The UN on Monday denounced Colombia’s anti-narcotics police for firing on a humanitarian mission it led to investigate the murder of several coca growers during clashes with security forces.
The mission, comprised of observers from the UN, as well as the Organization of American States and church groups, were on Sunday attempting to reach a remote outpost where the killings took place when they were stopped in their tracks by four exploding stun grenades, as well as teargas and the sound of gunfire, the UN’s human rights office in Colombia said.
The confusing incident is the latest embarrassment for Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos’ government as it struggles to implement a peace deal with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) while trying to get a grip on booming coca production run by criminal gangs filling the void left by retreating rebels.
The problems in the turbulent municipality of Tumaco began on Thursday last week, when several hundred farmers clashed with police as they attempted to eradicate illegal coca crops. At least six farmers were killed.
Initially the government blamed the murders on a dissident faction of the now demobilized FARC, saying that they had fired homemade mortars on the very same farmers the guerrillas had ordered to confront police in order to protect their coca crops.
However, eyewitness accounts verified by the Ombudsman’s Office of Colombia point to the police as the ones behind the slayings.
As a result, the government has since backtracked and the police on Monday suspended four officers accused of opening fire as a fuller investigation is carried out.
The UN human rights office in a statement expressed alarm that police with whom it had been in constant communication and authorized their movements had impeded their probe.
Colombian Vice President Oscar Naranjo met with representatives of the UN and apologized for the police officers’ behavior, saying that they had acted “irregularly.”
Despite the tragedy in Tumaco, Santos said security forces would not ease their campaign to root out drug trafficking in long-neglected rural areas.
“We won’t permit lawless organizations to intimidate or pressure communities,” Santos said at an event in a former FARC stronghold to roll out benefits for hundreds of towns hard hit by the country’s half-century conflict. “We won’t lower our guard against drug trafficking, which was the fuel of so many years of violence.”
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