NewsLatin AmericaTransitional justice opens a new case to investigate crimes against ethnic peoples

Transitional justice opens a new case to investigate crimes against ethnic peoples

The Special Jurisdiction for Peace announced today the opening of a case to investigate crimes against indigenous peoples.JEP

“Today is a very important day in the history of the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP). It is the first time that, at the national level, it will be possible to investigate crimes against ethnic peoples and territories and recognize the differential, massive impact that the conflict had on them.” This is how the president of the transitional justice system, Judge Eduardo Cifuentes, announced the opening of the new Case 09, the macro-investigation into non-amnestiable crimes committed against Ethnic Peoples and Territories during the armed conflict.

Those investigated will be the former members of the extinct FARC, members of the public force, and other State agents and civilian third parties who have participated in these crimes. In the midst of an unprecedented indigenous ritual also in this court, created in the peace agreements with the FARC, it was learned that the provisional universe of this case is 1,350,181 victims of ethnic origin, a figure that speaks of the enormous effects against indigenous communities in the armed conflict. The preliminary data is based on the reports of 976 reports delivered by ethnic, human rights organizations and state entities.

The macrocase will focus on 4 territories, where 375,967 victims have been identified. One of the most affected was the region of Buenaventura, Dagua and the Middle Pacific. The rest are the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta and its adjacent areas; the Amazon and Orinoquia; and Choco, specifically in the Middle Atrato area.

The JEP had recently opened a macro-case -as these great processes are known- to investigate all the crimes committed by military and paramilitary alliances. There is also one on the taking of hostages and other serious deprivations of liberty committed by the FARC; the so-called “false positives”, killings of civilians to pass them off as combat casualties; one on the genocide of members of the left-wing Patriotic Union party, and three more on all the crimes committed in the context of the armed conflict in regions particularly hard hit by it. The opening of a macro case on sexual violence and other crimes motivated by the gender, sex, orientation or gender identity of the victim is still pending.

Patterns of crime against indigenous people

“The fact with the most documented victims is forced displacement, followed by homicide and forced disappearance,” explained the president of the Recognition Chamber and magistrate of indigenous origin, Belkis Izquierdo, who recalled that the peoples consider the territory as a living subject. , a sacred entity endowed with spiritual relationships based on its own cultural processes, so the displacement “weakened its sacred connection with the ancestral and collective territory.” Both magistrates reiterated that the violence against indigenous communities “is accentuated by racism and discrimination, and has put them at risk of physical, cultural and spiritual extermination, a situation that the Constitutional Court has recognized for almost two decades.”

Indigenous healing ritual at the headquarters of the Special Jurisdiction for Peace.
Indigenous healing ritual at the headquarters of the Special Jurisdiction for Peace.JEP

The investigation to decide the opening of the macro-case identified crime patterns that most strongly affected the indigenous communities. “The reports presented to the Chamber relate the ways in which the FARC, in some regions of the country, implemented as a war strategy, destructuring and dismantling the Ethnic Peoples, their community fabrics and their political-administrative organizational forms, and their uses and customs. ”, indicated the JEP. The actions of this armed group not only sought to assassinate the leaders of the indigenous peoples, but also to affect the “cultural structures on which their own knowledge is based.”

The JEP will also investigate how the security forces imposed “restrictions on access to food and medicine, mobility by setting schedules for social and cultural activities, and control of transit through the collective territory.” Also, according to the reports analyzed by the Information Analysis Group (GRAI) of the JEP as a preliminary hypothesis, they will delve into how the military participated in the dispossession of the territories of ethnic peoples in alliances with paramilitaries and with third parties or economics agents.

In addition, as the Truth Commission has also documented, the military installed themselves in schools and sacred sites or sites of ecosystem fragility, important for indigenous communities, “contrary to the principle of distinction.”

After analyzing the reports received, the JEP will also investigate the types of weapons used by members of the Public Force and the way in which they were used, as well as other illicit methods used to attack. “Crimes related to taking over populations with homicides of civilians belonging to ethnic groups, homicides of ethnic combatants put out of action, destruction of cultural property and places of worship, as well as other attacks and damages to the ethnic population are grouped here. ”, reports the Special Jurisdiction for Peace.

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Source: EL PAIS

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