Members of the front line hug during a protest against the government of Iván Duque, in Bogotá, on May 28, 2021. Photo Guillermo Legaria/Getty Images
Julián Barón remembers that he was the youngest in the prison.
At the age of 19, accused of the crimes of conspiracy to commit a crime, assault on a public servant and possession and manufacture of dangerous substances, he arrived at the Santa Rosa de Viterbo prison, in Boyacá, in November of last year.
Months before, he had been one of the visible faces of the social explosion in Paipa.
Colombia had been submerged in a wave of protests and in that region he was one of the leaders.
On August 7, the Minister of Defense, Diego Molano, announced from the Boyacá Bridge that the arrests of several participants in the marches were ready.
A few weeks later, ten police officers raided his house and, in front of his parents, his brothers and his grandmother, took him away.
“It was shocking.
We never imagined that participating in a demonstration was going to land us in jail”,
account by phone, already released.
After three months a judge of second instance considered that there were no reasons to keep him locked up.
But his process is still open and he could face a sentence of up to 30 years.
He tells his story this week, when cases like his entered the agenda of the new Congress.
Parliamentarians from the Historical Pact, the coalition of parties led by Gustavo Petro, joined victims and social leaders to seek the creation of a special commission of congressmen to monitor the processes of young people who were prosecuted for protesting.
Many remain in jail or under house arrest.
There are no clear figures on how many were victims of judicial set-ups during the marches, but the Ombudsman's Office has said that in at least 89 cases the arrests were illegal.
“The government did not want to listen.
We were victims of political persecution, we were unjustly accused and under very serious charges, many innocent people have been imprisoned”, says Barón.
The first line, which faced state repression with Esmad in the streets, was equated by the Government with a criminal group.
And as if it were, he acted against them.
There was never a dialogue and they were persecuted until they were taken to jail.
Along with Julián, six other young people were arrested in the same circumstances in Boyacá.
All of them, after spending months in jail, managed to get the justice to allow them to face the process in freedom.
But in other parts of the country there are many who have not.
For those cases congressmen like Alirio Uribe, Robert Daza or Pedro Suárez Vacca, all of the Historical Pact, look for ways out so that there is not a single young person detained unjustly.
“We have taken the first step, we created an accidental commission to deal with the issue of young people who were arbitrarily detained in the protests.
There is no census of exactly how many there are, but we know that there are more than 300 who are in jail, under house arrest or with arrest warrants against them.
From here we are going to evaluate legal mechanisms that allow them to be released”, explains Uribe.
They are going to move the issue on several fronts.
Uribe is responsible for putting in place a statutory law on the right to social protest as ordered by the Constitutional Court, but so far Congress has not done so.
They also have in their hands the modification of the public order law, in which there would also be room to talk about the victims of judicial persecution.
"There is still no decision and anything that is done will be within the constitutional framework," says the congressman and points to some figures: "Between 2002 and 2019, more than 10,400 young people, between 18 and 25 years old, were prosecuted.
Of those, only 400 were called to trial.
It is necessary to start a process that allows us to review case by case to see in which cases it was an arbitrary measure.”
A young man runs during a protest, on May 28, 2021. JUAN PABLO PINO (AFP)
Pedro Suárez Vacca, representative to the Chamber of the Historical Pact for Boyacá, says that the initial intention as a government party is to guarantee the right to social protest and review the current status of the people who have been detained.
“The crimes for which they are accused do not match the events that occurred.
They are accused of terrorism, damage to another's property, conspiracy to commit a crime.
The State judicially persecuted people who legitimately demonstrated,” says the congressman, who was a criminal judge and obtained the freedom of several captured young people.
According to the Ombudsman's Office, between April 28 and June 3, 2021 there were 12,288 acts of protest, which left all kinds of victims.
In addition to the legal proceedings, at least the young people suffered attacks that marked them forever.
Gareth Sella lost the sight of one of his eyes due to a shot by Esmad when they participated in a march against police violence in February 2021. His case was one of more than 100 eye injuries that were recorded during the social outbreak of the year past, and his presence in the national debate against police abuse led him to give a speech before Congress denouncing state brutality.
“Today, they [the Police] are accomplices of the government.
The people have woken up, and even if they take their eyes off us, we see their State crimes”, he said in March 2021 before Congress.
This week he returned to the Capitol, but this time on the side of the elected government, in a session to create the commission to help young detainees.
With the arrival of Petro to power, the search for justice was reactivated, a lost effort during the government of Iván Duque who did not recognize, despite reports from international organizations, that there was excessive force and police abuse in his response to the protest.
The campaign
Not one more day,
of which Sella is a part, seeks to remove from silence the cases of young people prosecuted and demand their freedom.
“That they be free from their criminal proceedings as well.
Free and
acquitted
”, he points out.
He is optimistic with the arrival of the Petro Government.
“It is great to find the political will to support the youth, to support the social movement and to give it the value that it should have been given, and that is change.
This change owes a lot to the youth, the way to respond correctly is to give them a dignified life, not just get them out of prison”.
Human rights defender Érika Prieto says that the idea of proposing a release should be taken with caution.
“These are criminal alternative scenarios within the framework of an ordinary law in Congress, which is not only to forgive and forget, but also to recognize a fault on the part of the State.
It is not sought, as has been mistakenly said, a submission to justice or an amnesty as forms of release.
Before any outing, says Prieto, it is necessary to see how many and in what conditions the young people are prosecuted.
Neither Inpec, nor the Police, nor the Ministry of Defense have responded, says the defender, to requests to resolve these doubts.
Prieto believes that the will of the government on this issue will be measured precisely in the message of urgency that it gives to the processing of a law that benefits young detainees.
“We will see what the government is up to and how much it is willing to fight for the freedom of these boys.
Without them, Gustavo Petro would not be president”, he says.
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