FARC guerrillas “torture and kill” fleeing adolescent girls

FARC guerrillas stand accused of the torture and murder of three adolescent girls as they tried to demobilize and leave Colombia´s largest and longest running terrorist organization.

The girls aged 15,16 and 17 belonged to the FARC command in the Amazonian department of Guaviare, and according the fellow guerrilla alias “Carlos”, were brutally gunned down “in the last few days” following a month-long ordeal which saw them “tied up for 24 hours a day”.

“Carlos”, who demobilized – managing to escape the same treatment – told the Cartagena-based newspaper El Universal that over the course of a 15 month period, he witnessed the assassination of six “compañeros”, all minors; a fact he claims led him to quit the armed conflict.

“I demobilized because of the way they killed other guerrillas: they tied them up and killed them while they were defenseless. They took them over to a hole shot them and threw them into the water”.

The testimony of “Carlos” corresponds with a slew of recent interviews with ex-guerrillas that belonged to the front commaned by “General” Jorge Enrique Navarrete Jadeth all of which have allowed authorities to understand that 70 per cent of the combatents in the FARC´s Frente Primero are underage fighters.

According to the government agency Bienestar Familiar, there were around 18,000 children that “collaborated” with the FARC  and the ELN in 2012.  Non government bodies have, however, put the figure of active fighters lower (around 13,000 in the FARC). Bienestar Familiar also reveals that 40% of the FARC´s troops are minors, and shows that recruitment is on the up.

This follows hot on the heels of a police report compiled in January that claimed young girls in the FARC´s ranks were used as “sex slaves” with as many as 1,000 forced abortions a year carried out within the rebel group.

According to one of the report´s authors the average female fighter is shared by “five to seven guerillas” during her time on the front line, and if she is made pregnant and refuses a termination she is “forced to abort, or killed”.

The level of secrecy and the nature of the conflict means these figures are difficult to verify, but nevertheless offer insight into the full horror of Colombia´s internal conflict.