Colombia’s justice minister has introduced a bill that contains a controversial proposal to decriminalize incest between first-degree relatives in order to decongest prisons, AFP reports.

“What we are proposing to rule out is that two people, both adults who voluntarily gave their consent to sex, should be sent to prison,” Nestor Osuna told a local radio station on Tuesday.

Colombian law punishes first-degree relatives for sexual relations between siblings or between parents and their descendants or ancestors with up to six years in prison.

On Monday, the minister introduced a bill in Congress to improve prison conditions and decriminalize certain practices to reduce prison overcrowding, which has reached a critical point.

“It is necessary to establish in the criminal law, which is characteristic of a liberal society, certain limits of the state’s prosecution of behavior that does not actually harm society,” he said in this regard.

Osuna explained the differences, in his opinion, between incest and other sexual crimes. “This is neither rape, nor forced sexual intercourse, nor sexual intercourse with minors. These crimes will continue to receive the high penalties they deserve.” Incest “with a child is rape,” he also emphasized.

In Colombia, the age of consent is 14. The minister did not specify what will happen in the case of incestuous relationship between a young person aged 14 to 18 and an adult.

In support of his claim, the minister, a lawyer by profession, cited Nobel laureate Gabriel García Márquez’s masterpiece A Century of Solitude, in which sexual relations between members of the Buendia family are a common practice.

“IN A century of loneliness, there are several generations where there is incest,” he said.

However, the minister said that the number of prisoners convicted of incest is “minimal”.

The proposal drew criticism. This is a “harmful message for families and a terrible incentive for rapists,” Ernesto Macias, former president of the Senate and a member of the Democratic Center (Right) party, reacted on Twitter.

Elected in the summer of 2022, President Gustavo Petro, the first left-wing president in the country’s history, plans to implement an ambitious set of reforms. However, some of these reforms, related to the energy transition and the health care system, are causing tension today.