Live: Juan Manuel Santos brings his truth about false positives

The former president began his speech by assuring the importance he has for the country and especially for the victims, the truth about the cases of false positives. “The truth, however difficult it is, is the basis of reconciliation”, Tenuous.

Santos explained that he would speak explicitly about what falls under his management as defense minister. “I want to share with you my truth, how I saw it as I experienced it, about the problems we face and the measures we are taking in the Ministry of Defense in the area of ​​human rights in general and in particular how we investigated and arrested this macabre modality known as the false positive “, he stressed.

For the former president, this is not an easy story to understand, not only because it is inconceivable that the military committed and tolerated these cases, but because two contradictory phenomena occurred in parallel: “An improvement of the troops thanks to their training in human rights and an opposite tendency associated with certain units and certain regions to commit killings and extrajudicial killings”Santos explained.

The former president said he shared with Uribe the task of ending the FARC guerrilla warfare, but they disagreed on the method. “Uribe was the president and I was his subordinate,” he said. For Santos, the fact that Uribe did not recognize the armed conflict made his strategy difficult because it meant that the laws of war on bombing that humanitarian law allows in armed conflict could not be enforced.

“The double message created some confusion within the armed forces because they applied human rights but their supreme commander and head of state did not recognize the existence of an armed conflict. For me, that doubt did not exist. And that’s how we let the troops know: we have to apply human rights, period ”, said the Nobel Peace Prize.

In his speech, Santos explained that he had arrived with a new war plan: “On March 23, 2007, I said at the NCO school: We are a legitimate public force because we respect human rights, because we apply international humanitarian law, because we win by our actions, the respect and gratitude of the Colombian people ”.

Santos insisted that he put all the working capacity to respect human rights and this led to the implementation of a comprehensive human rights policy. “We have made the decision to work hand in hand with the International Committee of the Red Cross and the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights”, commented

Finally, in January 2008, they launched this comprehensive human rights policy which marked the path that framed the behavior of the police in the development of operations, and specified that “Between 2006 and 2008, the ministry provided comprehensive training and organized 22 workshops on this subject, emphasizing the importance of regulating the use of force”.

The Nobel Peace Prize winner said these tools were useful because the death toll ceased to be the most important thing. “What we didn’t know that ended up being called false positives by the press. And that was portraying civilians as victims of fighting with nothing to do with the conflict,” he pointed out.

Santos said that over time this practice has reached the extreme of ending the lives of people coming from outside areas where military operations have been presented to be portrayed as victims. They were murdered far away so that no one would recognize them and their disappearance would not spark local protest..

“The pressure to produce casualties and the rewards for doing so have undoubtedly been the main incentives to produce such a degradation of the conflict,” Santos said.

He said that during his first months as minister he heard rumors about these events but without proof he did not accept them. “I also wrapped myself in the tricolor and went out to distort what everyone said were malicious accusations. After all, I had belonged to the military forces “, he remembered.

“My sad state of denial began to see the light of truth on both sides. On the one hand, I understood the pressure the forces felt to claim victims. During the many visits that we made with President Uribe to the battalions, they came out to reduce the losses. At that time, it didn’t seem unreasonable because we were at war “, Santos reported to the Commission.

In 2007, he noted that several international representatives had warned him against false positives. Later, reports reached him which confirmed that there were many cases of extrajudicial executions. “More than 100 cases were discussed and many officials understood the problem to be serious. They understood that it was not a legal war “said the former president.

The false positives of the young people of Soacha

Santos also brought up the case of Soacha mothers, one of the triggers of the macabre episode. “In mid-September 2008, Carlos Franco, the director of the presidential human rights program, attended a meeting of the commission at the ombudsman’s office, during which the Institute of Forensic Medicine said he found of the dead in Ocaña. been denounced as missing in Soacha since February, ”said the former president.

He also said Franco called the Ocaña prosecutor’s office and asked what these people had died of. “They started to find out and after a few hours told him that they had all been found dead in action with the military. Then he called Cimitarra and the same thing happened: they appeared as killed in action “.

The cup has been passed, I thought to myself, and we have to take the bull by the horns and make this public. A statement was issued saying that we have very disturbing information about some of the missing from Soacha who appeared as “NN” killed in action in Ocaña, reported by the army, and that we are investigating. My experience as a journalist had taught me that if we made this public, more information could emerge that would help us resolve such a situation. “Santos said.

“But I remain with remorse and deep regret that during my ministry many mothers, including Soacha’s, lost their children to this ruthless practice, innocent young people who should be alive today.” hui. It should never have happened. I recognize this and I apologize to all the mothers and their families, victims of this horror, from the depths of my soul, ”concluded Juan Manuel Santos.

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