“More than 13 years shouting that our children were not guerrillas and we finally heard it from them”: mothers of victims of false positives for Santos

The association of mothers of the so-called “false positives” of Colombia (Mafapo) spoke on Friday before the statements of the former President of the Republic Juan Manuel Santos before the Truth Commission, on the extrajudicial executions while he was Minister of Defense.

In the afternoon of this Friday, the mothers of the young people killed by members of the National Army and presented as wounded in combat, asked to meet the former president, who was head of the Armed Forces between 2006 and 2009, in the presidency of Álvaro Uribe Vélez, so that he can look them in the eyes.

“We look forward to a meeting where Juan Man Santos will see us in the eyes. Over 13 years screaming that our children were not guerrillas. We finally heard it from her mouth. We want to reiterate that we will be launching into Congress. From now on, our voice is that of thousands of victims across the country ”, declared the association of mothers of families.

Mafapo had announced a few hours before starting the process of contribution of Juan Manuel Santos in front of the president of the Truth Commission, the Jesuit priest Francisco De Roux, that they expected “a little” from the president during this meeting to clarify what s ‘has passed.

In this message before the dialogue, they asked her to tell the truth and to apologize to each of the mothers to whom “Uribe, Montoya and you took their children from them. Today can really change history. For the memory of our children, tell the truth», Underlined the mothers of the young people.

“No, they weren’t picking coffee. They worked informally, they applied for a place at university, they were unemployed. Our children have been deceived, tortured and victimized again by various political leaders and part of society “Mafapo’s mothers claimed, referring to a statement by former President Álvaro Uribe.

For his part, Juan Manuel Santos assured, at the end of his testimony, that everything “humanly and legally possible” had been done to stop the extrajudicial executions, which are the subject of an investigation by the Special Jurisdiction for Peace. (JEP) as one of the priority crimes in the armed conflict.

“I have remorse and deep regret for what happened during my ministry. I recognize it and I apologize to all the families who are victims of this horror, from the depths of my soul, ”concluded the former president.

The Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP) announced that between 2002 and 2008, when Álvaro Uribe was president, 6,402 false positives were presented, young people who were duped into being murdered by members of the army and presented as members of the demobilized Farc guerrillas in order to obtain advantages.

The former president began his speech by assuring the importance it has for the country and especially for the victims, of 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 comes under his management as defense minister. “I want to share with you my truth, how I saw it as I lived 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 on how we investigated and 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.

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