At least three people, allegedly drug addicts, have been murdered in the last 24 hours in the municipality of Miranda, in the north of the Colombian department of Cauca, in what the neighbors denounce as a wave of "social cleansing".
One of the victims is Neider Andrés Collazos Gutiérrez, a 21-year-old man, but the identities of the other two deceased have not been revealed, although they were also homeless. One of them would be of Venezuelan nationality, according to the Colombian radio station RCN.
The first death occurred in Las Gradas de la Plazoleta, where armed men arrived in a van who fired indiscriminately at those present. Collazos and a woman who has not been identified were killed.
On the other hand, on the Miranda-Corinto road, the lifeless body of another young man was found, apparently of Venezuelan nationality. The victim’s body was left lying on the guardrail with several firearm impacts along with a paper with the message "Death to the rats and rats". In Colombian jargon, a chirrete is a drug addict homeless man dedicated to theft to survive.
The Institute of Studies for Development and Peace (INDEPAZ) has collected these events as a massacre in what would be the sixth in 2022 and the first in the department of Cauca.
Indigenous people displaced from Venezuela
On the other hand, some 200 Venezuelans, most of them indigenous Sikuani, have arrived displaced in the Colombian municipality of Puerto Carreño after fleeing the fighting between the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the National Liberation Army (ELN) guerrillas. has denounced this Friday the Colombian Ombudsman and collects the Colombian newspaper ‘El País’.
The combats between both guerrillas have left almost 30 dead in the first days of the year 2022. "Colombian illegal armed groups are clashing on Venezuelan territory and, for this reason, more families from that country have abandoned their homes and fled to Colombian territory and other parts of Venezuela.", explained the Ombudsman.
Some 170 people fled to Colombia in the first week of the year and on Thursday a group of former FARC combatants who are still in the peace process also had to move due to the clashes. The armed groups dispute the illegal businesses on the border, mainly cocaine trafficking.
The ELN has some 2,500 members, according to Indepaz, while the FARC dissidents that rejected the 2016 peace accords add up to some 5,200 combatants without a unified command, the majority (85%) new recruits who were never in the guerrilla before the war. peace signing, also according to Indepaz
.