“We will not allow discourses that justify violent actions against women to continue to be perpetuated”: National Network

Ana María Sarrias, 24 years old, was one of the fatalities of the operation carried out by the Military Forces in the Alto Remanso village, in the department of Putumayo, on May 28. The woman was the wife of Divier Hernández, president of the village's Community Action Board. This news was confirmed by the Ombudsman's Office two days after the events, where ten more people also lost their lives.

The Public Prosecutor's Office also noted that Sarrias was the mother of two boys aged 2 and 6 and was pregnant when men dressed in black started shooting at a bazaar where the population was located. One of those bullets hit the body of the woman who died immediately. According to El Espectador, the woman's last words were; “help me, don't let me die, please help me,” witnesses of the events told the newspaper.

Since the military operation became known, the Ministry of Defense and officers of the National Army have declared the legality of the action and claim to have attacked members of FARC dissidents.

General Eduardo Enrique Zapateiro Altamiranda, commander of the National Army, said in an interview with RCN that “this is not the first time that pregnant women and children have died in the midst of operations.”

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Faced with these claims, the National Women's Network called on the National Army and Colombian society to “denature the fact that military actions present the lives of women, girls and boys as collateral damage.” It should be noted that in the operation, carried out by the Army, the Air Force and the National Navy, a child under the age of 16 also died.

Officer Zapateiro stressed that the action was legitimate and did not violate the human rights of the civilian population. “The 11 people killed belong to the criminal structure of the Gaor 48,” the soldier said in his interview with the media outlet.

But on its Twitter account, the feminist network responded to the commander's justification. “We will not allow these discourses that justify violent action against us, our bodies and communities to continue to be perpetuated.”

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According to the Observatory of Memory and Conflict (WTO) of the National Centre for Historical Memory, in the period between 1958 and 2021, 51,919 women victims of the armed conflict were registered, of whom 18,048 died as a result of these actions.

In its latest triune, the National Women's Network assured that, “in the Colombian armed conflict and socio-political violence, women have been violated in a differentiated way and our bodies have been used as a tool for social control, remaining in the middle of the crossfire and condemning us to sexual violence.”

WTO data also shows 14,248 women victims of sexual violence, 13,273 victims of targeted killings and 9,307 victims of enforced disappearance, which appear as the most repeated victimizing acts in the context of the internal armed conflict against them. In addition, 6,356 women have been victims of abduction, 4,632 victims of recruitment for sexual purposes.

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