On the morning of March 28, a commando from the Forces Armed broke into a village in that town located on the border with Ecuador and Peru, in the department of Putumayowhere a three-day fair was held, attended by hundreds of residents.
“As a result of the military operation and the use of lethal force in Alto Remanso (southwest), some 11 people were killed and 5 more were injured,” said Juliette De Rivero.
The army “would have used firearms while 30 to 50 people were in the bazaar, including children and women,” he added.
According to the state ombudsman, the Human Rights Watch (HRW) office and indigenous authorities, among the deceased there could be at least four civilians: a minor, a governor of the Kitcwhwa native people, a community leader and his pregnant wife.
The government of the right-wing Iván Duque and the military commanders defend the operation as “legitimate” and they assure that the dead are dissident rebels of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) who departed from the peace agreement signed with the State in 2016.
The UN recalled that “the intentional use of lethal weapons can only be done when it is strictly unavoidable and with the purpose of protecting life.”
He also urged the authorities to protect witnesses and journalists, the latter threatened for their publications on the case.
The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) asked the State to investigate the facts and avoid “the stigmatization of the victims.”
The operation removed the wounds of the “false positive“, as the biggest scandal of the Colombian military forces is known, which revealed that at least 6,400 civilians were killed and presented as killed guerrillas between 2002 and 2008.
Although the bulk of the FARC guerrillas surrendered their weapons in 2017, dissident cells without a unified command remained active, numbering some 5,200 combatants, mostly new recruits.
Source: Ambito
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