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Colombia's tribunal exposes how troops kidnapped and killed thousands of civilians1
BOGOT?, Colombia — In front of a war crimes tribunal, Blanca Monroy took the microphone and addressed the former Colombian army officers who were responsible for killing3 her son. He was an unemployed4 carpenter who, in 2008, was kidnapped, shot 13 times and was then buried in a mass grave.
"No one understands the pain of a mother who loses her son. It's an emptiness that will never, ever, be filled," she said. "You should ask God for forgiveness."
Monroy's son died in one of the darkest chapters of Colombia's 50-year guerrilla war. To run up body counts, Colombian soldiers kidnapped and executed more than 6,400 civilians from 2002 to 2008 and falsely reported them as Marxist guerrillas killed in combat, a special tribunal found.
The killings5, known in Colombia as "false positives," were never fully6 investigated by Colombian courts. But now the tribunal, set up under a 2016 peace deal, is trying to get to the bottom of what happened. And it could result in a former high-ranking officer in the country's U.S.-backed military being convicted of war crimes.
This comes as Colombia's Truth Commission is about to release its final report, documenting accounts from people affected7 by the long civil war.
There was pressure to pump up body counts
Formally known as the Special Jurisdiction8 for Peace, the tribunal functions outside of Colombia's regular judicial9 system and has a 15-year mandate10 to prosecute11 the most heinous12 crimes committed by guerrilla fighters and the government troops they fought against. The tribunal started work in 2018 by investigating thousands of kidnappings carried out by the rebels, but it has now moved on to abuses committed by the armed forces.
Most of the false positive killings took place in the 2000s, when Colombian military officers came under fierce pressure to crush the guerrillas. Failure could derail their careers. However, reporting bigger body counts could mean promotions13, overseas postings and other benefits.
"There was constant pressure from our superiors, including the army commander, to produce combat deaths," former Lt. Col. ?lvaro Tamayo, one of the defendants14, told a war crimes tribunal hearing in April in the northern town of Oca?a, where many of the false positive killings took place.
"'Good' officers produced bigger body counts. 'Bad' officers didn't," he said. "This generated psychological pressure and fear of being demoted or expelled from the army for a lack of operational results."
So, some officers hatched a lethal15 conspiracy16.
They lured17 poor, unemployed young men from Bogotá and other cities to small towns near the war zone with promises of jobs. Then, according to testimony18 gathered by the tribunal, soldiers gunned them down, planted weapons on them, dressed them in camouflage19 and reported these innocent civilians as rebels killed in combat.
Officers can avoid prison
The tribunal's estimate of false positives goes far beyond previous tallies20. And the tribunal's president, Eduardo Cifuentes, says the real number could be even higher than what investigators21 found. He tells NPR the killings are "the absolute worst" of Colombian war crimes.
The top priority of the tribunal is to learn exactly how and why the crimes happened. The goal is to make sure they never happen again and to help the country heal after decades of warfare22.
"Our objective is reconciliation," said tribunal judge Alejandro Ramelli, speaking at the Oca?a hearing. "But you can't forgive if you don't know what happened."
That's why the tribunal is being lenient23 with defendants. They can avoid prison if they confess to and fully explain their crimes, including who gave the orders. They're also required to make up for some of the harm they've caused and participate in public hearings held in former war zones where the crimes were documented.
Mothers want false positives' names cleared
The hearing in Oca?a took place in a local university auditorium24 where a dozen defendants, now stripped of their military uniforms, sat stiffly onstage and heard directly from the relatives of their victims.
When it was her turn to speak, Zoraida Mu?oz faced the former army officers and insisted that it made no sense to target her 22-year-old son, who was himself a former soldier.
"I want my son's name cleared," she said. "He was no guerrilla. He'd just gotten out of the army. But he was abducted25 and killed."
The defendants include a retired26 general who stands to become the highest-ranking former officer convicted of war crimes. They all sounded deeply repentant27. At one point, former Lt. Col. Tamayo admitted that he gave the direct order to execute several innocent civilians on the outskirts28 of Oca?a.
"I betrayed my family and the army," Tamayo said, his voice breaking. "I am a disgrace."
Sandro Pérez, a former army sergeant29, was even more blunt, saying, "I became an assassin, a monster for society, a death machine."
Not all Colombians are on board with the tribunal
The testimony has been riveting30. But critics in the right-wing political and military establishment claim it could hurt army morale31 and damage the institution. They insist that the tribunal should stick to investigating massacres32 and kidnappings carried out by the guerrillas and that it is placing far too much blame for war atrocities33 on government troops.
President Iván Duque, a conservative who opposed Colombia's peace treaty, tried in 2019 to overhaul34 the tribunal and strip it of some of its powers, saying, "we can reform and design a [court] that assures genuine truth and justice to all Colombians." But that effort failed.
Some critics accuse the tribunal of exaggerating the scope of army atrocities.
"What we are seeing is the case of a few bad apples," says John Marulanda, a former army colonel who heads a national association for retired military officers. "You cannot generalize and say 'all the army is involved.' "
He thinks military judges or the country's ordinary justice system should handle the false positives cases. However, 15 years after the army killings were first revealed by human rights groups and mothers of the dead, there have been only a handful of convictions.
Testimonies35 show the killings were carefully coordinated36
This so-called "impunity37 gap" justifies38 the efforts of the war crimes tribunal to revisit the cases, says Rodrigo Uprimny of the Bogotá human rights group Dejusticia. What's more, he says the testimony makes it clear that the killings were carefully coordinated and not the work of just a few out-of-control troops.
"When you see a colonel saying 'I did that, I did that, I did that,' really confessing systematic39 crime in public view, it's really very powerful," he says.
Accused soldiers who fully cooperate with the tribunal will not go to a traditional prison, though their freedom will be restricted. They'll also spend up to eight years performing community service in the neighborhoods of their victims.
At first, that didn't sit well with Blanca Monroy, who spoke40 at the Oca?a hearing and whose son, Julián Oviedo, was shot 13 times.
"I was thirsty for justice and I wanted them put in jail," she says, speaking from her modest home in Bogotá.
But the war crimes tribunal allowed her to meet face to face with the men responsible for her son's death. She rebuked41 them. She cried with them. Gradually, she says, she even began to forgive them.
"I no longer feel fury or hatred," she says. "Now I feel at peace."
1 civilians | |
平民,百姓( civilian的名词复数 ); 老百姓 | |
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2 transcript | |
n.抄本,誊本,副本,肄业证书 | |
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3 killing | |
n.巨额利润;突然赚大钱,发大财 | |
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4 unemployed | |
adj.失业的,没有工作的;未动用的,闲置的 | |
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5 killings | |
谋杀( killing的名词复数 ); 突然发大财,暴发 | |
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6 fully | |
adv.完全地,全部地,彻底地;充分地 | |
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7 affected | |
adj.不自然的,假装的 | |
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8 jurisdiction | |
n.司法权,审判权,管辖权,控制权 | |
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9 judicial | |
adj.司法的,法庭的,审判的,明断的,公正的 | |
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10 mandate | |
n.托管地;命令,指示 | |
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11 prosecute | |
vt.告发;进行;vi.告发,起诉,作检察官 | |
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12 heinous | |
adj.可憎的,十恶不赦的 | |
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13 promotions | |
促进( promotion的名词复数 ); 提升; 推广; 宣传 | |
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14 defendants | |
被告( defendant的名词复数 ) | |
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15 lethal | |
adj.致死的;毁灭性的 | |
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16 conspiracy | |
n.阴谋,密谋,共谋 | |
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17 lured | |
吸引,引诱(lure的过去式与过去分词形式) | |
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18 testimony | |
n.证词;见证,证明 | |
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19 camouflage | |
n./v.掩饰,伪装 | |
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20 tallies | |
n.账( tally的名词复数 );符合;(计数的)签;标签v.计算,清点( tally的第三人称单数 );加标签(或标记)于;(使)符合;(使)吻合 | |
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21 investigators | |
n.调查者,审查者( investigator的名词复数 ) | |
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22 warfare | |
n.战争(状态);斗争;冲突 | |
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23 lenient | |
adj.宽大的,仁慈的 | |
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24 auditorium | |
n.观众席,听众席;会堂,礼堂 | |
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25 abducted | |
劫持,诱拐( abduct的过去式和过去分词 ); 使(肢体等)外展 | |
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26 retired | |
adj.隐退的,退休的,退役的 | |
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27 repentant | |
adj.对…感到悔恨的 | |
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28 outskirts | |
n.郊外,郊区 | |
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29 sergeant | |
n.警官,中士 | |
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30 riveting | |
adj.动听的,令人着迷的,完全吸引某人注意力的;n.铆接(法) | |
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31 morale | |
n.道德准则,士气,斗志 | |
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32 massacres | |
大屠杀( massacre的名词复数 ); 惨败 | |
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33 atrocities | |
n.邪恶,暴行( atrocity的名词复数 );滔天大罪 | |
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34 overhaul | |
v./n.大修,仔细检查 | |
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35 testimonies | |
(法庭上证人的)证词( testimony的名词复数 ); 证明,证据 | |
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36 coordinated | |
adj.协调的 | |
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37 impunity | |
n.(惩罚、损失、伤害等的)免除 | |
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38 justifies | |
证明…有理( justify的第三人称单数 ); 为…辩护; 对…作出解释; 为…辩解(或辩护) | |
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39 systematic | |
adj.有系统的,有计划的,有方法的 | |
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40 spoke | |
n.(车轮的)辐条;轮辐;破坏某人的计划;阻挠某人的行动 v.讲,谈(speak的过去式);说;演说;从某种观点来说 | |
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41 rebuked | |
责难或指责( rebuke的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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