The families of three Ecuadorean journalists who were murdered by “Guacho” have rejected Colombian President Ivan Duque’s claim that killing the FARC dissident means justice.
Colombia’s security forces killed Guacho in a military operation on Friday after which Duque said that the death of the dissident FARC commander effectively meant he kept his promise “that the crime against the three journalists will not remain in impunity.”
But the victims’ families couldn’t disagree more; according to them, the death of the dissident FARC commander only perpetuates the impunity that leaves them without knowing why their loved ones were murdered.
It’s the position of the three families that no death is cause for celebration, that it is as painful to us that deaths are still happening to those who attacked us as much as to our loved ones.
Murdered journalists’ families via LA Times
“We received the news with a lot of pain because a source of very important information is gone,” Ricardo Rivas, whose brother Paul was murdered by Guacho in April, told newspaper El Espectador.
Rivas fails to understand why the death of the dissident FARC leader was celebrated in Colombia as a victory while the victims’ families are left without answers to why their loved ones not released or rescued, but murdered.
We understand that the conditions to capture him were very difficult, but this is not a victory celebration. Two lives that perhaps took the wrong path were lost, but in the end this bloodshed at the border is the consequence of state abandonment.
Murdered journalist’s brother Ricardo Rivas
“When we were recovering the bodies we talked to Prosecutor General Nestor Humberto Martinez. He told us that the investigations very advanced, which is what mattered to us most,” said Rivas.
“I believe the Ecuadorean and Colombian government promote the death of Guacho as a trophy, but this has nothing to do with impunity… Impunity does not end with the death of someone,” according to the photographer’s brother.
To know what happened to Paul, Javier and Efrain is an end to impunity. It cannot be that they enter into the statistics of unresolved cases.
Murdered journalist’s brother Ricardo Rivas
Rivas said that the families will continue to demand justice, because they believe that the governments of Colombia and Ecuador share responsibility in the death of their loved ones.
It is the obligation of both states to investigate what happened with the false report on their release by a Colombian news outlet [, newspaper El Tiempo], that said to have information from a highly reliable source. Something must have happened, so what happened in those minutes or hours that effectively prevented the release? This is something that needs to be clarified.
