers,” the minister wrote in response to a tweet from presidential candidate Gustavo Petro, adding a video in which a wounded soldier speaks.

“A war arsenal was seized from the 'innocent civilians'.

grenades, rifles, suppliers, cartridges, among others”, he spread.

It is not the first time that Minister Molano has been in the middle of a scandal over the legitimacy of an operation.

In March 2021, when he had barely been a month, the complaint that the Army had bombed a camp of underage guerrilla dissidents in Guaviare forced him to answer before Congress.

He, who had previously been director of the Colombian Family Welfare Institute (ICBF), justified the operation.

"The discussion here is not about the legitimacy of our security forces to carry out these operations, but how the FARC dissidents continue to recruit these young people and turn them into war machines," he said at the time.

Corruption scandals, illegal espionage of journalists, as well as cases of rape of indigenous girls by soldiers have marked the Army in the current administration.

Also complaints about operations.

Guillermo Botero, the first defense minister of the Duque government, resigned after Senator Roy Barreras revealed that the minister and the Army had concealed the death of eight minors in a bombing against FARC dissidents.

"This week's attack was an indiscriminate attack that violates the norms of International Humanitarian Law, but in addition, Colombians are once again informed as if it were a military success, which is actually a false positive," said Barreras.

Due to these antecedents, the Attorney General's Office has just asked Minister Molano to deliver this Friday a copy of the "operations order", the report on the military deployment in Putumayo and details on the dead, wounded and captured during the operation.

And the UN called on the authorities to "investigate and clarify what happened, guaranteeing rights to due process and access to justice."

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Source: elparis

All news articles on 2022-04-01

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