During a humanitarian action in the municipal cemetery of San Juan del Cesar, in La Guajira, the Search Unit for Persons Reportedly Missing, UBPD, exhumed 128 bodies that, after a technical-scientific assessment in which medical criteria were applied, forensics, led to the recovery of 38 bodies with signs of violence, which could belong to people who were disappeared within the framework of the armed conflict.
The dynamics of the intervention combined the development of humanitarian and extrajudicial actions led by the Search Unit with a precautionary measure generated by the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP), which determined the protection of the bodies buried in the cemetery, the framework of macrocase 03, Caribbean coast subcase.
The 38 recovered bodies are in the custody of the National Institute of Legal Medicine and Forensic Sciences for the identification process and, once the entity confirms the identities, they will proceed with dignified deliveries to the next of kin.
To approach this cemetery, it was necessary to form a team with professionals from different areas of forensic sciences and the results of an investigation carried out by the servers of the Search Unit, Luz Carolina Pulido and Gisela Cañas, fed with training contributions. of allied institutions that accompanied the process: groups of civilian contributors of information and former members of different armed structures, social organizations and families of missing persons.
This mission was also accompanied by family members, peace signatories who are part of the Reencuentros Humanitarian Corporation, the Committee of Solidarity with Political Prisoners, the JEP, the United Nations, the Lions Club, the Municipal Mayor’s Office of San Juan del Cesar , representatives of the Wiwa people and the Kankuama Indigenous Organization, who promoted the search for relatives of possible people considered missing with ethnic affiliation.
According to the UBPD, in La Guajira there are a universe of 1,026 people missing in the context of the armed conflict, of which 135 search requests have been received. For its part, the universe of people reported missing in Colombia in the context of the armed conflict is 111,640.
The entity indicated that to support the identification process, the Search Unit invites those who have a loved one missing before December 1, 2016 and in the context of the armed conflict or who presume that the body was in the cemetery San Juan del Cesar, contact the entity in Valledupar, on race 8 # 14 – 26 (Cañaguate neighborhood); or through the telephone lines 3167444722 and 3165243128.
