A search party of more than 600 members of the indigenous community succeeded in locating the bodies of eight Awá murdered by the FARC. The National Organization of Colombian Indigenous People (NOCI) criticized the government for its failure to locate the bodies earlier.
“We achieved in eight days that which the state and the armed forces failed to achieve in two months,” President of the NOCI, Luis Evelis Andrade, said Wednesday.
The search’s objective had been to locate seventeen indigenous people missing since February, among them two pregnant women.
Andrade said that success of the search, which began on March 23rd, was largely attributed to the guidance of indigenous authorities, as well as the indigenous police and 600 aborigines, who helped search for the bodies.
The location of the bodies was communicated to the authorities, who will be responsible for their retrieval.
While Andrade said he was satisfied with the success of the search, he also expressed “a feeling of impotence, of sadness, of much pain, at seeing defenseless people cruelly murdered” by the guerrillas.