Following the confessions of the former head of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC, Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia), Salvatore Mancuso, who declared that in various municipalities of Táchira State there are more than 200 bodies buried in common graves, Marino Alvarado, coordinator of enforceability of Provea, stressed that it is important that the work of locating those disappeared and their relatives be carried out by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, and conducted with their personnel on the ground, both in Colombia and in Venezuela.
Anggy Polanco // Correspondent lapatilla.com
Mr. Alvarado emphasized that the United Nations must participate by advising throughout this process, monitoring how it develops and also accompanying the victims’ groups and committees that exist in Táchira and Norte de Santander.
He also stressed the need to establish responsibilities of those who collaborated with the Self-Defense Forces (AUC) in Venezuelan territory, because there, beyond the collaboration they could have had from the military – according to the information given by Salvatore Mancuso – there may also be civil authorities involved or had knowledge and did not act.
Without doubt what is certain is that on the Venezuelan side there are people responsible, either by action, because there were officials who collaborated, or by omission, which shows the inability of the authorities to guarantee the protection of national sovereignty,” pointed out Alvarado.
The human rights activist said that if the paramilitaries dug mass graves in Venezuelan territory, could the FARC have dug some too? Could the ELN also? So, what is evident is the enormous incapacity of the Venezuelan State to protect sovereignty, the complicity of authorities and the armed forces with the doings of irregular armed groups, whatever the ideological sign.”
He added that there are authorities that have tolerated both the presence of paramilitary groups and guerrillas on the Venezuelan side.
More than 500 missing
For his part, the President of the El Amparo Foundation and General Director of the International Committee Against Impunity in Venezuela (Ciciven), Walter Márquez, reported that to this number one must add added another 300 citizens who have disappeared on “trochas” (foot paths, trails) since 2015 and there is yet no investigation.
Márquez urged the authorities of Venezuela and Colombia to expand the Binational Commission appointed to investigate what Mancuso declared, with the aim of having consular participation and the presence of relatives of the victims, as well as officials of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, which has open offices in Caracas and Bogotá.
“The complaints that there are mass graves in San Antonio, Ureña, Boca de Grita, La Fría and San Cristóbal are serious. More than 200 corpses were transferred to this territory, or that could have been murdered here, mostly Colombians, but we cannot rule out that there may be Venezuelans. If we add some 300 disappeared persons as recorded by Venezuelan NGOs from the days of the “trochas”, with the presence of the common underworld, dissidents from the Farc and the Elenos (ELN, National Liberation Army), and gangs like the “Tren de Aragua”. All this can add up to more than 500 victims of forced disappearances, which In addition to being a crime against humanity, it is a very serious violation of human rights where the families of the victims demand an immediate investigation and a response,” said Márquez.
He pointed out that among this figure of more than 500 disappeared there are migrants, porters and citizens who have been assaulted crossing through trails from one side of the border to the other throughout the seven years after the closure of the international bridges.
The activist highlighted that there is no refined statistic, but rather a mixture of everything, because in Venezuela and Colombia there is information opacity regarding the disappeared, that is why he insisted that it is necessary to expand the audit of the victims through the relatives who are survivors.
“There is joint responsibility of both States for their inaction in border security,” he said.