By Jhoan Sebastian Cote, EL ESPECTADOR, June 5, 2025
(Translated by Eunice Gibson, CSN Volunteer Translator)
At a ceremony at the Presidential Palace, President Gustavo Petro apologized in the name of the government to the campesino community and to the victims of the war who live together in an iconic social system of self-government in Urabá.
In February 2005, the 17th Brigade expedited the “Phoenix” mission to “protect” the population of San José de Apartadó in Urabá. It was the genesis of one of the most aberrant events in the history of this nation’s war. The soldiers that patrolled the area ended up joining the “paras” of the Heroes of Tolová Bloc who massacred eight campesinos, including four children.
A month later, ex-President Álvaro Uribe made the following statement: “In this community in San José de Apartadó there are good people, but some of their leaders, backers and defenders are seriously accused by people that have been living there of aiding the FARC and wanting to use the community to protect that terrorist organization.”
By that time, the Peace Community of San José de Apartadó was already completely established as an iconic organization of campesinos and victims of the conflict. They had come together as a Community living in several properties in the region. They had declared themselves neutral in relation to any and all armed actors, including those of the government. The Peace Community, because it does not permit the entrance of anyone bearing a weapon, and the statements made by ex-President Uribe to accuse the Community, made it as if there were a target on their foreheads.
Now, twenty years later, because of that stigmatization by the highest official of the government, and the multiple violent acts suffered all through those years, Colombia offered a public apology and admitted its responsibility internationally.
The ceremony took place in the Plaza de Armas of the Presidential Palace. The intermediary between the government and the Community was the Inter-American Court for Human Rights. That agency had been studying the case since 2008, and its analysis could have ended with an international conviction for failing to protect the rights to life, liberty, due process, and legal protection to children. The Gustavo Petro administration interrupted this path to conviction by reaching a friendly solution agreement with the Community. It includes promises that government institutions will comply with a series of petitions made by the campesinos. This is a major achievement, because the Community had cut off conversations with the government since 2005.
The priest, Javier Giraldo, who had presented the international petition, revealed that the Community had registered 1,462 horrendous crimes since its creation in 1997, including up to 307 homicides. In the region, there persists “a model of paramilitary activity which has turned into a normal habit, a collection of violations of liberties and fundamental rights being infringed by the single fact of the presence of weapons,” said Giraldo at the ceremony. The Community, made up of displaced people from the region, has taken a stand against the war for land in Urabá. Ever since then they have suffered from the crossfire between the guerrillas and the paramilitaries, and from the association of the Armed Forces with the latter group. But they have stood firm on their premise: that nobody that belongs to any armed group may come into their properties. Their gesture has been recognized internationally by the Catholic Church.
The one taking the first responsibility for making the apology was the Director of the National Agency for Legal Defense (ANDJE in Spanish), César Palomino, who admitted that “for their decision to declare themselves neutral in the armed conflict, for claiming their right to peace, and vindicating the condition of the civilian population, the Community was stigmatized by high officials of the government and by the military and police in prior administrations. The stigmatization was widely disseminated by the major communications media, condemning the Peace Community of San José de Apartadó to ostracism, violating the rights to honor and dignity of its members, placing them in great danger and without defense.”
In the next segment, Palomino admitted that the government had done little or nothing to protect the men, women, children, and elderly people, who had been victims of massacres, extrajudicial executions, forced disappearances, tortures, sexual violence, forced displacement, plunder, and persecution by members of the Colombian Army, Police, and paramilitary groups. “The Colombian government is making it clear, unequivocal, official, and public, admitting its international responsibility (. . .) In the name of the Colombian State, I admit this responsibility before the members of the Community for the serious and continual harassment, as well as the stigmatization of those who were the victims by this nation’s high officials,” he concluded.
President Gustavo Petro, for his part, made a 41-minute speech in which he recalled the debates he led in the Senate to reveal the parapolitica[1] in Colombia. In addition, he used the occasion to make an analogy between the crimes against humanity in Colombia and Naziism. Also to invite Colombians to unite in support of a popular consultation on labor law reform. After a long statement in which he emphasized that, if there had actually existed a real governing State in Colombia, the series of evils that the Community reported would never have happened, and he said,” Forgive us, Peace Community of San José de Apartadó!”
When his turn came, Germán Graciano, the Community’s Legal Representative, explained as follows: “In these 28 years, we have had 300 people murdered. Eighty percent of them by the Armed Forces and the paramilitaries, twenty percent by the FARC. Now we want it to be recognized by the President of the Republic as a state crime and a genocide. We have not been involved in the war. We have proclaimed a policy of disarmament as the real path to peace in the country of Colombia. We know that weapons do not lead to peace. Peace comes through every single one of us. We look for the peace that we hope for, not with hate, but searching for an alternative to defend our lives.”
[1] Parapolitica is the term used us discuss the involvement of the paramilitaries with politicians.