The ombudsman of the Colombian department of Caqueta, Alvaro Castelblanco Cardoso, warned Thursday that the population of his department is “under siege” both by the armed forces and by illegally armed groups, reports El Espectador.
The ombusman said that “false positives,” extrajudicial killings by the army, continue to be a problem in the region, and that new reports of human rights violations by the army continue to surface.
According to the Castelblanco, “no less than 50,000 or 60,000 young people who live in the area are potential victims of displacement.”
The ombudsman called for closer monitoring of the actions of the armed forces active in the area, in statements made in a Constitutional Court hearing on the situation of displaced people in Colombia.
“False positives” is the name given to the scandal in which the Colombian army was found to have killed innocent civilians, and reported them as guerrillas killed in combat, in order to inflate the statistics of enemy deaths. Colombia’s Prosecutor General’s Office is currently investigating some 1,200 cases of false positives.