Colombia's Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP) indicted 10 former FARC members on Tuesday for war crimes and crimes against humanity committed against five Indigenous groups in the country's southeast between 1996 and 2016. The charges — torture, murder, forced displacement, landmine placement on Indigenous territory, and deliberate destruction of ecosystems — represent the tribunal's first case explicitly centered on the systematic targeting of Indigenous communities during the half-century civil conflict. JEP magistrate Catalina Diaz framed the indictment as overdue recognition of Colombia's most marginalized victims. "Today we are delivering justice to the most forgotten peoples of a segregated Colombia," she said, describing how FARC commanders ordered subordinates to mine Indigenous land and ruin the ecosystems tribes depended on for survival. Three of the accused were members of FARC's last secretariat, the rebel group's highest command structure before the 2016 peace deal. Among those indicted is Julian Gallo, who served eight years as a senator under the 2016 agreement that granted FARC 10 congressional seats. The deal's architecture was always controversial: it traded disarmament and political incorporation for non-prison penalties administered through the JEP. Last year, the tribunal sentenced seven ex-FARC members accused of kidnapping to eight years of reparations work, including landmine clearance and locating missing persons. Military members were also sentenced for the "false positives" scandal — the systematic killing of civilians who were then recorded as rebel combatants. Indigenous leaders treated Tuesday's indictment as a structural acknowledgment, not just a legal proceeding. Yhon Jairo Figueroa, a Koreguaje tribal leader, said it was the first time the Colombian state recognized that armed groups "did not just kill individuals" but "attempted to kill the knowledge, the language, the territory." The distinction matters: it reframes violence against Indigenous communities from incidental collateral damage to deliberate cultural destruction. The timing is precarious. Colombia's newly inaugurated far-right President Abelardo de la Espriella — a former defense lawyer who represented right-wing paramilitaries — has publicly criticized the JEP for issuing lenient sentences. His congressional allies have proposed a nearly 17 percent cut to JEP's fiscal year 2027 funding, a measure set for debate this month. Before taking office in August, de la Espriella made opposition to the tribunal's framework a visible part of his political identity. The broader conflict's scale remains staggering. A 2022 Truth Commission report documented 450,664 people killed between 1985 and 2018 and 121,768 forcibly disappeared. Indigenous communities and activists continue to face violent attacks. Some FARC fighters who rejected the 2016 deal formed splinter groups still engaged in armed conflict, and the mechanisms designed to process accountability — the JEP chief among them — now face an existential funding threat from the very state that created them. What Colombia is testing is whether transitional justice can survive a hostile administration. The JEP was designed to trade prison sentences for truth, reparations, and acknowledgment — a bargain that only works if the institution persists long enough to enforce its mandates. A 17 percent budget cut doesn't abolish the tribunal outright, but it signals a slow strangulation that could render it operationally incapable of processing the thousands of cases still pending from a conflict that touched every corner of the country.
