Colombia: Victims Reject Duque’s Statements on Massacres
Relatives of the victims of the massacres that occurred in recent days in Colombia on Sunday rejected the statements of Colombian president, Iván Duque, in which he classified such crimes as “collective homicides” and refused to call them masscres.
“This was a massacre, this was not collective homicide, it was a massacre that they committed against our children, they must come to collaborate with us so that there is truth and justice,” said Álvaro Caicedo, father of one of the minors murdered in the Llano Verde massacre in the Sultana del Valle.
In rejection of the Colombian president’s pronouncement, Caicedo also sent him a message. “You should committ to solving this crime as it should be, we don’t want them to come to make fun of our pain,” Telesur reported.
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Nos duelen los muertos que deja la violencia producto de narcotráfico y terrorismo. Entre 2010 y 2018, nuestro país vivió 189 homicidios colectivos, y entre 2019 y 2020, 34 hechos de esa naturaleza. Seguiremos combatiendo a disidencias FARC, ELN, Clan del Golfo, carteles y otros. pic.twitter.com/r4kA3ComdT
— Iván Duque 🇨🇴 (@IvanDuque) August 22, 2020
President Iván Duque declared on Saturday during a trip to the department of Nariño that the massacres that took place in various regions of the country, which have left more than 30 people dead, are “collective homicides.”
“Many people have said: ‘the massacres returned, the massacres returned’, first let’s talk about the right name: ‘collective homicides’, and sadly it must be accepted as a country, it is not that they returned, it is that these events have sadly not gone away,” Duque said.
Similarly, President Duque compared the massacres that occurred in two years of his government with the eight of his predecessor, Juan Manuel Santos, ignoring the trend of an increasing number of massacres since 2018.
Como va esto, el 7 de agosto de 2022, cuando deje de ser Presidente de la República, Iván Duque dirá que los cientos de líderes sociales y exguerrilleros asesinados, así como las masacres ocurridas desde 2018 son culpa del gobierno de Santos.
— Iván Cepeda Castro (@IvanCepedaCast) August 22, 2020
While the relatives of the deceased are demanding justice, the National Victims Committee described the president’s statements as “absurd” and acknowledged that this type of analysis evidences the alleged responsibility of the State in crimes by action or omission.
“Either he really doesn’t know where he is located or he doesn’t understand anything about the conflict that is happening in this country. It would be very good for the entire Democratic Center [Party] and its caucus to study what is happening in the country, the entire political context because they only say atrocities that not even the most ignorant understand,” said Rosario Montoya, a member of the National Victims’ Table.
Featured image: File photo.
Translation: OT/JRE/EF
