Colombia: new big demonstration against the government

Several thousand people, including natives, students and teachers, demonstrated in Colombia on Wednesday during a new day of social mobilization against the right-wing government of President Ivan Duque.

This is the fourth

, also called at the call of the unions, to increase pressure on the Head of State, in power since August 2018.

Read also: Colombia: thousands of natives in Bogota to demand to see the president

This time, the crowd took to the streets to denounce the resurgence of violence in remote regions of the country, since the peace agreement signed in 2016 with the powerful Marxist guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc).

, declared the human rights activist Francia Marquez, who took part in the march.

In Bogota, the epicenter of the protest, demonstrators marched through the streets on foot and in motorized caravans to the historic heart of the capital, chanting slogans hostile to the government.

Some 7,000 indigenous people are taking part in this demonstration, after arriving on Sunday from Cauca, a region in the south-west of the country badly affected by armed groups involved in drug trafficking.

Since October 10, they have requested a personal meeting with the Head of State and have traveled to Bogota following his refusal to meet them.

The mobilization against the government, on an unprecedented scale in Colombia, began in November 2019, but was interrupted by the end-of-year holidays, followed by a general confinement of five months from March 25 to stop the spread of the new coronavirus.

In addition to popular discontent, Ivan Duque is faced with the deterioration of the economy and security, against the backdrop of a pandemic which since the beginning of March has killed nearly 30,000 people in this country of 50 million inhabitants.

The violence financed by narco-trafficking has resulted in 68 massacres since early 2020, according to the independent observatory Indepaz.

Other demonstrations took place in September against police brutality after the death of a man at the hands of the police.

Colombians also denounce poverty, which in 2019 affected 35.7% of them, as well as inequalities, increased by the pandemic in this country which is already the most unequal of the 37 members of the Organization for Cooperation and economic development (OECD).