<\/p>\n
Colombia\u2019s government issued a long awaited public apology on Tuesday for the extrajudicial killings of 19 civilians who were slain by the military and registered as rebel fighters during one of the most violent periods of the nation\u2019s civil war.<\/p>\n
The apology comes as Colombia\u2019s government attempts to make amends with communities affected by decades of armed conflict and broker peace deals with rebel groups that are still fighting the military in rural areas despite a 2016 peace deal between the government and the nation\u2019s largest rebel group.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese (killings) should have never happened,\u201d Defense Minister Iv\u00e1n Vel\u00e1squez said at an event in front of the nation\u2019s congress attended by the victims\u2019 relatives.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe ask you to forgive us for these crimes that embarrass us in front of the world,\u201d Vel\u00e1squez said in a speech. The killings took place between 2004 and 2008 as Colombia\u2019s military intensified its campaign against the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia \u2014 the rebel group that made peace with the government in 2016.<\/p>\n
The killings involved young men from poor neighborhoods who were lured away from their homes with false promises of jobs in other parts of the country. Once they arrived at their destinations, the victims were shot by soldiers who dressed their corpses in camouflage, or placed weapons next to their bodies, and presented them to their superiors as rebels killed in combat in order to secure promotions and vacation time.<\/p>\n
Courts in Colombia have been ordering the government to apologize for these cases \u2013 known here as \u201cfalse positives\u201d — since 2015, as part of a set of reparation measures which also included prison sentences for some of the soldiers and officers involved.<\/p>\n
But the administrations of Presidents Juan Manuel Santos and Iv\u00e1n Duque had skirted around the orders to apologize in public because they were reluctant to recognize that during the nation\u2019s armed conflict the military committed war crimes that were just as serious as those carried out by rebel groups, said Gimena Sanchez, a Colombia expert at the Washington Office on Latin America – a human rights group.<\/p>\n
Sanchez said the recently elected government of Gustavo Petro, Colombia\u2019s first leftist president, has been more willing to collaborate with investigations into war crimes, including those undertaken by the Special Jurisdiction for Peace, a transitional justice system created by the 2016 peace deal.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is incredibly important to the victims families,\u201d Sanchez said. \u201cThose family members had to deal with the stigma of supposedly being family members of guerrillas.\u201d<\/p>\n
According to the Special Jurisdiction for Peace, Colombia\u2019s military committed at least 6,402 extrajudicial killings between 2002 and 2008, as commanders pressured their troops to provide more results on the battlefield, and placed an emphasis on increasing the number of enemy casualties.<\/p>\n
The peace tribunal recently charged a former commander of Colombia\u2019s army for the murders of 130 civilians between 2002 and 2003 in Antioquia province.<\/p>\n
At Tuesday\u2019s event, the mothers, sisters, sons and daughters of the 19 victims were invited to speak.<\/p>\n
Many carried photos of the victims, and wore t-shirts with their names.<\/p>\n
While the relatives thanked Vel\u00e1squez, the defense minister, for attending the event and issuing an apology, most said they were not ready to forgive.<\/p>\n
And they said the ones who should be apologizing to them are the politicians that were leading Colombia when the murders of their relatives occurred, including Santos, who was Colombia\u2019s defense minister between 2006 and 2009.<\/p>\n
\u201cSantos should be the one who shows his face here and asks for forgiveness,\u201d said Florinda Hern\u00e1ndez, whose son Elkin Gustavo Hern\u00e1ndez, was murdered by the military in January of 2008. \u201cWe don\u2019t want this to happen again, and we are still seeking justice for the murders of so many people.\u201d<\/p>\n
Santos apologized to victims of \u201cfalse positives\u201d in 2021, during a hearing with Colombia\u2019s truth commission that was held behind closed doors. The former president said he felt \u201cdeep remorse\u201d for the killings of civilians and added that he led investigations that helped to end the practice.<\/p>\n
Tuesday\u2019s public apology comes as Colombia\u2019s government attempts to broker peace deals with the nation\u2019s remaining rebel groups.<\/p>\n
Elizabeth Dickinson, a Colombia analyst at the International Crisis Group, said the government\u2019s decision to apologize for extrajudicial killings helps the military build trust with communities that have been afflicted by human rights violations.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf we manage to get an agreement with any group what\u2019s going to be key to (sustain) that is the trust that the security forces have with the civilian population,\u201d Dickinson said.<\/p>\n
– AP News<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Colombia\u2019s government issued a long awaited public apology on Tuesday for the extrajudicial killings of 19 civilians who were slain by the military and registered as rebel fighters during one of the most violent periods of the nation\u2019s civil war. The apology comes as Colombia\u2019s government attempts to make amends with communities affected by decades…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":124,"featured_media":8297,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/dims.apnews.com\/dims4\/default\/66ce62e\/2147483647\/strip\/true\/crop\/3735x2490+0+0\/resize\/1440x960!\/format\/webp\/quality\/90\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fassets.apnews.com%2F81%2F46%2F359b460dea4d230cdc4a63b79a08%2F26e361189d4049e0aaa0f7b404bb9c88","fifu_image_alt":"Colombia\u2019s Government Issues Long Awaited Apology for Extrajudicial Killings During Armed Conflict","footnotes":""},"categories":[192],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8294","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-polity-governance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8294","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/124"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8294"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8294\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8296,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8294\/revisions\/8296"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8297"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8294"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8294"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8294"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}