Second Frustration of the Colombians Victims Seeking Justice

Abstract

By mid-2020, the Special Justice for Peace, the transitional justice regime agreed between the FARC guerrillas and the Colombian government in 2016, had budgeted to dictate its first sentence on the kidnappings committed by this group. This was frustrated because it became a scandal to which the former guerrilla leaders denied the details of this crime since 2019, claiming that they had been withholdings and that there had also been no recruitment of minors. The same pattern of not acknowledging their responsibility was used by army generals with regard to “false positives” (extrajudicial executions of people presented as the product of combat). The fact that the JEP did not proceed to open the incidents of non-compliance as agreed, two years after these versions had been rendered, has affected its credibility. While new irregular armies are taking control of different areas of the country previously dominated by the FARC, the victims demand that the JEP apply the regime envisaged for those who violate the commitment to tell the complete, exhaustive and detailed truth in exchange for not having the penalty of jail. From a socio-legal perspective, it investigates the reasons why the JEP adopted a “dialogic” strategy in contravention of Legislative Act 01 of 2017, through which this commitment was raised to constitutional rank and why it refuses to attend the legitimate claim of the victims.