(ANSA) - ROME, MAY 29 - Colombian President Ivan Duque has ordered the deployment of the army in the streets of Cali, the third city in the country that has been the scene of a month of violent protests that have caused three deaths.
The president held a security council in the city to take stock of the situation.
Duque went personally to Cali, the capital of the Valle del Cauca department, the scene for over a month of important demonstrations and serious riots between demonstrators and police. At the end of a series of meetings with ministers and local leaders, reported Blu Radio of Bogotà, the head of state argued that "we must defend our rights with the instruments that the Constitution and the law give us". For this reason, he continued, I decided to have "the maximum possible deployment of military assistance for the National Police" in Cali and in the Valle del Cauca with the immediate deployment of 7,000 soldiers who will help strengthen the garrison of strategic points and remove the blocks in the communication routes. In our country, he concluded, "there cannot be islands of anarchy. "For over a month, an anti-government mobilization organized by a National Strike Committee (CNP) has been underway throughout Colombia, in which dozens of deaths have been recorded, many of them in Cali and the province, hundreds of injured, numerous disappeared and multiple reports of sexual violence against women participating in the protests.
