Bogotá, February 16, 2022.
We, Human Rights Platforms, Coordination Colombia Europe United States, the Colombian Platform for Human Rights, Democracy and Development, the Alliance of Social and Related Organizations, the Patriotic March, the Agrarian, Peasant, Ethnic and Popular Summit and the National Movement of Victims of State Crimes -MOVICE-, warn and denounce the alleged involvement of some members of the security forces in cases of corruption, which allowed criminal groups to act and strengthen themselves, increasing the conflict in the territories, the distrust of society with respect to the military and police institutions, and affecting the foundations of Colombian democracy.
At the beginning of February, some media reported on the arrest of the Army Colonel (r) Róbinson González del Río, allegedly for being part of a criminal structure at the service of a drug trafficking gang operating in the department of Nariño. Subsequently, some audios were revealed that implicated the former commander of the Sixth Army Division, General Jorge Hernando Herrera Díaz, with illegal groups. Likewise, on February 15, a confidential document from the Attorney General’s Office was made public, in which retired General Leonardo Alfonso Barrero Castillo, former commander of the Armed Forces, was investigated for his alleged links with the “Clan del Golfo” under the alias “El Padrino” and mentioned the head of Joint Operations of the Armed Forces, General Wilson Neyhid Chawez Mahecha. According to the Attorney General’s Office, at the time of the events, the latter military officer was in Joint Command No. 2 Southwest, in charge of directing joint operations in Valle del Cauca, and Nariño.
These relationships between Armed Forces and drug trafficking gangs take place in the most violent regions, and where more social leaders are murdered. They also show the reasons why criminal groups, which the government of President Iván Duque and the Attorney General’s Office hold responsible for murdering social leaders, human rights defenders and signatories of the Peace Agreement in the process of reincorporation, are growing exponentially.
In addition to this delicate situation, the current government, through the then Minister of the Interior, Nancy Patricia Gutiérrez, appointed General (R) Leonardo Barrero as the coordinator of the Plan of Opportune Action -PAO-, a plan for the protection of human rights defenders and social leaders. In other words, a military officer associated with criminal groups, which the government itself claims to be the victimizers of social leaders.
At the time, when we learned that the former commander of the Armed Forces had important criminal investigations against him for human rights violations, and despite this, he was serving as coordinator of the Timely Action Plan in the Ministry of the Interior, we publicly denounced such nonsense, which was not only an offense to the victims, but also implied a lack of guarantees for the genuine protection of social leaders. And, we opposed having a former military officer at the head of the prevention and protection policy of the Ministry of the Interior to guarantee the free exercise of the defense of human rights, reasons not listened to by the government who must assume political responsibility for its actions that have contributed to the continuity of the genocide of the social and human rights movement.
These serious facts are compounded by the national government’s refusal to advance in the dismantling of paramilitarism and organized crime through the National Commission for Security Guarantees, created by the Final Peace Agreement.
In view of these facts, it is urgent to advance in the structural reform of the Public Force, addressing among other aspects: truth, justice, reparation, non-repetition, the strengthening of citizen control mechanisms, the purging of the State security bodies, as well as the creation of a special unit in the Attorney General’s Office and the Public Prosecution’s Office to effectively advance in the investigation and prosecution of the alliances of the Military Forces with narco-paramilitary structures, illicit enrichment and corruption, which constitute systematic practices that must be addressed from a macro-criminality perspective.
Likewise, we demand that the competent authorities conduct an exhaustive investigation into the actions of military commanders and their relations with drug trafficking gangs, and that the results be made public. These last two cases are indicative of an underlying and structural problem in the country’s Armed Forces.
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