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Catalonia will increase its cooperation with the victims of the Colombian conflict
Villavicencio (Colombia), 12 March (EFE).- The President of the Spanish Autonomous Region of Catalonia, Pere Aragonès, announced this Sunday a strengthening of Catalan cooperation with Colombia, focused on peace and the protection of human rights and which he will support by funding the search for victims of enforced disappearances during the armed conflict. Aragonès, who today embarked on a trip to Colombia, the first leg of a tour of South America that also includes Uruguay, Argentina and Chile, initially moved to Villavicencio, capital of the Meta department, in the center of the country and one of the most affected by the conflict . At the Villavicencio Central Cemetery, where 674 unidentified bodies have been found and 70 people have already been exhumed, Aragonès toured the cemetery and heard firsthand the stories of victims of the conflict and families of missing people. Stories like that of Aurelia Pérez, who lost her son in the Guaviare Department 27 years ago and still doesn’t know anything about him, whether he’s alive or dead, or where his body is. The situation is similar with Aider Rubio, mother of three children who were also killed and disappeared in Guaviare during the conflict. “We aspire to a complete, stable and lasting peace, that Villavicencio is the world capital of peace and reconciliation, something that we want to achieve hand in hand with Catalan and Spanish cooperation,” declared the director of the Orlando Fals Borda Collective, César Santoyo, with whom Aragonès met to learn more about his work. In this sense, the Catalan regional president announced that the government is preparing a contribution of 295,000 euros (about 314,000 dollars) for the Unit for Search of Missing Persons (UBPD), in charge of searching and identifying the bodies of the missing victims during the Colombian conflict. “I would like to highlight the admiration that we in Catalonia feel for the then risky, courageous attitude to denounce this situation,” said Aragonès, adding that “in armed conflicts, the victims are always the same, the most vulnerable. ” The UBPD estimates that there are more than 104,537 missing people in the country. The Meta Department has the second highest number of cases, with 8,536 victims. “The Government of Catalonia will continue to accompany this peace process, but above all the people who are victims (… ) Peace cannot be built on oblivion, it must be built on memory, and for memory to exist, it is necessary to recover all the people who have disappeared,” added Aragonès. The Catalan cooperation will also extend the prevention and protection program to human rights defenders, which “will include actors from the local world”, such as the Lleida City Council, and “will further intensify the feminist perspective”, which not only welcomes defenders, but also to their relatives. “SHIELD 0.7%” The Catalan regional president also referred to the government’s intention to shield and respect the United Nations target of allocating 0.7% of the budget to official aid for international development. “This will be our goal for 2030: Catalonia will respect the UN commitments to allocate 0.7% of our budget to cooperation”, which currently stands at 0.2%, according to figures from Catalan Foreign Minister Meritxell Serret. This figure, which “may remain very cold”, is expressed in concrete measures that “have made it possible to recover and identify dozens of people reported missing, murdered during the armed conflict, here in Villavicencio and who now they have a place where they can rest with dignity and where their families can pay homage to them and remember them”, concluded Aragonès. The first day of the Catalan delegation in Colombia ended with a symbolic act of commemoration those who have disappeared during the conflict and with a meeting with human rights defenders who have invoked the Catalan protection program The agenda of the Catalan President will continue on Monday and Tuesday in Bogotá, after which he will travel to Argentina to continue his tour of Latin America, at He worked with former Presidents José Mujica from Uruguay and Michelle Bachelet from Chile, among others wants to meet . It will also take part in various institutional, business, cultural and democratic commemorative events and meetings, the Catalan government said in a statement. Laia Mataix Gómez (c) EFE Agency