A canal in Colombia could be a giant tomb of more than 9,000 corpses

A river megaproject in the Colombian Caribbean region could be the grave of 9,000 bodies of the disappeared victims of the armed conflict, according to the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP), an organization that called for an urgent search.

The justice mechanism in charge of investigating cases linked to the internal armed conflict in Colombia suspects that, along 115.5 kilometers of the artificial channel where the Dique canal megaproject is being developed, in charge of the National Infrastructure Agency (ANI), more than 9,000 corpses could be found submerged.

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The canal, located in northern Colombia, between the municipality of Calamar and the bay of the city of Cartagena, is in a delta formed by the waters of the Magdalena River, the country’s main river artery. Its construction began more than 500 years ago in order to unite several swamps and make it suitable for navigation between the river and the port of Cartagena.

In the last forty years of brutal violence in the country, the canal system witnessed gloomy murders carried out by paramilitary groups that threw the bodies into the swamps and waters to make them disappear. According to researcher Jasmar Pajaro, a member of the Karibe Lawyers Collective (Abokar), the Dique canal is “the largest mass grave in the country.”

The Attorney General’s Office instructed the Ministry of Transportation to speed up the search for the bodies and ordered the installation of inter-institutional working groups with the aim of drawing up a protocol that commits to the “safeguarding and protection of unidentified bodies.”

Although the bidding process may continue, the works could be affected by the search protocols for the disappearances, which will require four months of work.

In this sense, the control entity guaranteed the search, the identification of the bodies of the people reported as disappeared and who, it is presumed, were hidden in the tributary, in addition to “assessing the social and environmental impacts, with the participation of the communities concerned.”

A fluvial megaproject is being developed on the site that seeks to recover degraded ecosystems and mitigate the impact of floods in the region. The execution of the work, which is estimated to generate more than 60,000 jobs, will be carried out under concession for a period of 15 years.

It is estimated that between 1991 and 2015 there were between 6,700 and 9,600 forced disappearances in the area and, according to the newspaper El Tiempo, the JEP, together with the Search Unit for Persons Given as Disappeared (UBPD), have already identified around 79 zones where there could be bodies.

With information from Sputnik

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