Minister Velásquez requested that up to $500 million will be provided to anyone who provides information that leads to the arrest of the main ringleaders of the Jaime Martínez front.
Two battalions of Special Forces of Colombian National Army will arrive in Cauca to increase operations and increase the attack on criminal finances.
15 thousand hectares of illicit plantations will be replaced with 81 productive projects of coffee, beans, tourism and fishing, in conjunction with different institutions of the national Government, in Cauca.
“The Central General Staff in the southwest of the country demonstrated with its attitude that it was not really [working] for peace, that the operations they carried out during the period that we were in the ceasefire with that organization, in general in the country, showed that it was taking advantage of the ceasefire itself in operations that it committed against the inhabitants.”
This was stated by the Minister of National Defense, Iván Velásquez, at a press conference on Tuesday morning, together with the general commander of the Military Forces, General Helder Giraldo and the director of the Police, General William Salamanca.
In that sense, the head of the Defense explained that the so called EMC that operates in the southwest of Colombia “is not currently in the process of negotiation, so it does not, precisely, mean that negotiations are taking place with them. There is a fracture within the EMC in which at least two groups are evident: that one of the so-called Mordisco and that one of alias Calarcá, the latter remains in the negotiations.”
The statements come after the events that occurred executed by that organization in Miranda, Cauca, last Friday, that took the life of a minor, 12 years old, and seriously hit two adults, after a terrorist attack, while in Morales, two police officers were killed after an attack on the police station.
The Minister asserted that: "That drug trafficking organization called the Central General Staff, in Cauca, with the Jaime Martínez front, but in the same way with the Dagoberto Ramos and the Carlos Patiño, come to an attack against the inhabitants because it is not an exclusive operation against the Military Forces. Some have claimed that this organization is expecting, in the southwest of the country, that a ceasefire is agreed again, there is an emphatic response of the Minister of Defense: No new ceasefire will be agreed with the Central General Staff in the southwest.”
"What this criminal organization has shown in this region of the country, the attacks that this organization has carried out against civilians, remove any possibility of ceasefire, and in this, which is evident, there is not the intention of conducting a peace process, but the need to have a ceasefire in order to continue consolidating itself in the use of illegal drug trafficking mining, which seems very evident, because this shows then that there is not the purpose of peace, but as the President has been pointing out so many times: its objective is the increase of wealth through drug trafficking and illegal mining, especially, but also, in the same way, extortion,” said Minister Velásquez.
In that sense, the head of the Defense informed that the order from the President of the Republic, Gustavo Petro, is to increase operational and intelligence resources, which “have already begun to be put into execution.”
“On one hand, with provisions to increase the number of police officers in the municipalities that are under attack, or under the possibility of operations, we have to anticipate the Central General Staff actions, and, particularly, the actions of this Jaime Martínez front, and in that way the actions of the Military Forces with what has been carried out during this year in the 16 thousand Plan, which has led to deploy 15 new platoons to Cauca, of which 11 have already been sent, and about 450 men, are scheduled to be sent,” the Minister said.
In the same way, the Minister of Defense highlighted that the Ministry of the Interior will strengthen technological resources in that region of the country, with the establishment of 125 cameras, which will have the ability to identify plates and faces at a distance of up to 2.5 km, with technological developments of the Telematics Directorate of the National Police.
Among other operations reported by the Minister are the eradication of illegal mining, with operations carried out by the Military Forces and at the same time, humanized security, the need for the transformation of the territory under the leadership of the Defense sector.
“We are going to carry out operations to improve the material conditions of existence of the inhabitants of the department. In alliance with the Ministries of Justice, Agriculture, Health, Education, the National Directorate of Planning, Social Prosperity and the Government of Cauca, in the same way with the support of International Cooperation partners, which will lead us to conduct, for example, in the substitution of coca plantations, a plan that has already been implemented, but that we intend to launch and we will have in the department of Cauca,” he concluded.
Source: Press – Ministry of National Defense
