\n Colombia's peace tribunal on Tuesday indicted 10 former members of the FARC guerrilla group for war crimes and crimes against humanity against Indigenous communities during FARC's half-century of conflict with the state.\n<\/p>\n
\n The former Marxist rebels were charged with a litany of crimes, including extermination, murder, forced disappearance, torture, persecution, forced displacement, and the use of antipersonnel mines against five Indigenous communities, the Special Jurisdiction for Peace, best known by its Spanish acronym JEP, said.\n<\/p>\n
\n Three of the accused are former commanders of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) which agreed in 2016 to lay down arms as part of a landmark peace deal.\n<\/p>\n
\n The seven others are mid-level commanders.\n<\/p>\n
\n They are charged over acts allegedly committed between 1996 and 2016 in the Amazon and Orinoco regions of Colombia, which are historically FARC strongholds.\n<\/p>\n
\n The JEP cited a 1997 massacre of members of the Korebaju Indigenous reserve in southern Colombia.\n<\/p>\n
\n Investigators say guerrillas entered the reserve and murdered seven people accused of collaborating with FARC enemies -- either rival guerrilla groups or Colombian security forces.\n<\/p>\n
\n The JEP emphasized the difficulty faced by Indigenous communities in accessing basic health and education services during FARC's reign in these regions.\n<\/p>\n
\n It also noted the impact on their daily lives from the antipersonnel mines planted by FARC in the jungle.\n<\/p>\n
\n The JEP was set up under the 2016 peace deal to try the worst crimes committed by the various parties to the Colombian conflict.\n<\/p>\n
\n It offers non-prison sentences for individuals who admit to war crimes or crimes against humanity.\n<\/p>\n
\n Last year, it issued its first sentences against former FARC members over the kidnapping of tens of thousands of people during its war with the state.\n<\/p>\n
\n It also handed down its first sentences against former soldiers who admitted to killing thousands of civilians and falsely tallying them as guerrillas during the conflict.\n<\/p>\n
\n In both cases, the defendants were sentenced to years of acts of reparations for their victims.\n<\/p>\n
\n FARC's former leadership recently began taking part in the search for thousands of people who disappeared during the conflict by helping to exhume graves.\n<\/p>\n
\n Colombia's new right-wing president Abelardo de la Espriella has been intensely critical of the JEP's work, seeing the sentences as too lenient.\n<\/p>\n
\n He has vowed to massively cut the JEP's budget.\n<\/p>\n
\n The tribunal warned that it could become inoperable if the cuts are approved by Congress.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Colombia's peace tribunal on Tuesday indicted 10 former members of the FARC guerrilla group for war crimes and crimes against humanity against Indigenous communities during FARC's half-century of conflict with the state. The former Marxist rebels were charged with a litany of crimes, including extermination, murder, forced disappearance, torture, persecution, forced displacement, and the use […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":60,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[553],"tags":[],"ji_location":[],"class_list":["post-167268","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-live-feed"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n