A group of 30 deputies submitted a request on Tuesday to the Colombian Congress to put forward a motion to censure Colombian Defense Minister Pedro Sanchez, for the killing of more than a dozen minors recruited by paramilitary groups in various operations launched months ago against these organizations.
Among the members of the House of Representatives who supported the initiative are three from the Historic Compact – the formation that brought Gustavo Petro to the Colombian presidency in 2022 – and Green Alliance representative Catherine Miranda, who already announced her intention to introduce it last weekend.
For the proposal to succeed and lead to the minister’s resignation, at least 94 deputies out of a total of 188 deputies in the body must vote in favor of the project. It is expected that the Chamber’s Board of Directors will summon the head of the ministerial portfolio within ten days to appear before the plenary session, and within eight days a vote will take place.
The request comes due to the killing of at least 15 minors in recent operations launched by the Colombian army against several armed groups, including the FARC dissident led by Ivan Mordesco, whose positions in Guaviare were bombed last week, killing 20 of his fighters, including seven teenagers.
The leader himself referred to this issue in a video clip broadcast on social networks and echoed by local media outlets such as Radio Caracol and the newspaper El Espectador. In it, he conveyed his “solidarity embrace” to relatives and friends of “the murdered children and other fighters whom Petro commanded.”
“We hope that these young people who sacrificed their lives for the millions of Colombians who suffer from the injustice of the ruling class in this country will be remembered as worthy fighters for the liberation of our people,” he said.
Mordesco spoke of the Colombian army’s operations as a “declaration of war” and said the attacks ordered by Bogotá were “due only to the satisfaction of Americans thirsty for the blood of Colombian children, who are tired of the blood of Palestinian, Colombian and Venezuelan children in the Caribbean and elsewhere in the world.”
He pointed out in the line, “We wanted the 2026 electoral process to have the least shocks possible, but in the face of the progress of the military sectors, all that remains for us is to take a defensive position for the regions, their calm, and distant political decisions.”
Moreover, as Radio W noted, the leader of the armed group warned that “hypocrisy must be removed from the political sphere of the rulers,” and stressed that “we will hold revolutionary trials against those materially and intellectually responsible for the killing of children,” an extremism that has extended to those leaders who promote the conflict.
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