In rural regions of Colombia young people have been killed by unknown perpetrators for the unknown reason which has invoked fear among the communities.
In just 12 days more than 35 people have been killed.
Alvaro Caicedo, the father of a victim, said he found his 15-year-old son, Jose’s and other four lifeless brutally tortured and then murdered bodies in Llano Verde neighbourhood in the western Colombian city of Cali.
“When the children didn’t come home, I was the first parent to go out looking. We went to the police station, then we walked all around, to places we knew he usually went. When I heard he was with a group of other children, I felt more relaxed. But, we found all of them, they’d been tortured, cruelly murdered, it was horrible,” said Caidedo.
He further said that they need to know who killed them and who is guilty. “We’ve been waiting for many days now and we have had no answers whatsoever.”
Erlendy Cuero of AFRODES, an association of displaced Afro-Colombians said, “People who have children are scared that the same thing that happened to those five could happen to theirs. There’s a lot of fear because this massacre made people realise that these groups don’t really care who they’re killing, even if it’s children.”
There were three separate killings in one day with a total of 17 deaths in the Arauca, Cauca, and Narino provinces.
In Narino, eight young people were killed in a separate attack on August 16 when an armed group entered a house and shot them.
According to reports, three young people were killed by armed groups in the town of Venicia in the Antioquia province.
None of the perpetrators in any of these incidents have been identified.
The president, Ivan Duque, visited the province of Narino, which suffered the most due to the attacks, and met families of the victims assuring them inquiry into the matter.
The governor of the troubled province requested increased security due to the spate of killings, which are happening at the height of Colombia’s coronavirus pandemic.
America’s Human Rights Watch director, Jose Miguel Vivanco, condemned these killing and said the situation is deteriorating
Oscar Palma, a professor at Rosario University and expert in security issues in Colombia, said these types of killings “are nothing new” and have been used by armed groups for many years to increase territory for cocaine production and drug trafficking in the Andean nation.