Colombian Soldiers Have Been Killing Mentally Ill Civilians and Selling Their Bodies to the Governme
Colombian Soldiers Have Been Killing Mentally Ill Civilians and Selling Their Bodies to the Government
By Ellie Mae O'Hagan 11 hours ago
I arrived in Soacha, a poor neighbourhood on the outskirts of Bogota, on an overcast July afternoon. We had driven away from the city centre and the building that dominates its skyline – a huge structure covered in LED lights that slowly change colour; a gaudy beacon for Colombia's wealthy elite – and had pulled up on a residential side street.
I was there with the NGO Justice for Colombia to hear about the country's "false positives" scandal, which first broke five years ago and shows no sign of relenting any time soon. The scandal has its roots in the Colombian 50-year civil war between the government and the left-wing peasant insurgent group FARC. In the early 2000s, then-president Alvaro Uribe, out of an apparent concern for the army’s reputation, started putting pressure on soldiers to increase their kill figures.
According to media reports, soldiers were promised cash payments and more holiday time if they produced the bodies of dead FARC guerrillas – an accusation the government denies. In an effort to increase their quotas, soldiers allegedly started luring young, impoverished men away from home with the offer of work. Once away from their families, the soldiers executed the men, dressed them up in guerrilla uniforms and presented them as combat kills. Many victims were dismembered and buried hundreds of miles away from their families.
When the scandal broke, the Colombian government insisted “false positives” were isolated incidents. By 2012, however, nearly 3,000 murders were recorded and, in 2007 – the worst year for this type of killing – one in every five combat kills recorded was a "false positive". In Soacha, 19 mothers lost their sons in the “false positives” scandal. So far, only one of those mothers has seen her son’s murderers convicted, but his conviction was appealed and the main defendant, an army major, became a fugitive.
More:
http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/colombias-false-positives-scandal-lives-on
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