They report that five young people were killed and there are about 10 kidnapped by a dissent of the extinct FARC in Cauca

The department of Cauca, in the southwestern part of the country, had a fateful holiday bridge after six young people were killed in the midst of a mass kidnapping allegedly perpetrated by the illegal armed group Carlos Patiño, part of the extinct FARC guerrilla, a fact that is added to the murders of a social leader and an ex-combatant also this weekend.

In a statement, the CEMAS Cooperative denounced that due to information from the population itself in Algeria, the armed men forcibly took 20 young people from the municipality and that they were known because they consumed narcotic drugs in the municipality.

Subsequently, five of them were found murdered in rural areas, four of them minors, including a 14-year-old girl. An indigenous minor also left him dying in a town hall in the north of the department.

They also denounced that more young people could be killed and that their bodies would have been thrown into the rivers. Five other young people would have been put to safety with the community and 10 more would remain in the hands of dissent.

“The solution to this problem is not to kill young people who for different reasons have fallen into this situation, for that they would have to wipe out a large part of Algeria's youth population. These practices lead to much more serious social problems,” they said from the CEMAS Cooperative.

At the moment there was no response from the authorities about this massive kidnapping of young people in Algeria.

They murdered a social leader and a former combatant of the extinct FARC

The killings of social leader Richard Betancourt and the signatory of the peace agreement Domingo Mancilla Cundumí were also reported in Cauca during the festive weekend.

According to preliminary information published by the Institute for Development and Peace Studies (Indepaz), Betancourt was in the vicinity of his home in the municipality of Algeria, when he was attacked by armed men who shot him on several occasions.

The social leader was recognized among the community for his work in favor of the population of the Santa Clara village, in the rural area of that municipality, where he served as president of its Community Action Board. In addition, it was collaborating in aid processes for persons displaced by the armed conflict in that area of the country.

In Indepaz, they also reported that clashes are being reported in that area of the department between the dissident Carlos Patiño of the extinct FARC and the Eln that since last year drug trafficking routes have been disputed.

While in Guapi, already on the Pacific coast of Cauca, former combatant Domingo Mancilla Cundumí, who was one of the reincorporates of the Aldemar Galán territorial space in the municipality of Policarpa, in Nariño, was killed.

In the preliminary information that Indepaz managed to obtain, it is stated that Mancilla was mobilizing through the village of Temuey de Guapi (Cauca), when he was attacked with a firearm.

Prior to these killings, Luis Carlos Bustamante Fernández, social, cultural leader and activist of the LGBTIQ+ community in the archipelago, was assassinated on San Andrés Island.

The body of the 40-year-old cultural leader was found on Thursday night, with signs of torture in the south of the Colombian island. With the murder of Bustamante Fernández, two cultural leaders have already been killed in San Andrés in the last week.

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