Victims of enforced disappearance ask the Truth Commission for a space to be heard

On February 8, a group of people stood before the headquarters of the Truth Commission (CEV) in downtown Bogotá, demanding to be heard by the peace entity. The activity was led by the Nydia Erika Bautista Foundation, a collective dedicated to the protection of the rights of women and family members victims of enforced disappearance in Colombia.

That Tuesday afternoon, CEV President Francisco de Roux came down, listened and spoke with several of the people who were in the Novena Race #12C - 10 in Bogotá. That day he told the leaders that he would open a formal space in two or three days, to hear their demands. Well, it's been almost two months and the Foundation is still waiting for the call. This was made known in a letter addressed to the CEV dated Thursday, March 24, 2022.

In the communication, the victims expressed that, “Father de Roux and gentlemen commissioners have not been heard, in the human, ethical, epistemological and legal sense of the word. We are afraid that the truth of the victims of enforced disappearances will be regarded as biased, that we will be considered an interested party,” the letter reads. The Nydia Erika Bautista Foundation was born into exile after the Baptist family had to leave the country due to threats in 1997.

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And it is that his daughter Nydia Erika Bautista is the victim of enforced disappearance on August 30, 1987. That day the 33-year-old Bogotá sociologist and economist was arrested by a group of armed men, registered with the 20th Brigade of the National Army, who took her to a farm in the municipality of Guyabetal (Cundinamarca), where they kept Nydia in captivity, torturing and sexually assaulting her, thirteen days later her body was found on the Bogotá- Villavicencio highway, in a state of decomposition which made identification impossible, for 3 years her family did not know anything about her.

In an interview with Contagio Radio, the Foundation's director, Yaneth Bautista, stated that the way to communicate with the Truth Commission has been solely through the reports submitted. “It seems to us that the Commission has fallen short in listening to direct victims, because even if it is said that the direct victims are the disappeared, we relatives are also victims of damage to integrity and mental health, due process and justice.”

Finally, Bautista said that the Commission should be an institution that walks alongside the victims. He also noted that since the signing of the Peace Agreement between the Colombian State and the former FARC guerrillas in 2016, they have submitted to the Commission six reports on cases, violence, affections and reparations to victims of enforced disappearance:

“We make all the reports, this letter and those reflections as a contribution to the Integral System, because we continue to have a commitment to peace and to the effectiveness of the mechanisms discussed in the Peace Agreement. It's like a mom when she tells her son that she is doing it wrong, and we do it with that feeling and with that responsibility.”

In the letter addressed to the CEV, the Foundation compared the work of the Colombian entity with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Peru, which was mainly responsible for preparing a report on the era of terrorism that country experienced between 1980 and 2000. “In Peru, the commissioners for hours and hours, days and months, sat down to listen to the victims in each of their testimonies and there were not one or two commissioners, but the entire Commission as a whole. It seemed to us that this way of listening to the victims collectively and with enough time and patience to hear them was restorative. The same thing hasn't happened in Colombia.”

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