As anti-government demonstrations continued throughout May, the Colombian state persisted in murdering and maiming demonstrators. The Mobile Anti-Riot Squadron (ESMAD) continued to clear protest barricades across the country. By 24 May, at least 44 people had been killed and 1,700 injured by the security forces. A furious people demand the removal of President Duque and fundamental change. ALVARO MICHAELS reports.
On 28 April, trades unions organised a national strike and demonstrations demanding the withdrawal of deeply regressive tax changes. More demands rapidly emerged, particularly the dropping of a pro-privatisation health care bill, and provision of vaccination schedules. The coronavirus pandemic has infected more than three million people in a population of 50 million and caused over 86,000 deaths. The economy contracted 6.8% in 2020. Colombia has one of the highest levels of income inequality in Latin America. Even officially almost a third of young Colombians are neither working nor studying, with over 40% of Colombians living in poverty – 15% in extreme poverty.
On the first day of the strike, police shot dead a young man in Cali. By 30 April 19 demonstrators had been killed. The mass demonstrations forced President Duque to abandon the tax ‘reform’ that day. The finance minister resigned.
Police attacks, shown on social media, provoked an explosion of protests against years of injustice, sustained by systematic assassinations of journalists, trade unionists, political and social leaders, with 27,000 people already forced from their homes this year. By 4 May at least 15 police stations in the capital, Bogota, had been destroyed. On 5 May ESMAD attacked mass protests there. The authorities in Medellin protested against police actions. Duque did not concede to demands to investigate police violence, but finally called for talks with leaders of the national strike.
Army and right-wing attacks
On 5 May, Medellín police attacked a peaceful protest. The next day, Duque sent in two Army battalions and 270 police officers to remove blockades on the Pan-American Highway, between Cali and Bogota, following rallies in major cities.
By 9 May a local Cali death squad, ‘the Anti-Communist Brigade’, shot and wounded ten indigenous protesters. Cali’s mayor, Jorge Ospina, whose cousin was killed by police while demonstrating, said he was unable to fulfil his duties as Cali was ‘ungovernable’; Duque told indigenous protesters to ‘return to your reserves’.
From 10 May, the establishment press attacked Gustavo Petro, leader of the Colombia Humana party, as a cause of the crisis, claiming a communist plot was at work. Duque demanded that the National Unemployment Committee (some 40 organisations) should stop demonstrating before negotiations could start. General assemblies at ‘resistance points’ around Colombia emerged, demanding minimum conditions for talks, including the participation of all the communities. The United Workers Central demanded ‘decent wages and jobs, a speedier vaccination process, subsidies to small and medium enterprises and defence of national production’.
By 12 May Duque reluctantly announced investigations into 65 police assaults and conceded the suspension of tuition fees for the second semester in public universities. The next day Colombia’s foreign minister, Claudia Blum, resigned after promoting a video claiming that Petro and Venezuelan President Maduro – along with ‘narco-terrorist’ groups – had organised and financed ‘urban terrorist attacks’ during the protests.
On 14 May, a 17-year-old woman in Popayan committed suicide after sexual abuse by police, sparking an uprising that left at least one person dead and the local police jail destroyed. The Prosecutor General had to announce a criminal investigation. Police attacked investigators of the Popayan Medical Examiners’ Office as they collected evidence of an alleged police killing.
From 28 April to 20 May, the NGO Temblores reported 1,645 arbitrary detentions nationwide. Protests against Duque’s government took place in Chile, Canada, France, Germany, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Britain and the US. The Organisation of American States remained silent. Panama kept its border with Colombia closed, blocking hundreds of Colombians trying to escape, amid the Covid-19 pandemic.
On 19 May, Congress voted against the Health Bill, intended to promote the private sector – a victory for the strike.
In a major publicity blow to Duque, on 20 May the South American Football Confederation removed Colombia as co-host of the June-July 2021 Copa America (international championship). Demonstrators had already disrupted some Copa Libertadores (Champions League) matches.
Jesús Santrich assassinated
Duque certainly approved the assassination of the revolutionary Jesús Santrich inside Venezuela on 17 May by Colombian commandos. Santrich led the FARC peace negotiations up to 2016. In August 2019, once it was clear that Duque’s ‘peace was nothing more than a web of lies’, he returned to the battle. Duque feared Santrich’s political influence on this new urban struggle in Colombia, with his knowledge of ties between the state and the criminals managing Colombia’s huge cocaine exports.
The way ahead
The social tension continues the protests of last September that followed the police murder of 13 youths during demonstrations, and a strike in November against pension cuts and education privatisation.
In February, Colombian leftist movements formed an alliance called Historical Pact to fight the congressional elections of 13 March 2022. The pact includes Colombia Humana, Patriotic Union-Communist Party, Democratic Alternative Pole, the Indigenous and Social Alternative Movement (MAIS), Colombia’s Labour Party, Democratic Union, and We Are All Colombia. Its target is at least 55 seats in the Senate and 86 in the Lower House – a majority.
Even Human Rights Watch has asked the US to ‘cut down’ its military support to the government and 55 US Congress representatives urged Secretary of State Blinken to suspend all direct aid to the Colombian National Police. Desperate, the Defence Minister Diego Molano, already blaming ex-FARC members for protest violence, now claimed Moscow was behind cyberattacks linked to the unrest. On 15 May Colombia’s opposition pressed charges against Duque, Molano and top security officials before the International Criminal Court. Miguel Ceballos, in charge of negotiations with the National Strike Committee, resigned in frustration on 22 May. International protests in solidarity with the Colombian people continue, including in London which FRFI supports.
FIGHT RACISM! FIGHT IMPERIALISM! 282 June/July 2021
