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From Riohacha (La Guajira), the former commander of the Southern Bloc of the Farc he attended the summons that the JEP made him to deliver a “full truth about the existence, origin and evolution of the policy that allowed the involvement of boys and girls in the armed conflict.”
Toncel Redondo, recalled the Special Jurisdiction for Peace, was an active member of the two most important organs that the Farc had: He was a substitute for the Central General Staff in 1989 and became incumbent as of 1990. In addition, he was part of the Secretariat since 2008, and hence the importance of your statement.
In the virtual diligence, alias ‘Joaquín Gómez’ read a document in which he accepted that children were forcibly taken and trained to fight for them in the armed conflict:
“I am willing to recognize unambiguously and without euphemism forced recruitment, a crime for which we as a political organization that emerged from the Peace Agreement are and I am willing to render accounts asking forgiveness from the victims and society.
But those words were only the beginning of the recognition of the forced recruitment of minors, since he also accepted the damage it did to many of them who today still carry that life to which they were forced.
Toncel Redondo added, on behalf of his party: “We cannot return the children we recruited and incorporated for so long in the war. We cannot heal the deep wounds that we cause in adults who today claim us, precisely, to have forcibly stripped them of their childhood“.
However, throughout the diligence he also tried to lower his tone a bit and affirmed that these children and adolescents “generally did not go to combat, they stayed in the camp taking care.” According to him, the minors were not taken to “military matters” because that would have meant “sacrificing them in vain”.
But there was also time to admit that many children did not survive and that they were shot. She even recounted how a girl who tried to escape from the guerrilla was killed:
“She even had a little brother. She did not want to be in a unit and requested a transfer to go to any other unit and they did not want to give her permission. She deserted without a weapon and with nothing; then some boys found her and killed her ”.
However, many of the ex-combatants who were recruited as children today still claim that this is only part of the story, because the truth about what happened to many children and where are their bodies, since the whereabouts of the tombs or the place where they were buried is still unknown.
The hearing was also attended by a delegate from the Attorney General’s Office, who questioned him about many of these executions, and alias ‘Joaquín Gómez’ tried to justify them by assuring that they were infiltrators of the Military Forces:
“Some cases occurred because some members of the Army took children out of Family Welfare and even though they were children, they turned them into killing machines, they used poison and personal defense techniques.”
Finally, the former FARC chief also admitted that abortions were performed, although, according to him, it was done with the mother’s consent.
Said virtual proceeding was presided over by Judge Iván González, of the JEP Recognition Chamber, who was accompanied by Judge Ana Caterina Heyck. The hearing lasted around six hours and you can check it out in the following video:
#At this time, Milton’s version of Jesús Toncel, known as Joaquín Gómez for the recruitment and use of girls and boys in the armed conflict, advances in Riohacha (La Guajira). https://t.co/6LgtOK5tJG
– Special Jurisdiction for Peace (@JEP_Colombia) October 6, 2020
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