Colombia says its troopers ‘neutralised’ FARC rebels in Puerto Leguizamo; rights teams say 11 civilians had been killed.
At 6am on the morning of March 28, lots of the Indigenous residents of Puerto Leguizamo hadn’t slept. They had been nonetheless celebrating, persevering with a raucous group get together that had lasted all weekend. Others had been simply waking up, greeting the all-nighters and getting ready a easy breakfast. A gaggle of youngsters performed soccer in a clearing.
Just some hundred metres away, Colombian troopers waited, closely armed and hidden amid thick vegetation. Precisely what occurred subsequent would turn into a degree of competition between all concerned events, go away 11 folks useless and generate a wave of public outrage.
In accordance with a number of survivors who spoke with Al Jazeera, the victims included 16-year-old Brayan Santiago Pama and native Indigenous chief Pablo Panduro Coquinche.
The identical day, President Ivan Duque trumpeted a profitable operation “wherein members of our public forces achieved the neutralisation of 11 members of a FARC dissident group, and the seize of 4 extra criminals in Puerto Leguizamo”.
However witnesses say at the least a few of these killed weren’t rebels in any respect, however somewhat civilians who the military claimed had been guerrillas so as to cowl up a mass homicide.
In a press release, the Group of Indigenous Colombian Amazonian Peoples (OPIAC) alleged that the operation concerned homicides “carried out within the model of false positives … towards the Indigenous inhabitants and its authorities”.
In Colombia, the time period “false positives” conjures up painful recollections of the peak of Colombia’s 50-year civil struggle, wherein greater than 6,400 civilians had been extrajudicially killed by the Colombian navy. A particular court docket final yr confirmed that the killings, which occurred between 2002 and 2008, had been offered by the navy as fight deaths.
The revelations sparked nationwide outrage, comprising certainly one of many focal factors of huge protests that erupted in April 2021, leading to a brutal police crackdown.
Requires investigation
The occasions in Puerto Leguizamo final week have fuelled public anger and set in movement investigations by human rights teams and native media, who've reported that 4 of the victims had been civilians.
4 others who had been arrested through the operation on suspicion of being dissidents from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) had been launched on Wednesday by Colombian authorities, after prosecutors cited an absence of proof to put expenses. United Nations human rights investigators in Colombia have known as for a probe into the navy operation.
Juan Pappier, a senior Americas researcher for Human Rights Watch, stated the stories of civilian deaths had been credible. “We now have proof that 4 of the folks killed seem to have been civilians,” he advised Al Jazeera. “However there are open questions on how they had been killed and what triggered the navy operation.”
Colombian Defence Minister Diego Molano has denied such claims, posting on social media that the operation was professional and together with pictures of weapons he stated had been seized from the “harmless civilians”.
However additional accusations have continued to floor. Gina Vasquez, a neighborhood Indigenous chief who helped the group to analyze what occurred, advised Al Jazeera: “There have been greater than 70 folks current locally when the firefight started. There have been youngsters current; there have been defenceless ladies.”
Coquinche had been making an attempt to flee the scene, and Pama died making an attempt to guard him, Vasquez stated.
Residents of the realm, wherein quite a few armed teams function, didn’t instantly perceive who was attacking them.
A number of witnesses and group investigators who spoke with Al Jazeera described being attacked by armed males whose faces had been coated by black masks, after which by Colombian troopers who fired on residents as they fled.
‘Enraged and shocked’
Oscar Daza, a human rights coordinator with OPIAC, described the operation as “a bloodbath executed by the Colombian navy”. The group is “enraged and shocked by this illegitimate and unlawful operation”, he advised Al Jazeera.
The occasions in Puerto Leguizamo kind half of a bigger sample in Colombia, the place navy forces typically fail to differentiate between civilian populations and native armed teams, Daza added. “They are saying anybody they kill is a terrorist, that we're all guerrillas and criminals. Statements like these are extraordinarily harmful.”
Rodolfo Pama, the daddy of the 16-year-old sufferer, stated his loss was indescribable.
“The Colombian authorities is aware of they did one thing evil,” he advised Al Jazeera. “They killed a minor. You'll be able to’t think about the way it feels. I didn’t lose him to an accident or an sickness; I misplaced him to a navy operation carried out by this authorities.” He echoed requires a full investigation.
Contacted by Al Jazeera for remark, the defence ministry’s media workplace supplied a latest information launch, which defended the operation as authorized and famous that “public forces will cooperate with all investigations”. The workplace declined to elaborate on Molano’s earlier statements in regards to the operation.
“It's irresponsible for the minister of defence to say that everybody killed on this navy operation was a prison,” Pappier stated, whereas cautioning that it was too early for his organisation to state conclusively what occurred.
Daza was much less cautious in his condemnation: “That is what occurs when the nationwide authorities stigmatises Indigenous communities [in conflict zones],” he stated. “They will’t simply arrive, say we're all criminals, and begin taking pictures. In the event that they do that, what's the distinction between them and paramilitary teams?”
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