Colombia's peace tribunal is in a "very difficult" position due to budget cuts by right-wing President Abelardo de la Espriella and threats against its judges, its new president told AFP.
The Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP) tries the worst crimes committed during Colombia's more than half-century of conflict between state forces, Marxist rebels, drug traffickers and right-wing paramilitaries.
It was established as part of the state's landmark 2016 peace deal with the most powerful guerrilla group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).
The right-wing De la Espriella is a fierce critic of the deal, which was signed 10 years ago this month, and which he considers too lenient on former guerrillas.
He wants to cut the JEP's budget by over $50 million in 2027 and abolish it altogether in 2028.
- 'Smear' campaign -
"We are in a very difficult moment," Danilo Rojas, a magistrate who took over as JEP president earlier this month, told AFP in an interview this week, calling the budget cuts a "hard blow."
The tribunal offers non-prison sentences for individuals who admit to war crimes or crimes against humanity and agree to make reparations to the victims.
It began operations in 2018.
After seven years of investigations, it handed down its first sentences last year.
Ten former FARC leaders were sentenced to eight years of community service for their role in tens of thousands of kidnappings, and 12 former soldiers were handed a similar punishment over the killing of thousands of civilians falsely passed off as guerrillas.
Rojas said the budget cuts, while representing a fraction of JEP's budget, threaten to slow down the wheels of justice.
"The number of lawyers has to be reduced, and that could immediately paralyze the proceedings," he said.
He added that hostility towards the peace deal, which was rejected in a referendum but later adopted by Congress, was being felt in the form of a "smear" campaign against the tribunal.
Some judges, he said, had received death threats or been followed.
"It's disheartening and psychologically difficult," he said.
- The power of forgiveness -
Closing the tribunal in 2028 would represent "victory for those who never agreed with the peace process" in the first place, he said.
Rojas has been a witness to emotional scenes of reconciliation between former perpetrators and victims, at meetings facilitated by the tribunal.
He especially remembers the soldier who admitted to killing civilians, falling to his knees before his victims, sobbing, when they granted him forgiveness.
The scene, which went viral on social media, became a defining image of reconciliation.
"It seems impossible that a perpetrator of a serious crime would confess, repent, ask for forgiveness, and, what seems even more unbelievable, that the victim would recognize him as a human being who made a mistake," he told AFP.
Moments like these give JEP and its staff the strength to continue their work "with courage, responsibility and temperance," he said.
