Colombia say March operation focused insurgent dissidents, however rights teams reported a minimum of 4 civilians had been killed.
The United Nations’s human rights physique has urged Colombia to prosecute these accountable for a army raid that resulted within the deaths of 11 individuals, together with 4 civilians that group members say had been handed off as fighters.
The Colombian army mentioned final month that it had carried out an operation towards Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) dissidents concerned in drug trafficking.
However human rights teams have reported that there have been four civilians among the many lifeless.
“We advocate that every one disciplinary and authorized measures be taken to prosecute and punish these accountable for what occurred in Alto Remanso,” Juliette De Rivero, the Colombian consultant for the workplace of the UN Excessive Commissioner for Human Rights, mentioned on Twitter on Wednesday.
The incident, which befell on March 28 throughout festivities in Puerto Leguizamo, an Indigenous city close to Colombia’s southern border with Peru, has spurred widespread public anger throughout the nation.
“Because of the army operation and the usage of deadly pressure in Alto Remanso, 11 individuals died and 5 extra had been wounded,” mentioned De Rivero, who added that the military “used firearms whereas they had been contained in the bazaar of 30 to 50 individuals, together with women, boys and ladies”.
In keeping with the native ombudsman’s workplace, Human Rights Watch and native Indigenous leaders, a 16-year-old, an Indigenous governor and a group chief in addition to his pregnant spouse had been among the many lifeless.
Oscar Daza, a human rights coordinator with the Group of Indigenous Peoples of Colombian Amazonia (OPIAC), described the operation as “a bloodbath executed by the Colombian army”.
The group is “enraged and shocked by this illegitimate and unlawful operation”, Daza instructed Al Jazeera earlier this month.
The federal government of President Ivan Duque and his army excessive command insisted the operation was a legit one concentrating on suspected FARC dissidents, who rejected a 2016 peace settlement that noticed the insurgent group demilitarise.
The UN urged authorities to guard witnesses and journalists which were threatened in latest days over their reviews.
The Inter-American Fee on Human Rights additionally requested the federal government to analyze the incident and keep away from “stigmatising the victims”.