Corruption, rapes and espionage: the wave of scandals that is shaking the Colombian Army
In mid-May, several Colombian media revealed the plot of Operation ‘Bastón’, which involves members of the Colombian Army with ties to drug trafficking
Corruption, illegal espionage, violation of human rights and sexual abuse are some of the scandals that have been uncovered during the last year and that reveal the crisis that the Colombian Army is going through.
On June 25, indigenous authorities reported that a 13-year-old girl was kidnapped and raped by soldiers patrolling the territory of the Embera Chamí community in western Colombia.
In the end, seven soldiers accepted charges of rape against the minor and are being held in jail. This case opened a pandora’s box that increased the outrage of the Colombian people towards the behavior of their Armed Forces.
The media revealed a series of accusations of military violations against girls in other indigenous communities, for which the Army acknowledged that 118 soldiers are being investigated for alleged sexual abuse against minors of those communities, committed in the last four years.
“Painfully, I want to communicate to all Colombians that, up to now, we have carried out a detailed verification since 2016, identifying 118 members of the force related in cases of alleged abusive and violent sexual acts against minors”, said Army Commander Eduardo Zapateiro, in a virtual press conference.
According to the military general, both the Prosecutor’s Office and the Army investigate all cases to determine the criminal, disciplinary and administrative actions that may take place.
Given the controversy unleashed, Zapateiro denied the “systematicity” of violations against minors in the Army and emphasized that these are “individual behaviors” and not “systematic” of the 240,000 members of the Army.
“An individual conduct cannot stigmatize the rest of the soldiers who render their compulsory military service in the best way”, he assured, while announcing prevention and training measures so as to prevent these crimes.
However, sexual abuse adds to other scandals that in recent months have stained this South American nation’s Armed Forces.
Murder of minors
In November 2019, the then-Defense Minister Guillermo Botero was forced to resign his post, amid controversy over an Army bombing that killed eight minors.
The fact was hidden for months and presented as an operation in which 13 members of a guerrilla camp and their leader, Rogelio Bolívar Córdoba, alias Gildardo Cucho, died.
But, in the place where the bombing occurred, there were minors who died in the attack. According to examinations by forensic authorities presented in Congress, among the deceased were a 12-year-old girl, a 15-year-old teenager, three 17-year-olds and three other children under the age of 16.
Botero’s resignation came a week before Congress voted on a censure motion against him, because of the defense and security strategy “that has endangered the rights and freedoms of the civilian population”.
In addition, the former Minister of Defense was being singled out for the situation of violence in the department of Cauca, where indigenous people had been killed in several attacks.
Illegal espionage
In early 2020, an espionage scandal broke out, when it became known that the military were in spying activities against at least 130 people, using computer tools.
The espionage efforts occurred between February and December 2019, were carried out through the diversion of resources from the US cooperation, and included foreign national journalists, human rights defenders, trade unionists and even military generals and members of the Government.
Various sectors questioned that these citizens have been the target of follow-up and harassment by the military intelligence and counterintelligence apparatus, while social leaders are without protection.
The Colombian International Press Association (APIC) rejected “the illegal interception and monitoring of national and international journalists”, and asked for security guarantees for the persecuted correspondents, Telesur reported.
For his part, Senator Gustavo Bolívar, who appears among the list of the people who they were spying, assured that an operation of this magnitude should have cost billions of pesos and that a movement like that is not carried out “without the State knowing”.
Operation ‘Bastón’
In mid-May, several Colombian media revealed the plot of Operation ‘Bastón’, which involves members of the Colombian Army with ties to drug trafficking, complicity with the elimination of social leaders, electronic espionage, profiling leftist opponents, protection of illegal mining, diversion of money, handover of contracts by by ‘finger pointing’ (without tender) in exchange for juicy gifts, sale of arms and safe-conducts to paramilitary and irregular groups.
The investigation originated from the request of the Colombian Government to belong to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), as a partner and not as a full member, and sought to standardize the transparency standards of its armed forces with those of the European defense group.
The result of this internal investigation work caused an impact, not only due to the number of uniformed personnel of all grades involved in activities outside the law, but also due to the seriousness of the events.
Due to the volume of information, one could well speak of a kind of WikiLeaks of the Colombian Army.
The counterintelligence operation uncovered numerous acts of corruption involving 16 senior generals and 266 Army officers and NCOs, and 35 civilians. The title of the operation refers to the traditional command ‘staff’ (stick) used by the generals, the group through which the investigation began, which exposed irregularities and crimes within the institution.
The leak of the results of the investigation by Colombian journalists generated a shock in the public opinion, while Defense Minister Carlos Holmes Trujillo was called to appear in the Senate by parliamentarians Iván Cepeda, Gustavo Bolívar and Antonio Sanguino.
Senator Cepeda defined the report as a “horrifying panorama” that demonstrates the existence of “a solid, far-right corrupt bloc, closely linked to drug trafficking in the national army”.
He denounced that authorities seek to cast a cloak of silence on the investigation and that the Military Prosecutor’s Office intends to link and process people from the institution by leaking the results of the Operation, as well as the journalists who made it public.
For Senator Gustavo Bolívar, from Alianza Verde, the reported events “correspond to a network of entrenched criminal structures with an extreme right wing apparatus”.
For his part, Senator Antonio Sanguino, who is on the list of politicians who are victims of espionage, denounced that this practice violates fundamental rights and generates great concern for his safety, in the face of continuous threats from extreme right-wing groups such as the Black Eagles (Águilas Negras), who have already threatened him with death on other occasions.
Faced with the accusations, Holmes Trujillo denied that there was a cover-up in the reported cases, limiting that by legal provision the Attorney General’s Office cannot release the names of the people investigated, nor the status of the process that, he assured, is in the process of investigation. .
He stressed that, on the alleged links of the Armed Forces with drug trafficking, they are being investigated, limiting that these are individual cases so it is not possible to speak of a structure within the Army.
However, according to the colombian magazine Semana, inexplicably, in many cases, “the investigations were left in the filing cabinets of prosecutors”.
US troops
The latest scandal that shakes the Army and the Government is that a court ordered President Iván Duque to suspend the activities of a US military brigade, deployed in the Latin American country between May 27 and June 2, for alleged support in the fight against drug trafficking.
The decision of the Administrative Court of Cundinamarca establishes that operations must stop while the Senate debates whether or not to authorize the presence and the activities of foreign troops in Colombian territory, as established by the Constitution.
In addition, it states that Duque must deliver to the Upper House of Congress all the information on the entry, arrival and stay of the more than fifty special units of the Security Force Assistance contingent.
The judicial sentence came after the complaint filed by several congressmen, who consider that the authorization of the deployment of the 53 US troops should go through the Senate, reported RT.
The arrival of the North American troops caused rejection by several sectors that warned that the military presence of the United States in Colombia threatens national sovereignty and is also unconstitutional.
A large group of congressmen considered it a violation of the sovereignty and functions of the Senate, as well as a potential trigger for a war conflict with Venezuela.
“I am very pleased that justice in Colombia restores our rights and our sovereignty (…) We hope that Congress is up to the task and that it denies that invasive and hostile presence in our territory”, said Cepeda, one of the promoters of the judicial action.
Bogotá and Washington assure that the US military limits itself to advising and supporting actions against drug trafficking, carried out solely by the Colombian Armed Forces. For this reason, Duque argues that the arrival of the brigade should not be authorized by the Senate.
For the moment, Minister Holmes Trujillo announced that the Government will refute the court ruling and defend the foreign military presence. “International cooperation is essential to strengthen the fight against drug trafficking”, he said.
This series of scandals affect the respect and credibility of the Army among the Colombian people, who during the protests in November 2019 demanded the reform and restructuring of the Armed Forces.
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