“Any apology for Nazism is unacceptable and I condemn any manifestation that makes use or reference to symbols alluding to those who were responsible for the Jewish holocaust that took the lives of more than 6 million people,” the head of state wrote on his Twitter account.
He also pointed out that “anti-Semitism has no place in the world.”
Duque thus established his position after the controversy that broke out in the country because members of a police school in the municipality of Tuluá, in the department of Valle del Cauca (southwest), paid tribute to Germany in which they used and highlighted Nazi iconography .
The Police explained yesterday in a statement that the ceremony was held as part of an educational activity on universal history at the Simón Bolívar Police School, in Tuluá, during Internationalization Week and that Germany was the guest country.
In photos published on social networks and on the Police Facebook account, a person appears disguised as Adolf Hitler and others in uniforms used by the German armed forces during World War II.
The swastika was also drawn on the armbands worn by some uniformed men and even on a model of an airplane that was displayed on the spot.
Faced with this situation, the German and Israeli embassies in Colombia expressed in a joint statement “their total rejection of any show of apology for Nazism.”
They recalled that “any hate speech” can lead to “tragic results like those experienced years ago” in World War II, in which six million Jews were killed.
For its part, the Colombian Police declared yesterday in a statement that it “rejects with the greatest vehemence the decision taken within the School. These are facts that go against the institutional policy of absolute respect for human rights, “the institution detailed in a statement.
Faced with the “use of Nazi emblems and the caricature of the police uniform”, which the institution described as “unacceptable”, the decision was made to remove the director of the Simón Bolívar School, Jorge Ferney Bayona, “immediately.”