“Everyone in Colombia must feel the wound of this country”, President of the Truth Commission

Today, April 9, the National Day of Memory and Solidarity with Victims is commemorated, who suffered the harshness of the conflict: 80,733 missing, 17,947 boys and girls forcibly recruited, 15,886 sexually abused (exactly 9,250,453 persons), who are included in the Single Registry of Victims (RUV).

The Presidential Advisor for Stabilization, Emilio Archila, sent a message of solidarity at the commemoration. The official said that the voice of the victims must be heard in order to prevent their story from being repeated.

The counselor indicated that the Government is working to ensure that “not only are the issues that victimized them solved, but also to provide them with the conditions they have asked us so that they never happen again and can develop their lives from now on.”

According to the Observatory of Memory and Conflict of the National Center for Historical Memory, Colombia reached 100,000 victims; 80,631 people forcibly disappeared between 1958 and 2020, and 99,235 according to the Unit for the Search for Persons Disappeared (UBPD).

Disparate figures and none accurate, since the probability of underreporting is high, given the risk that investigating or reporting poses to families, as well as the lack of diligence of the institutions responsible for conducting investigations.

For his part, Father Francisco de Roux, president of the Truth Commission, sent a message on the day that the victimization of the men and women who followed him began. “That is why we celebrate 'Victims' Day, 'the anniversary that date, is the accumulated of at least ten million people who carry this enormous suffering,” he said.

In addition, he asked that, “all of us in Colombia feel the wound of this country and transform this wounded nation into a nation full of the future for children, in a place where we trust each other, respecting our diverse ethnic, gender, political positions, conceptions of life, and that in dialogue and trust let us build a different country, one that will be the future of the children and grandchildren of all of you dear victims of Colombia”.

Women seeking missing persons call for marches and demonstrations calling for justice, truth, reparation and non-repetition. It is they who lead movements, since most of them it is the women, daughters, wives, sisters and mothers of the victims who have become researchers and seekers of their loved ones in order to reduce the impunity that prevails when talking about forced disappearance.

The disappearance of their loved ones has meant a drastic change in their lives, as their time sacrificed and their projects and roles within their families changed. “It is women who have politicized the search for their loved ones, this shows that there is a feminization of these victimizations that are indirect,” he said.

KEEP READING: