Declassified U.S. Evidence Fortifies Truth Commission’s Findings and Recommendations
Edited by Michael Evans
Bogotá, 28 June 2022 – Today, Colombia’s Truth Commission wraps up three-and-a-half years of work with the launch of its report on the causes and consequences of Colombia’s conflict. The publication of the Commission’s findings and recommendations is an important step forward in guaranteeing the rights of victims and of Colombian society to know the truth about what happened, to build a foundation for coexistence among Colombians, and to ensure that such a conflict is never repeated.
The Commission for Clarification of the Truth, Coexistence and Non-Repetition (CEV) was established as a direct result of the 2016 peace accords reached between the Colombian government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the country’s largest rebel group.
The Commission’s report makes sweeping recommendations about the role of Colombia’s security forces, denouncing the concept of the “internal enemy” and the systematic victimization of Colombia’s political left. The report also condemns decades of punitive counternarcotics programs pushed and backed by the U.S. and that the Commission says aggravated the conflict. The report is especially critical of Plan Colombia, the multibillion-dollar U.S. aid package that radically transformed the U.S. role in the conflict from one nominally limited to counternarcotics activities to one in which U.S. assistance and personnel were involved in a wide array of sensitive counterinsurgency missions. These included the protection of Colombia’s energy sector, the training and equipping of specialized military and police units, and highly sensitive operations to capture and kill leaders of insurgent, paramilitary and narcotrafficking groups.
Records consulted by the Commission illustrate how the Plan Colombia period corresponded with a general escalation in Colombia’s internal conflict, the weakening of the FARC’s position on the battlefield, the demobilization of thousands of paramilitary members, and the extradition of hundreds of alleged narcotraffickers under President Álvaro Uribe. These outcomes coincided with an escalation in human rights violations and abuses of power, including the murder by the Colombian Armed Forces of some 6,400 civilians from 2002-2008, during the height of the so-called “false positives” scandal, and the illegal surveillance of perceived political enemies by the DAS civilian intelligence service (…)
Para seguir leyendo: https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/colombia/2022-06-28/there-future-if-there-truth-colombias-truth-commission-launches?eType=EmailBlastContent&eId=dcccb233-01b7-4689-89f5-97bcd349f18e
Este sitio forma parte de un proyecto destinado a integrar y difundir recursos de información sobre la violencia política en América Latina y el Caribe.