The price to pay for protesting in Colombia

Nicolás Bernal, a skinny and melancholic teenager, remembers himself, as if it were someone else's life, in front of a riot squad.

He remembers that around him there was a row of collapsed buildings full of graffiti, south of Bogotá.

He was coming from playing soccer with some friends when, when crossing a main street, he found himself in front of a platoon of soldiers.

After that moment everything becomes cloudy.

The next thing that comes to mind is the rattle of a vehicle in which he was.

"I woke up a little bit and I was in a… what is that called what you work on?"

—Taxi—, answers his father, Ericsson Bernal.

His cousin Laura Sofía listens to the dialogue between father and son while brushing her hair in front of a mirror in her living room.

"From that day on, you have to complete the words and phrases," she interrupts.

The 13-year-old boy does not take himself for granted and continues the story: "That, taxi."

He fainted again then he tells.

He was on his way to the hospital, brought by a taxi driver who had picked him up on the street, before the crowd could run over him.

Bernal was hit by a tear gas canister on the back of the head.

It was April 30.

At the moment of impact, according to witnesses, he convulsed and expelled blood from his mouth and ears.

The impact had him in the hospital for 15 days and has affected the vision in his left eye.

To demonstrate this, the patch is removed, revealing two disjointed pupils.

"I see him

dip

twice."

In the hospital room he was visited by his godfather, one of the people he loves the most and whose name he has now forgotten.

He refers to him as "the tall man."

More information

• The Director General of the Colombian Police: "We will be the first to ask for forgiveness"

• A new night of anger in Colombia: Popayán explodes after the suicide of a minor held by the police

The social outbreak in Colombia, initially against a tax reform that hit the middle and working classes, has left thousands of injured during anti-government demonstrations that have been held throughout the country. The brutality of the techniques used by the police to suppress the protests has alerted the international community. At least 14 people, of the more than 40 who have died in the last 25 days, did so at the hands of the police. Sometimes as a result of firearms shots produced a few meters away.

The agents have deployed in this time a whole arsenal of weapons that in theory are not lethal.

Tear gas canisters, stun bombs, water cannons and some very bulky multiple rockets that, especially at night, produce a disconcerting effect.

This ammunition, up close, causes serious damage to those affected and can be lethal.

05/22/21 Young people injured in the protests in Colombia.

In the photo, Juan Fonseca, who has lost an eye.

PHOTO: CAMILO ROZO

In the mid-afternoon of May 14, Friday, Juan Diego Ortega, 24, was dressed as a cowboy. It runs the largest trade fair in Cauca, the region where the protest has been the bloodiest. That day, his friends, who know he is an expert in first aid, wrote to him to grab a first aid kit and appear in the front line of the demonstrations in the city of Popayán. The previous morning, a 17-year-old girl had committed suicide after reporting that riot police had sexually assaulted her.

The young people gathered to protest at the police station where the events allegedly occurred. The matter turned violent when some protesters burned public property. The riot police tried to disperse the people with a tank that was attacking them. In a video, the truck is seen running over three people on the corner of a street. He then changes direction and slams other boys against a fence. Ortega tried to help one of them when the tank hit him in the side and then in the face.

Due to the impact, he suffered a head injury and a laceration on his eyelid that required surgery. "That is not the worst. That will heal. But since then I have been in psychiatric treatment. I can't sleep, ”he says on the other end of the phone. According to the Defense Ministry, there are 1,037 people injured so far. At the same time, 1,029 injured police officers are counted. The Government argues, to justify its response, that the police are receiving systematic attacks from organized groups. The new Foreign Minister, Marta Ramírez, is traveling these days to try to counteract the negative image of the Government since the protests began.

The protest in Colombia has its origin in a tax increase to which a great social unrest has been added. The action of the police has not helped to appease this discontent. Jerónimo Castillo, a researcher at the Ideas for Peace Foundation, an ideas laboratory, believes that the authorities have not been able to respond to the demands of the street. “There is a State that has been dismantling its well-being and has concentrated on police matters (the guerrillas, the war against drugs). Now it has been unable to understand that there is a change in the way of understanding governance because it has to negotiate with multiple social and political actors. But the only answer is the police ”, he says.

Videos with scenes of police abuse have gone viral on Colombians' mobile phones.

“If the government does not take decisive action to stop these abuses, it is probable that the Colombian police will not leave practically any type of brutality without committing”, says José Miguel Vivanco, director for the Americas of Humans Right Watch, who throughout the crisis has documented excesses.

Alejandro Lanz, president of Temblores, an organization specialized in recording abuses of authority, adds: "There is unjustified violence."

05/22/21 Young people injured in the protests in Colombia.

In the photo, Sara Valentina Córdoba, an 18-year-old student.

PHOTO: CAMILO ROZO

He has recorded at least 33 cases of people who have lost their vision or have suffered very strong blows to the eyes. One of them is that of Juan Pablo Fonseca, a kitchen boy at one of the best restaurants in Bogotá. "On May 1, the attack occurred," explains his brother. A riot police, 30 meters away, hit him with a tear gas canister in the Cedritos neighborhood, a point where there are usually quite a few protests these days. In that place, President Iván Duque has an apartment. Fonseca had to have his eye removed and since then he has undergone six more operations, reconstruction and maxillofacials. He has lost hearing in one ear and his spirits, which his brother is struggling to help him overcome.He has filed a complaint with the prosecution and is on top of the internal affairs investigation being carried out by the police department.

Sara Valentina Córdoba, an 18-year-old student, is in that same bureaucratic labyrinth so that her case does not end at all. On May 5, in Bogotá, he was hit by a blunt object from the police when he tried to take refuge in an alley. The blow caused a serious corneal injury and a retinal detachment. “They tell us that the damage is irreversible. He will never see the same again, ”says her mother, Sandra Pérez, as she pushes her daughter's wheelchair at the institute of legal medicine. That is the price your daughter must pay for protesting.