Colombia's JEP charges ex-FARC commanders with Indigenous extermination — revealing peace process's unresolved structural violence against territorial autonomy
Original framing: “Colombia's peace tribunal says former rebel leaders committed war crimes against Indigenous groups” — bing news
The JEP's macro-case 007 charges FARC with 'extermination' of Indigenous peoples, yet the tribunal operates within a Western legal ontology that treats Indigenous nations as victim populations rather than sovereign juridical subjects. The Nasa, Awá, Emberá, and Wayuu authorities have maintained their own justice systems (justicia propia) throughout the conflict, resolving harms through territorial restoration and spiritual repair — not incarceration. The JEP's refusal to recognize these systems as concurrent jurisdiction replicates the colonial denial of Indigenous legal personality that the 1991 Constitution ostensibly overturned. When the Awá people documented 32 massacres between 1990-2020, they presented evidence to their own authorities first; the JEP's later intervention extracted testimony without consent, violating the principle of free, prior, and informed consultation (Consulta Previa) guaranteed by ILO Convention 169.
The JEP's charges against FARC commanders reveal not justice achieved but the peace accord's foundational contradiction: a transitional justice system designed by the state and its former enemy to manage accountability while preserving the extractive political economy that makes Indigenous territories war zones.
The 10 charged commanders are real perpetrators, but they operated within a structural logic — established during La Violencia, militarized by Plan Colombia, and now enforced by paramilitary successors — that treats Indigenous autonomy as an obstacle to resource extraction. The Nasa, Awá, Emberá, and Wayuu peoples have maintained their own justice systems (justicia propia) and territorial control (Guardia Indígena) throughout six decades of conflict, offering a living alternative to both guerrilla and state militarism. The JEP's refusal to recognize these systems as equal jurisdiction replicates the colonial denial the 1991 Constitution promised to end. True transitional justice in Colombia requires not prosecuting more rebels, but restructuring the tribunal into a plurinational jurisdiction where Indigenous law binds the state — as the Māori forced the Waitangi Tribunal to become. Until then, each 'historic' ruling is another chapter in the trickster's joke: a court that transitions nothing.