Colombia peace tribunal charges ex-FARC members with anti-Indigenous crimes

The former rebels are accused of abuses such as torture, murder and the displacement of Indigenous leaders during Colombia’s civil conflict. Save Share Colombia’s transitional justice system, established to address crimes committed during the country’sdecades-long civil conflict, has indicted several former members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), formerly the country’s largest rebel group. A group of 10 ex-rebels were charged on Tuesday with alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity between 1996 and 2016. The Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP), the transitional justice tribunal, said that the accused had carried out crimes of torture, murder and forced displacement against five Indigenous groups in southeast Colombia. “Today we are delivering justice to the most forgotten peoples of a segregated Colombia,” JEP magistrate Catalina Diaz said. She explained that FARC commanders had ordered subordinates to plant landmines on Indigenous territory and ruin ecosystems the tribes relied on for survival. “These people have had their basic right to exist compromised,” Diaz added. The indictment is the latest example of Colombia’s efforts to reckon with the abuses and violence of a civil conflict that lasted for more than half a century, resulting in severerights abuses. Since the 1960s, left-wing rebels, government security forces, criminal networks and government-aligned right-wing paramilitaries have clashed over efforts to control territory and shape the country’s power structure. Indigenous communities and activists continue to faceviolent attacksin Colombia today. Continued fighting has also led to an ever-growing death toll. A 2022 report from Colombia’s Truth Commission found that450,664people were killed between 1985 and 2018 as a result of the conflict. An additional 121,768 people were forcibly disappeared. Indigenous activists and community leaders hailed JEP’s decision on Tuesday as an acknowledgement that their communities were targeted. “For the first time, the Colombian state recognises that [armed groups] did not just kill individuals,” said Yhon Jairo Figueroa, a leader of the Koreguaje tribe. “But they attempted to kill the knowledge, the language, the territory.” Three of those accused are also former members of the last secretariat of the FARC, which reached apeace dealwith the government in 2016 that included disarmament....