After traveling the entire nation & interviewing over 30,000 people
Signed by Lucía González Duque, commissioner of the Commission for the Clarification of Truth, Coexistence and Non-Repetition, the magazine Cambio publishes a note announcing the commission’s final report. It was created as part of the peace process with the FARC, the world’s oldest guerrilla organization.
This report, says Commissioner González Duque, is not the end of a process. On the contrary, it may be the beginning of a new stage: “We have to strive to build a public ethic based on the true recognition of the dignity of all human beings.”
To achieve this monumental task, the commissioner said, “more than 30,000 people, from all sides” were interviewed.
“[…] as a society and as a nation we are indebted to ourselves and to others, and especially to the most excluded, who have therefore been the main victims of an armed conflict that raged cruelly against the humblest, the peasants, indigenous and Afro-Colombian populations, a reason that perhaps explains why we cared so little or did not care at all. We confirm that the shameful inequity in which we live is a factor in the persistence of the armed conflict. We learned that armed politics have extracted a tremendous toll, taking lives and shutting down democracy. And that the war on drugs feeds the other wars and does not solve the problem.
“This war was waged against civil society: at least 80 percent of the people dead were not killed in combat, they were not armed participants. It was developed fundamentally in territories and on immense layers of the population mostly beyond the reach of the State does not reach and in which rights are not respected, and for this reason, not only the armed groups but also other powers find fertile grounds to expropriate their lands, their property, their lives, without a functioning justice system.
“We have one of the most well-endowed and trained militaries in America, but we have more than 10 million casualties. Before our eyes, more than 8 million hectares were dispossessed, more than 450,000 people were murdered, more than 16,000 children were recruited and more than 120,000 people disappeared, among many other human rights violations and infractions of international humanitarian law. Where were we? is the question.
Click Cambio to read the full note by Commissioner Lucía González Duque.
Before our eyes, more than 8 million hectares were dispossessed, more than 450,000 people were murdered, more than 16,000 children were recruited and more than 120,000 people disappeared, among many other violations of human rights. human rights and breaches of international humanitarian law.
Commissioner Lucía González Duque.
