A historical recognition for people who have lived in a differentiated and exacerbated the consequences of the armed conflict.
Friday, July 22, 2022. The Commission for the Clarification of Truth, Coexistence, and Non-Repetition presents the volume of experiences of women and LGBTIQ+ people in the Final Report, which recognizes the violence committed against LGBTIQ+ people victims of the armed conflict. This is a historic event, as it is the first Truth Commission in the world to include in its report the recognition of the differentiated violence, impacts, resistance, and coping of people with diverse sexual orientations, identities, and gender expressions (SOGI).
In the arduous work carried out by the Gender Working Group, 63 reports were received from social organizations, collectives, and associations of women and LGBTIQ+ victims of the armed conflict, in which their testimonies and recommendations were collected, mainly addressed to the State. In this process, led by the Gender Working Group, more than 400 interviews were conducted and 369 victims and more than 700 victimizing events were identified.
Among the victimizing events that were recorded, cases of threats, displacement, sexual violence, torture, homicides, and exiles were identified, which were perpetrated by paramilitaries – representing almost 40% of the perpetrators -, guerrillas perpetrating 30% of the cases, the security forces in 6.8% of the cases, among others. Of the victims identified, 60% were children and adolescents when the victimizing events occurred, 14% were black, Afro-Colombian, or Raizal people, 4% were indigenous, 54% were gay men, 26% were lesbian, 12% were bisexual people and 10% were trans people.
In the research and advocacy process carried out by civil society organizations, it was possible to approach each of the territories that suffered the greatest impacts of the war, where the victims and survivors were placed at the center of the process. Therefore, it is necessary to recognize and honor the trust and generosity of each person who, with their contribution to the truth, bet on a country at peace.
Within the multiplicity of victimizing events, backgrounds, and contexts that framed the violence exercised by the different armed groups against LGBTIQ+ people, the Commission identified patterns that characterized the statutes, internal guidelines and purposes of each of the armed actors. Concerning the FARC-EP and paramilitary groups, the Commission recognized that, between 1996 and 2008, they persecuted and violated the rights of LGBTIQ+ people.
The Commission identified that FARC-EP guerrillas made particular use of threats, recruitment or attempted recruitment, and forced displacement. As for paramilitary forces, the Commission identified threats, sexual violence, torture, displacement, and homicide (although there were fewer known cases of violence against LGBTIQ+ people in Caquetá). Particularly noteworthy is the cruelty with which these acts were carried out, through physical abuse in body areas that have relevance in the construction of the identity of people, such as hair, nails, genitals, and breasts, in addition to the permanent threats against life and insults against the diverse identities of the victims. In the acts of sexual violence practiced by the paramilitary groups, two details were observed: on the one hand, the simultaneous acts of torture and mistreatment, which expressed cruelty against the sexuality and gender of the victim; and on the other hand, the retention and transfer of the person to the place where the violence would take place.
The security forces, for their part, resorted to arbitrary detentions, homicides, sexual violence, torture, threats, and attacks on freedom of association to annihilate LGBTIQ+ people to reaffirm state power, and achieve results in the war, and impose controls on civilian life. In turn, the Commission identified that at times it acted in collusion with paramilitary groups. This legally armed actor was characterized by using the authority granted to it by the constitution and the law, as well as the tools for the exercise of its functions, such as weapons, facilities, and vehicles. The events in which both elements appeared the most were arbitrary detentions. As described in the following testimony, the security forces and other armed actors used various forms of violence to maintain territorial and population control, imposing a moral, social, economic, military, and political order in which diversity and anything outside heteronormativity was rejected.
Well, I think that the police have declared war on diversity, diverse people, and the police, because yes, I have also suffered many aggressions by the police, male and female colleagues have had a lot of trouble with the police (…) It is as if they wanted to humiliate these people, to make fun of them, to tell them that this is not the right thing to do, because it is always like saying “Oh, you think you’re such a woman? Come on, I’ll rape you, come on and blow me, you think you’re so macho, come on and let’s beat each other up”. I mean, things like that, so I think things like that are like exercising that power to humiliate and degrade. (Interview translated from Spanish with a trans man, in “Entre silencios y palabras”, report presented by Caribe Afirmativo, 2021).
These acts of violence also occurred in a context of social complicity on the part of the civilian population and official institutions, who by not attending to the claims of LGBTI people, condemned to impunity and silence all calls for justice. Thus, from Caribe Afirmativo, we welcome the use of the term of prosecution, being a bet included in the 13 reports that were presented as a contribution to the truth from civil society organizations to the Commission.
We express our support to the Truth Commission and its legacy, who in the framework of its mandate have opened spaces of participation to people with diverse SOGI. This chapter on the experiences of women and LGBTIQ+ people sends a message of reconciliation and forgiveness to Colombian society and also, to people with diverse SOGI who have been condemned to silence and impunity. In the words of Commissioner Martha Ruiz at the presentation event of the LGBTIQ+ section of the Final Report last Tuesday, July 19, “one of the pillars of the report is the wounded Colombia, which has transformed our society, a society that normalized violence.” This way, as a civil society organization, we reiterate our commitment to the construction of the legacy of the Commission for the Clarification of Truth and our support for the reconstruction of the social fabric, manifesting once again our commitment to the struggle for sexual and gender diversity.