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Justice backwards...
My name is Hector Enrique Martinez Pineda,
my son's death from the hands of the police has not been justified.
On May 26th, 2012
my son, my daughter and their friends were drinking beer on the street corner.
Meanwhile two policemen from Cali, Sarco and Bakero,
who are known to be very arbitrary with teenagers,
arrested him and took him to the police station,
beat him up and then let him go.
My son and his friends left running
not to let the officers intimidate them.
To that, one of the officers shot my son in the foot
without any warning.
My son fell down,
The officers arrived on a motorcycle and picked him up.
My daughter cried in front of other people and friends
to the officers not to kill him as they already hurt him.
Not to beat him but take him to the hospital,
but the officers did not care about these appeals.
My son also begged them:
"You've already hurt me,
take me anywhere you want, I haven't done anything.
I'm hit, take me to the hospital"
but the officers did not listen to his begging.
One of the friends came back to help him
but one of the officers threatened him with a gun and made him go back.
When the friend turned he heard a shot...
The officer shot him again, in the stomach once
and then again in the throat while lying defenseless on the ground.
The officers got on the motorcycle
and shouted at the people not to pick the boy up.
"No one must pick the boy up!"
They left on the bike like hitmen would do.
They got on the bike and left.
Friends picked up my son
and took him to the hospital with a taxi.
Unfortunately, he died in the hospital.
In fact this goes unpunished
and I wanted to do the march backwards
because the justice and this country all go backwards!
The justice backwards,
The investigations of "positive falses" backwards.
They did not show any will to resolve the problems of the "Mothers of Soacha"
already 5-6 years and they have done nothing.
Deaths of syndicalists,
enforced disappearances,
recently we had another story
on the news where they kill a boy on the football pitch.
This is intolerable of the police!
The abuse of the police against the under-aged
is not only at the level of Cali but throughout the country,
where they stigmatize them,
point them out, beat them,
treat them as they want.
They always want to give precedence
in front of the people as a form of repression
so that young people can not be out on the street.
Therefore I decided to do the march backwards
to raise awareness
that one must denounce the abuses of the authority
and not keep quiet,
cause when one keeps quiet everything stays in impunity.
That's why I decided to march backwards from Cali to Bogota
and with the organizations that have helped me
as Nomades,
MOVICE,
solidarity with the political prisoners,
many organizations that work
so that all these cases of police and military abuse
are not left unpunished.
I do not generalize,
there are officers that are very professional at work
but some others do not deserve to work for the police.
I hope that here in Bogota
state prosecutor assists me
and that the state procurator assists me too
to inspect the case
and start disciplinary investigation against these two...
can't even say assassins
because the way they killed my son
is unprecedented.
What an assassin would do...
After had shot for the first time
I say they should have helped him
and taken him to the hospital.
And could have arrested him if he had done something wrong
but not killed him, as they did.
We are here asking for justice
so that the law is fulfilled,
that's why we came here.
The motor of the entire march now fell ill.
That's what happened to him just now, sure.
The illness comes from here, from the neglection, the solitude.
Us who have lost, we know what it is.
We're not asking for sweets, we're asking for our dignity.
We're not asking for money, with money they won't raise from dead
none of them.
Yes, we do need money,
If someone invite us for lunch, great!
Give us money for rent, amazing!
Pay bills, even better!
But the dignity and the truth about what happened to our sons,
what the Colombian state is doing,
why the police and the military forces have not been penalized for this?
All the cases here are public forces
police, army, the miscalled "positive falses",
whose relatives are being persecuted for denouncing it.
The complaints are handed in and nothing.
All of us, the victims, are tired of the "exhaustive investigations".
Always investigations which do not proceed.
In my case I applied to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights
because here for over 4 years the prosecutor never wanted to assist us.
And when we shout out to the sky
he says: "Where do we disagree?"
"No, sir, you never assisted us so what kind of disagreement can we possibly have?"
We talked to madam Marlen Barbosa, who was going to move the
case of the people shackled here on the 8th of March.
I was here, they promised us results and nothing has changed.
We're here for him, from the heart.
Because we are all brothers, relatives, friends,
as my colleague said, you are the same too.
and if it had happened to one of you, you would have to remain silent
in fear of losing the case.
The idea is to talk to the prosecutor
because the officers who assassinated Hector have other ongoing investigations
and so that it does not repeat they must be suspended.
The prosecutor haven't done this.
And because they were allowed free they ended up killing him too.
From there one can stop these killings.
And for saying this publicly they haunt us.
March, April, May, June, July,
August, September, October, November.
Nine months.
Should we turn the lights down, the truth?
And one thing is to request and the other to demand
It is the responsibility of this house
that truth and justice come out.
And this is just a small scale here
This weekend they assassinated another youngster in Cali.
It was on the news, the police let him die.
They said he was still alive, then claimed that he was dead, one minute...
And they picked him up dead and moved.
And that's how it is.
And all they're telling us is: "exhaustive investigations"
until when?
and they call us terrorists...
I think something is not working here,
and they talk about a few bad apples
but I think that the whole tree is rotten,
and many trees that run this country are rotten...