Colombia: Death of minors reported in attack against ELN

Four minors have died during a military operation against the National Liberation Army (ELN), the last active guerrilla in Colombia, according to opposition congressman Iván Cepeda, who claimed that the government had withheld said information.

The National Institute of Legal Medicine, in charge of forensic services in the country, informed the senator that it received eight bodies of deceased persons for the practice of medicolegal autopsy, corresponding to a 13-year-old male and three 17-year-olds, two male and one female.

The senator obtained the information through a right to petition that he made before the state entity and whose response he published on his Twitter.

“I inquired why people in the area sent me information saying that there was a possibility that there were minors. What we did was go to the authorities,” Cepeda told The Associated Press.

The minors reportedly died during a bombing carried out by the Army on September 16 in the municipality of El Litoral de San Juan, Chocó, in the west of the country.

That day, Defense Minister Diego Molano reported that “6 individuals from the ELN structure were neutralized,” without mentioning the ages of the deceased, in the development of an operation against Ángel Padilla Romero, alias “Fabían,” the ELN commander in Chocó.

In a statement released on Thursday, the Military Forces indicated that they gave the public opinion “sufficient and timely” information about the military operation, however, they clarified that it is not their “competence to report on procedural steps that correspond to the reserve of the investigation and to which he does not have access because he is not a procedural party”.

Hours before, the Military Forces defended the legitimacy and legality of the operation they carried out against alias “Fabián” and assured that it was carried out in “the framework of International Humanitarian Law, abiding by each and every one of its principles,” reported on Thursday to journalists the press service of the Armed Forces.

In addition, they indicated that it is the ELN who “violates International Humanitarian Law” by exposing a protected person and who “commits a war crime by forcibly recruiting minors and placing them within a military objective.”

Senator Cepeda assured that “the person responsible is the ELN, it is clear that they are committing a war crime,” however, he indicated that the armed forces had to carry out another type of operation in which “combatants could be clearly distinguished from non-combatants.” .

The National Institute of Legal Medicine did not reveal the causes of the death of minors, only clarified that “according to the documentation provided by the competent authorities, they are related to events that occurred on September 16, 2021 in the municipality of El Litoral de San Juan-Chocó ”.

Minors in Colombia continue to be recruited by groups outside the law. From 1999 to February 2021, more than 6,900 children and adolescents dissociated themselves from armed groups, according to the Colombian Institute for Family Welfare.

“The problem is that all human rights indicators are skyrocketing: massacres, displacement, recruitment, assassinations of environmental and human rights defenders,” warned Cepeda, who will summon the armed forces to a political control debate.

“At that rate we are going to return to the worst moment of the war in Colombia,” he added.