Colombia: Colombia’s Land Thieves Going Unpunished: Land Restitution Chief

Jul 23, 2018 | Stephen Gill, Colombia Reports
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Colombia must punish those who teamed up with paramilitary death squads to steal land during the country’s armed conflict, according to the outgoing-director of the Land Restitution Unit. The Victims and Land Restitution Law was passed by President Juan Manuel Santos in June 2011 with the aim of delivering some sense of justice to those affected by the South American country’s half-century long internal conflict. The Land Restitution Unit, albeit through a slow process, has managed to return hundreds of thousands of displaced Colombians to their original lands in the countryside but those responsible for the theft have largely escaped unpunished.