Bogota Colombia – Practically twenty years after the Colombian military killed her 19-year-old son, Beatriz Mendez heard the phrases she had lengthy waited for.
Protection Minister Ivan Velasquez publicly apologized on Tuesday for the extrajudicial killing of 19 civilians, together with Mendez’s son and nephew, clearing their names of any wrongdoing and acknowledging the state’s accountability for his or her deaths.
“We come to express regret,” Velasquez mentioned. “We all know that it’s troublesome to acquire forgiveness nowadays as a result of the state has tried to cover the reality.”
President Gustavo Petro and armed forces chief Luis Ospina Gutierrez additionally apologized. It was the primary time the state admitted its function within the scandal, generally known as the ‘false positives’ case.
The time period describes a army follow of killing civilians and portraying them as rebels in Colombia’s decades-long inside battle to extend the variety of fight killings for which troopers can declare.
These statistics, in flip, allowed the army to say that the tide was turning within the conflict in opposition to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the biggest insurgent group on the time.
Mendez’s son, Weimar Castro Mendez, and her cousin, Edwar Rincon Mendez, had been final seen on June 21, 2004. They disappeared from the impoverished neighborhood the place they lived in southern Bogota whereas strolling with a buddy .
Two days later, the Mendez household heard from a radio broadcast that the army had recognized the 2 younger males as insurgent fighters killed within the battle.
Mendez, who had been in a close-by rural city on the time of the disappearances, arrived in Bogota and located her son and nephew in a coffin. Their our bodies, wearing blood-stained insurgent clothes, had been riddled with dozens of bullets. The corneas of her son’s eyes had been eliminated.
“It was horrible, like one thing out of a horror film,” Mendez mentioned.
Their grotesque deaths marked just the start of Mendez’s trials. After reporting the crime and sending letters begging for justice to then-President Alvaro Uribe and his Protection Ministry, nameless callers flooded her cellphone with loss of life threats, forcing her into hiding for 5 years.
Specialists estimate that the 19 killings acknowledged this week are simply the tip of the iceberg: a small fraction of the deaths for which the federal government is accountable.
Not less than 6,402 civilians had been extrajudicially killed between 2002 and 2008 alone, in line with the Particular Peace Jurisdiction (JEP), a tribunal created below the 2016 peace deal between the FARC and the federal government.
Lots of the victims had been poor rural farmers or younger males from cities lured to distant areas with job presents.
The JEP has investigated greater than 3,500 army members for crimes linked to the killings, however human rights activists imagine the deaths signify a broader, institutional failure.
“The state has an obligation to ensure human rights. If these rights are violated, even when there isn’t any direct accountability, there’s a accountability for the truth that we failed to stop the occasions and shield the rights of residents,” mentioned Maria Camila Moreno, director of the Worldwide Court docket for Transitional Justice. ICTJ), a non-profit group dedicated to pursuing accountability for mass human rights violations.
Nonetheless, that perception has sparked controversy in Colombia, the place right-wing politicians have pushed again on the concept that the crimes had been systematic and ordered by military commanders.
Colombian courts have ordered earlier governments to concern formal apologies as a part of reparations to victims. However former President Ivan Duque refused to conform, mentioned Pilar Castillo, director of AsociaciĂłn Minga, a bunch that gives authorized illustration to victims of extrajudicial killings.
Duque’s inaction displays a broader tradition of denial, Castillo added.
“In reality, the Duque authorities didn’t have the political will to adjust to the rulings as a result of this is able to have meant that the extrajudicial killings had been a prison follow inside the armed forces,” she mentioned.
She identified that the Duque authorities was not alone in avoiding accountability: the governments of President Uribe and his successor Juan Manuel Santos additionally denied that extrajudicial killings had been a systemic downside within the army.
As an alternative, the governments argued that the instances had been remoted, a story that has been refuted by the JEP however nonetheless circulates in right-wing sectors, mentioned Moreno, the ICTJ director.
Nonetheless, throughout JEP hearings, army officers testified that state insurance policies and stress from superiors motivated the crimes. Extrajudicial killings elevated in 2005 when the Protection Division introduced a directive rewarding army members with holidays, promotions and bonuses for fight killings.
Officers additionally informed the JEP that former Colombian army basic Mario Montoya ordered troopers to prioritize killings over seize.
The JEP has to date indicted three generals, together with Montoya, who’s accused of the extrajudicial killing of 130 civilians throughout his time as commander of the Fourth Brigade, from 2002 to 2003.
In September, retired Normal Henry Torres Escalante publicly admitted to ordering extrajudicial killings and obstructing the investigation into the crimes.
In the course of the public occasion on Tuesday, family of the 19 victims gave emotional testimonies on stage in entrance of prime army personnel. Some refused to simply accept the state’s apology, and others cursed on the nation’s armed forces.
Some referred to as on former presidents Uribe and Santos – who served as his predecessor’s protection minister – to additionally publicly apologize.
Santos, who acquired the Nobel Peace Prize for ushering in a peace take care of the FARC throughout his presidency, apologized to the victims in 2021, however his assertion was made throughout a closed-door listening to. He informed native media he was not invited to Tuesday’s public occasion.
On Wednesday, Uribe denied that his authorities was answerable for the crimes, with out mentioning the potential of a public apology.
Castillo, the director of AsociaciĂłn Minga, mentioned Tuesday’s formal apology was a precedence for the victims’ households as a result of prime officers, together with Uribe and Santos, had denied the killings or justified the army’s actions when the scandal broke in 2008 first broke out.
For instance, some victims have been accused of being criminals to downplay their deaths, in line with households and rights advocates.
Mendez, who fought for practically twenty years to show her son’s innocence, mentioned her little one had by no means been concerned in prison exercise. On the time of his loss of life, he had just lately graduated from highschool and was striving to discover a job to supply for his household.
She sees Tuesday’s apology from Protection Secretary Velasquez as the results of her battle — and that of hundreds of others.
“We’ve proven that the whole lot we have now carried out for our sons has not been in useless,” she mentioned.
