Bodies of 4 murdered members of Colombia Land Restitution Commission found in mass grave

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Four people who were members of a commission of the Land Restitution Unit (URT) and who had been missing since May 27 in the central Colombian department of Meta were murdered and their bodies found in a mass grave, the Government confirmed on Friday (9).

The victims are Karen Sulay Garay Soto, 26, who worked at the URT; John Steven Cagua, and sisters Yadmil and Sandra Milena Cortés Uribe, whose bodies were in a mass grave in the municipalities of Mesetas and Uribe, in Meta.

“This fact generates deep pain, all my solidarity with the families and friends of these 4 people. I reiterate our commitment to work to return the land to the peasants, and we will spare no effort to find those responsible for these murders,” Colombian President Ivan Duque wrote on his Twitter account.

The head of state added that “criminals vilely extinguished the lives” of Garay, the Cogua worker, and the sisters “Sandra Cortés and Yadmil Cortés, rural women with whom we were working to recover their land”.

The Cortés Uribe sisters were reclaiming the land “La Ilusión” located in Mesetas, taken from them more than 20 years ago by FARC guerrillas.

The general director of the Land Restitution Unit, Andrés Castro, said in a statement that “this act of violence is a disgrace to us” and recalled that “it is the first event of this type that has happened to the Unit” in ten years of existence.

About the claimants, Castro said that, like so many Colombian victims, they were beginning their process of restitution of property and had the hope that they would be able to return to the countryside.

“They were requesting their right to restitution, but the violence, unjust and cruel, snatched the dream from their hands. They hoped to join the more than 73,000 people who have returned to their land with the restitution policy, but the violence killed their illusion,” he added.

According to URT, the commission left Villavicencio, the capital of Meta, for Mesetas on May 25 and contact with them was lost two days later.

Subsequently, on May 31, local media reported that the van in which the commission was traveling had been found abandoned in a hamlet that is part of the municipality of La Macarena, an area where FARC dissidents have a strong presence.

URT’s main objective is to serve as the government’s administrative body for the restitution of land to those dispossessed due to the internal armed conflict.