Colombia to investigate claims of US soldiers raping Indigenous girls
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Spanish-language US television network Univision reported back in December that an American soldier living with a Colombian army regiment in 2019 sexually raped and impregnated a 10-year-old girl from the Nukak tribe.
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US and Colombian paratroops at Tolemaida Air Base in Colombia in 2020 (AP)
Colombian President Gustavo Petro ordered an investigation into reports of rape of Indigenous young girls by US and local soldiers on Friday.
Spanish-language US television network Univision reported back in December that an American soldier living with a Colombian army regiment in 2019 sexually raped and impregnated a 10-year-old girl from the Nukak tribe in the southern Amazonia region.
An "increasing epidemic of rape of indigenous adolescents in the Guaviare department (in Amazonia), including largely by white men, some of whom are military," has been unmasked after the network investigated the matter and interacted with local sources and state organizations.
Petro said he had asked a commission from the family wellbeing institute and the presidency to travel to Guaviare to investigate the accusations.
"This horror has gone unpunished for years," Petro tweeted.
On his account, Public prosecutor Isabel Leon said as quoted by Univision that both Colombian and US soldiers were being investigated for the alleged abuse of Nukak girls.
Petro said 118 members of the Colombian army were under investigation.
On its account, the US Embassy in Bogota released a statement claiming its troops had not been stationed in Guaviare in 2019.
It is worth noting that the traditionally nomadic Nukak were displaced from their ancestral lands at the end of the 20th century by the brutal decades-long armed conflict that has brought misery to millions of Colombians.
Today, the Nukak live in precarious rural settlements and beg in towns to survive.
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