Colombian congresswoman Elizabeth Jay-Pang denounced before Congress the robbery by a group of armed men supposedly coming from Nicaragua to fishermen from the island of San Andrés in waters over which both countries maintain a dispute in high international courts.
In a communication to which local media had access, the representative requests action from the Foreign Ministry, the Ministry of Agriculture, the National Navy and the Colombian Embassy in Managua for this action and other similar ones that “significantly affect the security of the fishing activity”.
Cristian Harvey Corpus, the owner of the Mar Azul fishing boat, specified that at 2 in the morning he was fishing in the northern keys and his crew was “victim of Nicaraguans who approached them” with weapons.
In total, there were five armed men, according to information provided by Corpus in a local chain on the island and collected on the representative’s social networks, who got on the boat and intimidated the crew with the alleged “intent to kill them to take the boat and the produce” of fishing.
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However, seeing that the crew did not offer “any resistance” they did not comply with this supposed initial purpose.
Colombia and Nicaragua are involved in a dispute after a ruling by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) 10 years ago modified the boundaries between the two countries in the Caribbean Sea.
The ruling maintained Colombia’s sovereignty over the archipelago of San Andrés, Providencia and Santa Catalina, as well as the keys that comprise it, and preserved 12 nautical miles of water surrounding these territories.
However, it lost almost 75,000 square kilometers of sea to Nicaragua, although that country claims that the square kilometers it won were more than 90,000.
Since then, the eternal lawsuit for the sovereignty of the Caribbean waters around the archipelago has led to judicial confrontations and diplomatic tensions between the two countries.
