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The incessant murder of social leaders persecutes the Government of Petro

2022-11-28T18:57:33.424Z


Organizations such as Indepaz and Human Rights Watch warn of the seriousness of the situation. 171 defenders have been killed so far this year, the same figure as all of 2021


The assassination of social leaders does not stop in Colombia.

Indepaz, the NGO that keeps track of these deaths, has reported that so far in 2022, 171 social defenders have been murdered, the same number of homicides committed in the entire previous year against environmental, union, and human rights leaders. .

The face of Nicodemus Luna Mosquera, a renowned union leader who was assassinated in Dibulla, La Guajira, marks that painful milestone.

In that area, adds the Ombudsman in a risk alert, the Clan del Golfo, Los Pachenca and other local gangs operate.

Luna had been a leader of the USO Workers' Union, in Tibú;

and now he was affiliated with the National Association of Oil Pensioners.

He had been the victim of various attacks.

The inability to stop these murders was one of the main criticisms of the then senator Gustavo Petro against former president Iván Duque.

Since the peace agreement with the FARC was signed in 2016, the armed groups have murdered 1,298 social leaders, a violence that intensified during the Duque administration.

Petro has not managed to stop the bloodbath in the first three months of his government either.

Embarked on a policy of total peace, which seeks to negotiate with all armed groups, including organized crime gangs, Petro and his officials have demanded that these organizations stop killing defenders and respect the communities.

Several have shown their willingness to approach negotiations, but so far they are not complying and the killings continue.

According to Human Rights Watch, in the first three months of the Petro government, 35 social leaders have been assassinated.

The most serious situation continues to be concentrated in the departments of Nariño, Chocó, Cauca and Valle.

“To stop the massacre of social leaders in Colombia, it is not enough to start peace negotiations and subjugation with armed groups.

It is urgent to establish a security policy that protects the civilian population, expand the state presence and implement the mechanisms of the peace agreement with the FARC to protect social leaders and advance strategies for the comprehensive dismantling of criminal organizations," he told EL PAÍS , Juan Pappier, HRW senior researcher for the Americas.

October the worst month

October was the deadliest month this year.

Different hypotheses point out that FARC dissidences such as the Western Coordinating Command and the Second Marquetalia, under the command of Iván Márquez, exert pressure on indigenous communities, reservations and councils in a struggle for social control that has high prices of the coke

There had been a spike in murders in April, it went down in September, but in October it went up again.

Although each organization handles different figures, they all agree on the increase in cases.

“What we see is that the people most affected are the members of the Community Action Boards, the indigenous and Afro-descendant authorities that protect the land and territory, as well as environmental defenders.

We have also identified that non-state actors continue to be responsible for a large part of the homicides," says the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.

Recently inaugurated, Petro also gave an order via Twitter, announcing that the military chiefs would be measured by the decrease in deaths and not only by casualties or captures.

“The commission of massacres and their impunity in the jurisdictions of military and police commanders will affect the resume of the commanders.

From now on, every military or police command in their jurisdiction must ensure that the commission of massacre and death of social leaders is neutralized to the maximum,” he said at the time.

However, until now, it is not known how that has impacted the protection of defenders.

The Ministry of Defense has not yet presented its security policy either.

The document is expected to be available by December.

There is an Emergency Plan for the protection of defenders, social leaders and peace makers, which was promoted by different human rights organizations and the Peace Commission of the Senate, accompanied by the United Nations Office for Human Rights.

The Plan was presented on August 5 and the president added it to his Government plan.

One of the 49 measures in this plan are the Unified Command Posts for Life, which seek to be inter-institutional operational spaces to give concrete responses to risk situations for leaders and ex-combatants of the municipalities with the highest rates of violence.

Another is the formation of the National Commission for Security Guarantees, which must verify that the strategy is being followed and recommend how to apply it, as well as evaluate and remove the most threatened people from the territories.

The UN says that it is still premature to take stock in three months of the impact that the PMUVs have had on the reduction of violence.

“This is a measure of a broader plan whose impact must be analyzed as a whole.

The causes of violence against defenders are multiple and structural.

It is difficult to reverse dynamics of violence in the territories, change the way authorities work at the local level, generate the necessary trust with civil society to identify risk situations and expand the capacity and coordination of State institutions in the regions." , they say in the United Nations.

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Source: elparis

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