Colombia: 22 minors died in Army bombings against guerrillas since 2018

At least 22 minors have died in bombings of the Colombian Military Forces against dissidence camps of the FARC, from the Gulf Clan and the guerrillas of the National Liberation Army (ELN) during the government of Iván Duque, which began on August 7, 2018.

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This was denounced by Senator Iván Cepeda, who is part of the leftist party Polo Democrático Alternativo, who stated in a press conference that his Legislative Work Unit (UTL) carried out an investigation into the minors killed in bombed camps and that it is based on the reports from the state institute of Legal Medicine (forensic unit).

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“In the right of petition sent to Forensic Medicine, we established that of those 21 bombings in seven, that is, in a third, there were deaths of children and adolescents. At least 22 minors under the age of 18 have died in these operations carried out by the Military Forces, ”Cepeda said.

As detailed, of the 22 minors killed, thirteen were men, seven women and there are two whose sex was “impossible to determine” by Legal Medicine by the state in which the bodies were found.

Most, he added, were between 15 and 17 years old, although there were also some between 10 and 13 years old.

“For those who want to justify the deaths by saying that they were already over 15 years old, we would like to remind ourselves that the additional protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child, relative to the participation of persons under 18 years of age in armed conflicts, was approved by Congress (…) in 2003, ″ added Cepeda.

It also pointed out that this investigation shows that “the practice of carrying out air strikes against places where children and adolescents are unarmed has a customary, systematic and generalized nature.”

THE CASES

Among the cases mentioned today by Cepeda is that of four minors among the eight who died in the Army’s bombardment of the ELN on September 16 in the municipality of El Litoral de San Juan, in the Chocó jungle (west).

Likewise this year, other minors have also died in Army bombings against the guerrillas, since a 17-year-old indigenous person died on July 5 in an attack against a FARC dissidents camp in a rural area of ​​San Vicente del Caguán, in the south of the country.

The death of several children and adolescents was also reported on March 2 in an attack on dissidents under the command of Miguel Botache, alias “Gentil Duarte”, in the municipality of Calamar, in Guaviare (south).

Defense Minister Diego Molano then justified the “legitimate use of force” against minors recruited by armed groups because, as he alleged, they cease to be victims and become “war machines that threaten Colombian society.”

A similar case occurred on August 29, 2019, also in San Vicente del Caguán, when the Army bombed a FARC dissident camp and more than two months later it was revealed that there were eight minors among the victims, which accelerated the resignation of then Defense Minister Guillermo Botero.

Faced with all this, Cepeda announced on Tuesday that he will file a petition to make a new motion of censure against Minister Molano for his responsibility in these military operations.

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Deshawn