In the Urrao cemetery they recovered eight bodies that would be missing - Medellín - Colombia

The Unit for the Search of Persons Considered Missing -UBPD- recovered eight unidentified bodies in the cemetery from the municipality of Urrao, southwest Antioquia, which could correspond to persons who disappeared in the context of the armed conflict between 2009 and 2011.

During the humanitarian action, in which the semicircular gallery of the cemetery was intervened, relatives of the victims, the San José de Urrao parish, the municipal hospital and signatories of the Peace Agreement participated to provide relevant information for the search.

“These humanitarian actions -which include the collection and analysis of information; the recovery of the bodies, the participation of the victims and the promotion of their identification- aim to contribute to the satisfaction of the right to the truth about the fate and whereabouts of the disappeared persons of the armed conflict, and to the reparation of the people who are looking for them ”, added Luz Marina Monzón Cifuentes, director of the Search Unit.

As part of the extrajudicial investigation of this intervention, starting in May 2021, the UBPD conducted interviews with information contributors and accessed files and autopsies, as well as burial and death records, in which decisive data was recorded for the investigation. search for the disappeared persons, including the dates of entry of the bodies to the cemetery and physical characteristics of the victims.

The entity reported that from the crossing and analysis of the information it was possible to establish the identity hypotheses of five of the bodies, one of which would correspond, according to its biological characteristics, to a female person who died in 2010. The ages of the victims ranged in age from 20 to 35 at the time of their deaths.

The bodies of the victims had signs of violence, mainly multiple fractures that correspond to possible wounds caused by a firearm projectile. This information was recorded in the autopsy records and some of the characteristics were verified by the UBPD during the recovery of the bodies.

For now, the bone structures were made available to the National Institute of Legal Medicine and Forensic Sciences for identification.

“What many families are interested in is having their loved ones, burying them, knowing where they are, where they can put a tombstone and some flowers. And from now on I am going to help as much as I can to contribute to the search for people who are still missing and who may be in this cemetery, ”said the gravedigger of the San José de Urrao cemetery garden, who asked to keep her name. in reserve.

This search is part of the Regional Plan for the Center of Antioquia – southwest chapter – which is being built by the UBPD together with organizations and people who are searching – which includes a universe under construction of 1,624 missing persons and at least 231 correspond to the municipality of Urrao.

MEDELLIN

Hope is not buried in the Tumaco cemetery - Other Cities - Colombia

Cesar Preciado, vice president of the Luz y Esperanza Association of the Disappeared, now more than ever shelters the illusion that her son’s body could be among the 36 that will be exhumed and identified in the Tumaco cemeteryon the Pacific Coast of Nariño.

The disappearance of Jonathan Walberto Preciado occurred five years ago and his father with a broken voice admits that “the people who have done this wrong not only harmed the young man they took, but they did it to the whole family.”

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With pain in his soul, he admits that “for five years in my house we have been waiting for news of my son”, but he does so before a large group of people who attended a symbolic act, in homage to the victims of forced disappearance in Tumaco.

It was about the opening of the intervention in the municipal cemetery, in which the Orlando Fals Borda Socio-legal Collective Corporation, Tumaco House of Memory, Tumaco Mayor’s Office, Nariño Governor’s Office, Departmental Table of Disappearances, Prosecutor’s Office and the Movement are involved. of Victims of State Crimes.

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For this reason, the associations of relatives of victims of forced disappearance wanted to carry out a ritual with the ancestral traditions of the Nariñense Pacific that included the Eucharist with the participation of the female singers, all with the purpose of giving a spiritual opening to the forensic work that As of this February 15, the Search Group for Disappeared Persons, GRUBE, and the Institute of Legal Medicine will advance.

Preciado assures that “there is a tiredness and there is a pain in our hearts”, and he cannot contain the tears again when he says that “it is very hard to know that my son has left the house, one waits for him to arrive but he does not arrive, We hope that the Lord helps us because there are people who are dying trying to find their loved ones.”

Relatives of victims of forced disappearance performed a special ritual.

Photo:

Socio-legal Collective Corporation Orlando Fals Borda

Relatives of victims of forced disappearance performed a special ritual.

Photo:

Socio-legal Collective Corporation Orlando Fals Borda

Margarita Granja, as the legal representative of the Association of Relatives of the Disappeared of the Pacific, considers that the step that is now being taken is a relief and consolation in the midst of the enormous sadness that she harbors, “because it will allow clarifying many situations of agony and despair that we have in our homes.

Although the woman acknowledges that everything is not going to be resolved now, she believes that it is a great step and effort thanks to the information delivered in due time to the competent authorities about the disappearance of loved ones.

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Also heard at the emotional event was the voice of encouragement from the priest of the Santa Teresita de Tumaco church, Father Andrés Marín, who considers that “people cannot finish their mourning until they know where the body of their loved one is.”

The religious believes that it is a great success to carry out this process “so that these families can rest, that generates peace in the mourning of people who have not been able to heal that in their memories.”

They can’t be repeated anymore

According to Naya Parra, coordinator in Nariño of the Orlando Fals Borda Sociolegal Collective Corporation, disappearances cannot be repeated and stresses that the intervention in the cemetery at the request of the victims’ relatives began with the act of remembrance.

“This begins as a clamor from many years ago, here the bodies were being lost because there has been no proper handling”, but he also says that it is a place of impunity “there are people who have been buried as NN without giving them proper handling of the bodies”.

He points out that in Colombia there are more than 120,000 missing persons, while there are more than 27,000 bodies of unidentified people in the country’s cemeteries.

In principle, the exhumation of the 36 bodies will be carried out for 10 days, a judicial proceeding that will be carried out by professionals from the Attorney General’s Office and Legal Medicine.

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“We hope that a return will also be made to the victims at the end of the process, so that you know what the findings were,” he stresses and clarifies that this will be a process that will take time.

The Undersecretary of Peace and Human Rights of the Government of Nariño, Juliana Viveros, understands that it is also necessary to provide psychosocial support to the families of the victims, for which a group of professionals will be in charge of ensuring their mental health.

The House of Memory of Tumaco is another of the entities that has been accompanying this initiative, whose director José Luis Fonci comments on interesting experiences that are put into practice there, such as the women who have suffered victimizing acts and who meet to weave, “While they knit, they talk, they hug each other, they help each other, there is not a psychologist there, they are all psychologists.”

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According to the investigations carried out by the Information System Network of Disappeared and Corpses, SIRDEC, in the department of Nariño there is a record of 3,850 disappeared persons, of which 3,100 are still missing.

The municipalities with the greatest impact are Pasto with 1,208 reported disappearances, Tumaco, 775, and Barbacoas, 230.

MAURICIO OF THE ROSE
PASTURE

Disappearance of bodies from the Bucaramanga cemetery - Santander - Colombia

The Search Unit for Missing Persons – UBPD met from Bucaramanga to learn directly about the challenges in the search for missing persons that victims and organizations have identified in their struggle to know the fate and whereabouts of their loved ones. .

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In the middle of these sessions they listened to various victims, authorities and organizations within which they revealed a complaint from the central cemetery of Bucaramanga.

“It is necessary to solve a lack of information about more than a thousand bodies that were found and that today it is not known where they are. The Advisory Council had a dialogue with local authorities so that this is clarified and the victims have answers,” said Luz Marina Monzón, director of the Victims Unit.

The Unit has a plan called the Barranca Region Regional Plan that seeks “the truth about 4,235 people who disappeared between 1961 and 2016, with the years from 2000 to 2004 and from 1986 to 1988 being the years with the highest record of forcibly disappeared people and given by disappeared in the context of the armed conflict,” they indicated,

By municipalities, the largest reports of missing persons in Santander are in Barrancabermeja 1,127, Bucaramanga 465, Cimitarra 398, San Vicente de Chucurí 284 and Sabana de Torres, 166. By provinces, the cases of disappearance are concentrated in Yariguíes, 2,254; Metropolitan Area, 739, and Carare Opón, 600, according to Unit figures.

So far the authorities have not ruled on this fact that would be investigated.

BUCARAMANGA