In Colombia the news of assassinations of social leaders does not stop. Week after week the figures increase despite the change of government and the total peace plans of the leftist leader Gustavo Petro.
A report by the NGO Front Line Defenders revealed that the South American nation recorded 46% of the murders of human rights defenders worldwide in 2022, with 186 social leaders killed.
An example that the danger is still latent is Richard Carrillo, a Colombian social leader from the municipality of Soacha, Cundinamarca, in the center of the country, who has been the victim of threats for his work as a social leader in the territory. Víctor affirms that he was shot at his house, as a threat and warning him to leave the country.
“On December 24, 2000, they shot me in the head and damaged my hand. Already five counted, five attacks and pamphlets, any amount, threats by WhatsApp, any amount, calls any amount,” Carrillo told the voice of america.
Why has the murder not been stopped?
The senator of the Green Alliance Party, Ariel Ávila, of the government coalition in Colombia, told the VOA that reducing the high number of murders of social leaders will not be easy due to the difficult public order situation generated by the different armed actors who are trying to impose their law.
“The protection of social leaders in the administration of Iván Duque (2018-2022) was very bad and in this government it has not been possible to stop it, for this reason we are recommending five actions knowing that it will not be easy to stop these crimes,” said Ávila .
The first, he added, is to advance an improvement in the follow-up of complaints, and collective protection plans, which is something that has not been done. The third thing is to strengthen the investigation unit in the Prosecutor’s Office, fourth to have a rotating program for individual protection and finally to improve the channels of dialogue with civil society called the Commission for Security Guarantees created by the peace process with the FARC, which in the Duque government was discontinued and it is necessary to resume ”, he explained.
“The security situation is not just around the corner to solve it because there are many complicating factors, so solutions are required, but you have to tell people that this is going to take time.”
Avila assured the VOA that these initiatives will make it possible to reduce the numbers together with other policies that are underway such as the Unified Command Posts for Life (PMU): however, he foresees that reducing the systematic nature of the murders will take several years.
“The security situation is not just around the corner to solve it because there are many complicating factors, so solutions are required, but you have to tell people that this is going to take time.”
On the other hand, the senator of the Radical Change Party David Luna, an opponent of the Petro government, has another thesis and disagreed that there are no concrete policies and actions to stop the violence that is registered against social leaders.
“Unfortunately, the decrees issued by President Gustavo Petro regarding the ceasefire are not allowing the Public Force to act. So we have to understand that if we want to fight against this crime, we must allow authority to be exercised where there are these murders, more presence of the Army is needed to protect society and protect the institutions, if the Prosecutor’s Office cannot act and execute the orders The murders of social leaders will continue to be freed from capture,” he mentioned.
The situation does not affect everyone equally, rural areas are the most vulnerable.
According to the Institute of Studies for Development and Peace, Indepaz, an NGO that is in charge of monitoring the situation of social leaders in the country, 48 defenders of human rights and their territory have been assassinated in Colombia in 19 departments in 2023. , being Arauca, Antioquia, Cauca and Nariño the most affected by this wave of violence.
“Unfortunately, the decrees issued by President Gustavo Petro regarding the ceasefire are not allowing the Public Force to act.
Leonardo González, coordinator of the Indepaz Human Rights Observatory, the problem does not affect the entire country equally, because in each territory where the problems that affect these communities persist, different battles are fought.
“There are some areas that have different conflicts, in the Catatumbo region these conflicts have to do with socio-environmental defense, there the social leaders make a defense to prohibit illicit crops, in addition to other conflicts such as coal mining and the border with Venezuela. So there are several problems that social leaders face against different armed groups that operate in that area.”
In this regard, he added that in the departments of Cauca, Nariño, Chocó, and Antioquia, the social leaders who defend human rights in their territories are those who oppose the deterioration of the environment, the extraction of gold mining projects, and the distribution of the earth.
“Each area has a different context and conflict and that is what has to be analyzed in order to make an intervention by the state. What is needed is a comprehensive policy, not only with the Public Force but with a broad social investment, ”he added.
Greater attention from the Executive
For the professor at the Externado de Colombia University and security analyst Andrés Macías, despite the importance that the Petro government has given to the situation with the implementation of protection plans, it is necessary to put it back on the agenda public the problem.
“The situation of violence against social leaders and human rights defenders had great expectations when the new government of Gustavo Petro arrived, but unfortunately what has been seen in these first months is that the violence has continued and has even increased. This is due to many factors, including the growth of violence in some territories.”
“The government must put the issue back on the public agenda, the issue of violence against social leaders is lost on the public agenda a bit, at the beginning in the government it was important, today it is not so much anymore, when the Violence has hardened,” he explained.
stigmatization
Macías indicates that this difficult situation is compounded by the stigmatization to which human rights defenders are victims when they express their concerns and express their opinions to seek solutions to conflicts in their territories.
“It is important to try to generate initiatives that do not stigmatize these exercises of social leadership a bit. Many times the actors involved point out and attack the positions of social leaders as initiatives that seek to generate stability in the territory or that try to prevent the development of a territory, so destigmatization is essential for the work of social leadership to be more recognized and gains greater legitimacy”, he highlighted.
The Unified Command Posts for life (PMU)
In August of last year, the government presented the strategy of Unified Command Posts for Life, as a mechanism to protect the country’s social leaders, guaranteeing immediate protection with the creation of roadmaps in terms of prevention.
In the PMU, said Macías, the measure that was established for the threat risks of social leaders has not given the expected results due to the way in which it has been implemented.
“Violence continues to increase and that puts into question the way in which these unified command posts have been consolidated for life and the relevance they have had in the territories,” he said. And he added that “the protection mechanisms for many of these leaders continue to be ineffective” because they follow “the same logic of bulletproof vests that does not prevent this violence from occurring.”
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