In an act at the Ministry of Defense together with Iván Velásquez, head of the portfolio, President Gustavo Petro presented on Friday the new faces of the high spheres of security and defense in the Andean country. “Zero corruption and zero violations of human rights,” exhorted the president, whose objective is to distance himself from the policy that he has governed until now and seek a focus on human rights and the defense of peace at all levels, also within those institutions. .
With the change of government came the paradigm shift in terms of security and defense in Colombia. Gustavo Petro, who has been leader of the Executive for less than a week, has already presented some of his ambitious proposals for the nation to move towards a course away from conflict and hostilities.
The most recent step in this direction, in addition to the desire to resume talks and negotiations with the leftist guerrillas of the National Liberation Army (ELN) in Cuba or the thawing of bilateral relations with its Venezuelan neighbors, was the renewal of the military leadership.
On Friday, at the headquarters of the Ministry of Defense in Bogotá, the capital, Petro, together with the newly appointed head of this portfolio, Iván Velásquez, announced important changes in the direction of the Armed Forces and the Police.
The essential requirements for the appointment of the new heads of the president’s security and defense strategy were clear: that they not carry accusations of corruption against them or that they drag human rights violations in the performance of their duties. The view proposed by the president is focused on the defense and protection of peace and human rights.
To ensure that the new appointments met these criteria, both the president and the defense minister carried out a detailed study, to avoid any scandal.
Thus, General Helder Fernando Giraldo Bonilla, until now in charge of the fight against corruption within the Army, will be the new commander of the Armed Forces. The naval engineer José Joaquín Amézquita will be in charge of the joint staff and Luis Mauricio Ospina, a graduate in Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law, will be the commander of the Army. The Navy will be under the command of Francisco Hernando Cubides, also a DD diploma. H H.; and the Air Force will now have Luis Carlos Córdoba as commander, who was president of the state aviation company that reaches where private commercial airlines do not.
Within the Police, the renewal is also substantial: Henry Sanabria, who developed a large part of his career in police intelligence, will be the new director. His second will be Yackeline Navarro, who has served in the areas of training and organization of the institution and who, with her appointment, becomes the second woman to assume this position. “Hopefully I can show that this world is no longer for men and is beginning to have a presence with the power of women, women who in the public force must be absolutely respected and valued,” the president said of Navarro.
During the presentation of the new headlines of the defensive strategy, Petro wanted to distance himself from his predecessor, the conservative Iván Duque, who focused his mandate precisely on defense but whose balance was not successful, in the heat of the data released by specialized organizations and who follow up on this matter.
The newly inaugurated president made special emphasis on citizen security as an essential element to achieve the “total peace” that he intends to achieve over the next four years.
His relationship with the military was one of the great unknowns for many, since he was always critical of the role of these institutions in the framework of national politics. In addition, his guerrilla past – he was a member of the political arm of the M-19, a left-wing insurgent movement – also added uncertainty to the direction he was going to take regarding security in a country where violence is still part of the usual landscape. .
Objectives and effects of the renovation of the military leadership
“Move to the human security strategy where caring for the life, rights and freedoms of the people is fundamental,” Petro said during the ceremony on Friday, which continued: “Here we do not look at political thoughts or anything like that, we are interested in this Public Force being professional in every sense of the word, that it can value its base men and women”.
As every decision has its collateral effects, the Colombian president’s order was also felt within the affected institutions. The law of the Andean country indicates that no chief can have less military career than his subordinates, so the new approach proposed by the leader of the Executive leaves out of the institution more than twenty generals with more experience than their current chiefs. Specifically, 23 police generals will leave their posts, in the largest purge in modern history in Colombia.
For some analysts, this decision may be a strategic mistake, because highly experienced and qualified people in this area are left out. However, for others this was a necessary step to give a new air to the country. In a conversation with France 24, Néstor Rosanía, executive director of the Center for Security and Peace Studies of Colombia, highlighted the importance of changing military and police doctrine.
“The Police will be removed from the Ministry of Defense and a Ministry of Peace, Security and Coexistence will be created; a Ministry of its own where the Police will be. And the military forces will also slowly be trained to build a doctrine where there is respect for human rights,” said the analyst.
To “guarantee peace, decrease violence and crime, guarantee a substantial increase in respect for human rights and civil liberties,” as Petro said, for Rosanía it is mandatory to break ties with the outgoing leadership, widely criticized by his controversial operations, such as the so-called “false positives” – murdered civilians who were counted as guerrillas killed in combat – or the repression against the population during the social protests of recent years, among many other cases.
“That old leadership was being investigated for issues of human rights violations, profiling journalists, opposition leaders and human rights defenders, and they had serious questions regarding corruption,” said the expert.
End impunity and protect social leadership
Another of the fundamental objectives of the Petro Government’s new defensive strategy is the protection of social leaders. For this, the president ordered that the police and military commanders will have to prevent massacres or assassinations against these leaderships as much as possible, because that will directly affect his service resume, as he stressed on his Twitter account this Saturday.
“The commission of massacres and their impunity in the jurisdictions of military and police commanders will affect the resumes of the commanders.”
The commission of massacres and their impunity in the jurisdictions of military and police commands will affect the resumes of the commanders
From now on, all military or police command in their jurisdiction must take care to neutralize as much as possible the commission of massacre and death of social leaders.
– Gustavo Petro (@petrogustavo) August 13, 2022
During the last four years, more than 950 social leaders have been assassinated according to reports from the Institute for Peace and Development (Indepaz). Violence in remote territories, where the State has historically barely had a presence, has intensified due to clashes between illegal armed groups, leaving serious damage to the civilian population.
This Saturday, August 13, the 62nd massacre so far in 2022 was reported, in which three men were annihilated in the department of La Guajira, in the northeast of the country. The murder of a peace signer was also reported. Thus, this year there have already been 32 murders of peace signatories, a balance that has increased to 338 since the signing of these agreements in 2016 between the State and the extinct FARC guerrilla.
With EFE and local media
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