More than 218,000 military personnel were displaced.
This report, prepared by Jaime Arteaga & Asociados in association with the Joint Strategic Transition Command (CCOET), of the General Command of the Colombian Military Forces, with the support of the Swedish Embassy and the IOM, indicates it 218,060 members of The Colombian’s military institution and their families were victims of forced displacement and dispossession of land, as a result of the Colombian armed conflict: 22,059 cases occurred during the provision of the service, 37,136 cases occurred after retirement and 158,865 cases were victims before entering the institution.
“Making this pain and these victimizations visible is a scene of symbolic reparation. The dispossession of land is an aberrant crime that has been used by armed groups, ”said Brigadier General Javier Alberto Ayala Amaya, commander of the CCOET.
The report details that the land lost by active or retired military personnel and their families may have amounted to 440,000 hectares, an area comparable to Risaralda department . In turn, it reveals it the departments where there were more cases of displacement and dispossession of the military during their time of service were Antioquia, Tolima, Caquetá and Valle.
Leonel Figueroa, one of the victims, assured: “I had an order not to return to my parents’ farm. The next day the armed groups took me from the farm, I suffered displacement and I had to come to Bogotá where a friend. A life without my family, without the land in which I grew up and starting in the capital brings many difficulties. My parents also had to abandon their land, almost giving it away for fear of armed groups. It was the farm or their lives ”.
The damages meant the breakdown of the family nucleus, psychosocial impacts and the loss of their patrimony comprised of land, houses, crops, animals and vehicles.
