This Monday, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights will issue a virtual statement on the state’s responsibility or non-responsibility for what is seen as the political genocide of members of the UP.
According to a case conducted by Colombia’s transitional justice system, 5,733 people have been killed or disappeared in attacks against this political force.
Of these, 5,195 were members of the UP and 538 did not belong to this political party but were assassinated or disappeared in acts of violence against this group.
The Recognition Chamber of the Special Peace Judiciary found that the violence against the members of the UP was mainly perpetrated by state agents and paramilitaries in a massive, general, systematic and selective manner.
According to the results of the Chamber’s analysis, of the 5,733 victims, 4,616 were murdered and 1,117 were forcibly disappeared.
On December 16, 1993, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights received a petition submitted by the Body for the Defense and Promotion of Human Rights and the Colombian Judicial Commission.
In it, they assert the international responsibility of the Colombian state for multiple and consecutive violations of human rights against members and militants of the political party UP.
The petitioner alleged that the Colombian state was responsible for political reasons for a genocide involving extrajudicial executions, massacres, enforced disappearances and forced evictions, threats, harassment, torture and unjustified criminalization affecting more than 6,000 people.
The UP Party was founded on May 28, 1985 by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of the Colombian People’s Army (FARC-EP) and the Colombian Communist Party as part of a peace proposal based on the La Uribe Agreement between the government of Belisario Betancur and the guerrillas.
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