Truth Commission published on Tuesday a new chapter of its final report, which refers to the “tremendous weight” that armed conflict in children and adolescents and assures that the war, in which 64,084 minors died, led to the fact that Colombia “lost at least three generations.”
Entitled “It’s No Less Evil: Boys, Girls and Teenagers in Armed Conflict”, the chapter highlights abuse and situations experienced by childhood during conflict based on almost 200 stories and more than 2,700 testimonies collected. and this made Colombia an “orphan country”.
“This country has not shown much concern for children, and it has always been assumed that what happens to them in the context of armed conflict is collateral damage, which is not so,” said Diana Britto, director of the department. .
Thus, the Truth Commission, which submitted the first chapter of its final report on June 28 after three and a half years of work, recorded that more than 50% of the displaced people in the country, and there were more than 8 million of them, were minors when they had to leave their homes.
This is the case of Mary Victoria, who at the age of 14 saw how FARC they killed his father and four of his brothers, aged 12, 16, 17 and 18. In the report, the Commission documents that “she undertook the journey alone in search of her mother. This will be the first of several journeys that will mark her adolescence and youth.”
In particular, 3,049,527 cases of displaced minors were recorded between 1985 and 2019, and 139,842 displaced children continue to live between 2020 and 2021.
The commission argues that “when the family had not been destroyed by prior violence and the affective bond was maintained, the rupture caused by root expulsion was less abrupt”, but “when (minors) had to go out alone, they were more vulnerable”. to violence such as labor exploitation, mistreatment of relatives or even strangers who took advantage of their need for work, housing and food.”
OVER 64,000 CHILDREN KILLED
Truth Commission also documented deaths of 64,084 minors in armed conflict between 1985 and 2018, of which 14,562 were indigenous and 27,290 were Afro-Colombians, according to collaborative data pooling with other organizations.
With over 450,000 homicide victims between 1985 and 2016, the number of orphans, although difficult to pinpoint, is expected to be very high.
In almost a third of cases (29.63%), the perpetrators of attacks on children were representatives of the state, in 22.47% – paramilitaries and in 16.46% – partisans.
However, already demobilized FARC guerrillas are responsible for 74% of underage recruitment, “a phenomenon that we don’t really understand in this country,” Britto said, since it’s not even considered a crime in the early decades of the conflict.
“So when they took a boy or a girl to war, the most the family could do was report a disappearance or a kidnapping,” he said in a video released by the Commission.
The report contains compelling evidence, such as that of Esperanza, a mother whose 16-year-old son came home from school in tears in 2001 because paramilitaries approached him and told him he would have to leave with them the next day.
That same night, his mother sent him to another municipality to avoid being recruited, but a few days later he showed up with his throat slit and 17 stab wounds “because he didn’t want to go with them.”
In other cases, guerrillas have used false promises to recruit young people to their “cause,” but “joining the ranks or performing various tasks for armed groups has not resulted in better living conditions,” the Commission said.
“They told me that I would have a better life. If we don’t like it, we will be detained for eight days and taken out. But no, when we got there, everything was different,” says Paula, a girl recruited FARC from 12 years old.
In this chapter, the Commission also documents how education was used as another form of warfare, with schools being attacked or educational centers being instrumentalized, which meant being born into a guerrilla or paramilitary group, or how the Colombian countryside was emptied by displacement, a young force that could would work.
(EFE)
Source: RPP
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