Exhibition seeks justice for victims of police violence in Colombia laprensalatina.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from laprensalatina.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
(Anna DalCortivo)
May 26, 2020. People come from all directions: holding signs, wearing masks. It’s quiet, considering the size of the crowd. The day after George Floyd was murdered by Minneapolis police, the space that will become George Floyd Square is blocked off by some kind of red ribbon, twisted through the doors and windows of a barricade of cars. Flowers mark the spot on the sidewalk where he died. In the days to come, the flowers multiply and other forms of memorial emerge: vigils, murals, billboards, portraits.
In the 12 months since Floyd’s murder, community members have continued to occupy and preserve George Floyd Square. The semiautonomous zone is built for and around Black liberation: a fight for a world in which Floyd would still be alive. It aims to both resist oppression and avoid oblivion.
In recent weeks Colombia has seen massive unrest, with a general strike, huge crowds across the country and significant violence from ESMAD – the riot police. This short piece seeks to clarify the background and underline the significance of this revolt against neoliberal tax policies.
In November and December 2019 there was a massive outpouring of popular dissatisfaction with the approach of the governing class towards social and economic policies, the peace process and a number of other issues. The state reacted in panic mode, and while the right wing media hysterically focused on vandalism, the riot police embarked on a relentless attack against protesters (irrespective of whether they were peaceful). I witnessed the dispersal of peaceful crowds with teargas and stun grenades a number of times. Each time I found myself wondering about the purpose of such interventions. As it was, the police-induced violence led to further confrontations, footage of police abuse significantly ou
Colombiaâs militarized police fought for decades on the frontlines of the countryâs war against leftist rebel groups and has long been accused of human rights violations; earlier this year, Temblores denounced âstructural and systematicâ abuses in the force which killed 86 people in 2020.
But relations between the police and the Colombian population further deteriorated during a year in which officers were empowered to slap people with hefty fines for not correctly wearing a mask or for drinking alcohol in public.
Anti-police demonstrations broke out in September after officers in Bogotá killed a lawyer, Javier Ordóñez, with a Taser electrical weapon after initially detaining him for drinking beer on the street. Police kiosks across the capital were torched in the following unrest while the police killed at least 10 protesters.
Colombian state agents ‘intentionally’ killed 15 civilians in 2020: US State Department
Other major issues addressed in the State Department report include cases of mass forced displacement of communities, with more than 37,000 people driven from their homes in 2019 and more than 15,000 between January and August 2020. It highlighted collusion between state security personnel and illegal armed groups, with nine agents accused of relations with paramilitaries
At least 15 civilians were intentionally killed by Colombian state agents between January and August last year, according to a new report by the US State Department. Published on 30 March, the report charts the alarming scale of human rights violations in Colombia, whether committed by armed groups or by security forces. Since the inauguration of Joe Biden in January, the US – which is Colombia’s largest trade and military partner – has called for implementation of the 2016 peace agreement, a shift from the previo