Colombian President Gustavo Petro has ordered his country’s ambassador to Egypt to verify the number of Colombians who have been killed in Sudan while allegedly fighting alongside the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in Darfur.
In a post on X (formerly Twitter), Petro said: “Turning our youth into commodities sold for death and sending them to fight in a war against Sudan—a country that has done them no harm—makes them targets for such operations.” He accused those coordinating mercenary activities from within Colombia of betraying their oath to Simón Bolívar.
The president strongly condemned what he described as “mercenarism and the commodification of men for killing,” calling it a form of human trafficking.
“I have called for an urgent bill to ban mercenarism,” Petro added. “This, too, is a form of human trafficking—turning men into products for killing. They longed for war so much in Colombia that, when the conflict here subsided, they went searching for it abroad, even where no one had harmed us.”
He described those who recruit youth to fight in foreign wars as “murderers” and “ghosts of death who have betrayed their oath to Bolívar,” invoking the foundational ideals of the Colombian nation.
