THE COURSE IS CORRECTED, BUT IT WON’T STOP

Bogotá, 22 Feb. (SNE).- The following is the summary of the speech delivered by Colombian President, Álvaro Uribe Vélez, during the promotion of General Mario Montoya, as new Commander of the Colombian Army:

• In this moment of our Nation’s history we need triumphant commanders. We don’t need commanders to justify defeats.
  
• Mistreatments affect the soldiers’ trust in the institution. He who mistreats has no trust in the institution because he does not respect it. Abuses affect the trust of the soldiers’ parents. That mistrust is contagious and may lead us to a generalized mistrust that we must avoid.
  
• A mistreated soldier is a resentful one. He may be a brave, aggressive and a soldier full of initiative, but he will finally become a bitter and resentful soldier.
  
• Battles fought with bitterness and resentfulness, are lost battles.
  
• Abusing a soldier authorizes him to abuse. First, he suffers from mistreatment and then he feels authorized to mistreat the criminal, the terrorist, and the innocent citizen.
  
• A soldier must be taught to win, without authorizing him to mistreat.
  
• The military victory needs the opinion’s trust to last. Abuses lead to a loss of the opinion’s trust.
  
• With mistreatments, when the citizens’ trust is lost, the possibility of continuing this battle until our Armed Forces consolidate the victory is affected. }
  
• If something must be made clear from this sad episode is that there is a profound relation between the human rights we have to respect in our fight against criminals, the human rights we have to respect in our relationship with the citizens and the human rights we have to respect within our Force.
  
• If we violate them within the Force, we loose the credibility to defend that we observe them in the eyes of our citizens and in the eyes of the criminals.
  
• These are not small incidents. They are profound. They are profound because our Security policy is not the security policy of a dictatorship. This policy is democratic because its a policy in a State of opinion.
  
• In Colombia, in these days, we’ve had two debates: the debate over child abuse and the debate over this deplorable incident within the Force. We cannot remove them. We must asks ourselves: which one of the two has more bearing on the other? If we do not correct child abuse, which must be corrected within our families, then we will be mistreating children so that finally they become mistreated soldiers or officers that mistreat. And if we don’t assume, once and for all, the commitment of having no abuses in the Public Force, it will become standard in Colombia to mistreat in our Public Force and in our families.