Photo: Eltiempo.com
BOGOTA, April 19 (RHC) – The First Senate Commission of Colombia’s Congress this Tuesday approved a proposal to investigate Defense Minister Diego Molano over the murder by the army of 11 civilians presented as dissidents killed.
The event in question took place on March 28th and 29th in the municipality of Puerto Leguízamo, in the department of Putumayo.
According to a witness who told Contagio Radio the details, the soldiers murdered people enjoying a bazaar raising funds for community activities and the army started shooting, killing several and others trying to leave the place, some by land, others jumped into the river.
The troops finished off those who were in the water, paying no attention to the injured, and several of them died in front of the soldiers. One of the victims is indigenous governor Pablo Panduro Coquinche.
According to witnesses, the military attempted to “fix” the crime scene to justify the killings and implanted rifles to ensure the dead belonged to the so-called “border commandos,” but the implanted weapons were not near the bodies of these killed.
On the other hand, the military refused entry to the relatives of the people who were in the community bazaar and tried to hide what was going on, they said.
This massacre has been condemned by political parties, indigenous and social organizations, among others, and yesterday the UN Verification Mission in Colombia called on the relevant authorities to investigate and clarify what happened.
Comunes Party senator Julián Gallo, one of the proponents of bringing the minister to debate political scrutiny, stressed that the “false positives” are not isolated events and reflect a security doctrine in this country.
“We cannot forget what happened in the Alto Remanso village of Puerto Leguízamo in Putumayo, which shows that the false alarms never stopped and never went away. It is painful how our country continues to bleed dry in favor of war in the 21st century,” he said.
He assured that in every scandal of false alarms there has been one constant: governments without social sense, which day after day open the gap of injustice, of inequality, making a gigantic effort so that the dream of building a stable and lasting peace shines through utopian.
“We can no longer even determine what was the most critical phase during which these extrajudicial executions took place, since soldiers, high-ranking officers, politicians and officials were part of this scandal, which was wrongly labeled as false alarms,” he stressed.
In Colombia, false alarms are cases in which members of the national army killed non-belligerent civilians during the armed conflict and passed them off as combat casualties. During Álvaro Uribe’s tenure there is talk of around seven thousand. (source: Latin Press).