December 12, 2016

Keymer Ávila | @Keymer_Avila

A few days ago I had a conversation with Javier Barrios from Radio Fe y Alegría about the cases of Barlovento and Cariaco, in which more than 20 people were murdered by officials of the State security forces, specifically by members of the FAN. From this exchange, 8 keys stand out to analyze these phenomena:

1. These deaths had already been announced since July 13, 2015, the date on which a policy such as the PLO was promoted and supported . Unlimited power cannot be given to the military and police, without accountability, without any institutional consequence in the face of their deviations and excesses. Our current sludge comes from these waters.
2. What we are currently witnessing is a massacre by trickle: although the cases of Cariaco, Barlovento and Tumeremo are scandalous because a large number of victims are achieved in a single event, it should not be lost sight of the fact that there is a continuous massacre here. or drip . At the beginning of the year, the Attorney General spoke of two hundred and forty-five people who died in just 5 months from the PLO. What has happened to those cases? This without taking into account that there are not counting all the deaths at the hands of the State security forces that do not carry the OLP label. In 2015 this phenomenon increased by more than 80% compared to the previous year and everything indicates that in 2016 the figure will be much higher. In a press follow-up that we carry out together with the Support Network for Justice and Peace , we have already counted more than a thousand people, so far this year, killed in the hands of the State security forces. Only about a quarter of these cases reach the press, the real figure must be much higher . This dripping massacre that we see daily must also be denounced and made visible.
3. The substratum of this type of politics is fear . Law and order campaigns, alarmed demands for greater security and strong-arm policies favor this type of practice. In the political class of both sides there is an authoritarian and repressive consensus, in view of this, citizens and social movements must demand an efficient State intervention in guaranteeing our rights, timely, proportional, framed in legality. Citizen security policies are to protect our rights, not to diminish or violate them . Giving up rights to gain security does not make sense. Is it logical that in pursuit of your safety they take your life, affect your personal integrity and your freedom? One asks for security to protect his life, personal integrity and to have more freedom.
4. The State cannot be allowed to end up behaving like the crime it intends to combat . Crime is stopped, controlled, reduced with greater institutionality, with actions adjusted to the law, not turning state officials into criminals.
5. The denunciation of human rights violations and police and military excesses should not be interpreted as a request for inaction on the part of the State . On the contrary, what is required is a greater intervention of the State, but a legitimate and legal intervention. An intervention not only criminal, the State must intervene in its entirety, satisfy the basic needs of the population and in the cases that it must repress, it must do so, within the framework of legality.
6. Whether or not these events occurred within the framework of a PLO is not the most important thing, today it is the PLO, tomorrow it can have any other name . Beyond the initials, what must be questioned is the specific institutional praxis, but also systematic and repeated regardless of the name it has. On the other hand, by concentrating only on the OLP we could, unintentionally, be covering up all the deaths at the hands of the State security forces , because not all the deaths that occur at the hands of the security forces are by the OLP .
7. We must denounce the militarization of citizen security , this should not be understood solely as the exercise of military officials in citizen security tasks, with this reference is also made to their culture, practices and war logic carried out by officials of the security forces. state security. Currently, all the deaths in the hands of the security forces are not only a consequence of the actions of military bodies, there are state and municipal police and national police forces (PNB and CICPC), which are also involved in this type of event. . What must be denounced is the rationality of war that breaks all legal and institutional limits, to convert the work of citizen security into akind of war , with fatal consequences for anyone.
8. The quality of innocent or guilty of the victim of an extrajudicial execution should not be the most important. In the case of Barlovento, one of the most outstanding aspects was the innocence of the victims, which, although it is relevant for their memory and their families, should not be the center of the discourse of institutional actors or of public debate. These types of events should not be tolerated, justified or legitimized in any case, regardless of the innocence or not of the people. In our country the death penalty does not formally exist, a penalty that by the way is in the process of extinction throughout the world, and if the death penalty did exist, it would be the consequence of a trial and the decision of a judge, not of police and military in the middle of the street. Rights have to be for everyone, not just for the innocent, because when you begin to tolerate and legitimize that criminals do not have rights.

Publicado originalmente en Provea.