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News > Latin America

Colombia Victims Demand Records of Military Human Rights Abuses

  • Victims demand Colombia's military forces release their classified records on human rights abuses.

    Victims demand Colombia's military forces release their classified records on human rights abuses. | Photo: Reuters

Published 16 May 2017
Opinion

As part of the peace process in Colombia, organizations have demanded transparency in issues related to victims of the armed conflict.

A group of lawyers in Colombia has called on the Constitutional Court to declassify military intelligence files in the name of increasing transparency in the process of reparations for victims as part of the historic peace deal signed between the government and FARC last year.

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The attorney collective Jose Alvear Restrepo demanded a public hearing on victims' rights as part of the Truth Commission that will aim to uncover the truth behind abuses committed during the half-century-long civil war between FARC rebels and state forces.

The human rights organization stressed that a hearing was necessary to give voice to various entities, including victims and other citizens, and they pressed the government to guarantee the participation of the victims in all processes relating to the implementation of the peace deal.

They attorneys argued that it is unconstitutional and contradicts the spirit of the peace agreement with the FARC that the Truth Commission is prohibited from including "mechanical or virtual reproduction of all intelligence and counterintelligence documents, since such a prohibition can only be done with those documents that are forbidden according to parameters established by the Constitutional Court."

"The reservation of a document, including those of intelligence and counterintelligence, should be evaluated on a case-by-case basis according to the parameters established by the Constitutional Court," according to the Constitutional Court framework.

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The lawyers urged for a move to override some of the provisions that deal with access to intelligence information that involves information on serious violations of human rights by the military and other actors bound by international humanitarian laws.

"As an organization that was a victim of the persecution of the Colombian state intelligence agencies under attacks that constituted violations of international human rights law, we are in the right and duty to demand it," said the group in a statement.

They also highlighted the importance of the opportunity "to clarify the phenomenon of murder and persecution of human rights defenders in Colombia, among the many human rights violations that can be counted in official archives."

Colombia's 52-year civil war with the FARC came to an end last year with the signing of a landmark peace agreement. The decades-long conflict claimed the lives of some 260,000 people and victimized millions more.

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