Why kill social leaders in Colombia?

The complete list consists of 162 names, which is the number of social leaders and human rights defenders murdered in Colombia so far this year. In the registry carried out by the Institute of Studies for Development and Peace (Indepaz), the last on the list are Francisco Sarco and Carlitos Urágama, members of the Indigenous Guard of the Emberá Playa Bonita community and the Association of Victims from the department of Chocó. Armed men broke into their homes on November 11 and they were killed in front of their families. At the rate of one death every two days, the news of the violent death of a social leader is part of Colombian daily life and is one of his worst shames: almost 1,400 have fallen since the signing of peace between the Government and the FARC guerrilla, in 2016.

a structural problem

Why do they kill them? Because they claim something. Let them be thrown off their land. Give them back their land. That no coca be planted on their lands. That drug trafficking does not pass through their lands. “In Colombia, the dispute over territory, for whatever reasons, economic, agrarian or related to drug trafficking, has always had as a background the extermination of those who defend a certain claim,” he explains. Jorge Ernesto Roa, Professor of Constitutional Law at the Externado de Colombia University. In a country so rich in illegal initiatives, with so many armed actors trying to impose their law, this has various applications in reality. Roa explains, for example, that a good number of murders committed in his day by the FARC today would be counted as murders of social leaders -then killed in combat, or victims of the conflict-, and recalls that “the first way out of drug trafficking in the face of any obstacle it is the elimination of that obstacle & rdquor ;. “Drug trafficking implies an occupation of the most fertile territory for the cultivation of coca base and more suitable for routes, and in those territories any kind of opposition is attacked in the same way & rdquor ;.

“They are very powerful mafias that take advantage of the absence of the FARC in the territories that were cleared up after the peace agreements& rdquor;, says Piedad Bonnett, writer and columnist for the newspaper ‘El Espectador’. Bonnett draws attention to the fact that among the assassinated leaders are environmentalists whose sin has been to defend the ecosystems, precisely, that the withdrawal of the guerrilla has left unprotected, and miners who defend the practice of artisanal mining against the establishment of large multinationals. The “corruption of local powers & rdquor ;, he warns, increases the lack of protection of those threatened.

At the rate of one death every two days, anyone imagines large demonstrations demanding from the State the due protection of the leaders, but this is not how it happens, since these leaders have always been the object of accusations: they have been stigmatized. “Traditionally,” says Roa, the State has cared little to give it value to the function of what in Spain they call social agents: unions, NGOs, community associations… They have always remained on the periphery of the State, and when they have entered the state spectrum it has been in a negative way, accused of being guerrilla allies, conspirators or accomplices of crime phenomena. A good part of society understands that the fact that there are 1,300 deaths for dedicating themselves to claiming their lands, or asking for the protection of the rights of peasants, speaks very badly of us as a society, but it does not generate the level of rejection that it generates in a society where these agents are valued as social agents who speak on behalf of all& rdquor;.

Another list: the ex-combatants

The list of social leaders is not the only one that has increased dramatically in recent years: also that of ex-combatants of the FARC assassinated. Is it no coincidence that all of this happened in years marked by the Government of Iván Duque, the president who reneged on the peace accords. Well, as Roa says, “the existence of an official discourse against the agreements, and against the actors in the agreements, is undoubtedly a message for society that creates a breeding ground for impunity& rdquor ;. “Of course & rdquor ;, adds Bonnett, “that It has had a lot to do with Duque not really implementing the agreements of peace, or that it implemented them very deficiently. That was a kind of brake that was put on the agreements and that has left many of the ex-combatants unprotected & rdquor ;.

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The Duque Executive was repeatedly questioned in this regard by the office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, but the lack of guarantees on the part of the Government led to the entry on the scene of the judicial instances. Thus, last January, the Constitutional Court declared the State of Affairs Unconstitutional in relation to the protection of the lives of ex-combatants, and currently, within the framework of another process, is studying the possibility of extending it to social leaders. should help remedy structural deficiencies that are at the base of their vulnerability.

Name: Deisy Sotelo, community leader. Day: January 29. Location: Algeria, department of Cauca. Name: Efrén Ramos, community leader. Day: February 2. Place: Puerto Leguízamo, department of Putumayo. Name: Gustavo Torres, peasant leader. Day: February 26. Place: Tibú, department of Norte de Santander. Name: María José Arciniegas, indigenous leader. Day: April 30. Place: Puerto Leguizamo. She was 27 years old. According to the ‘Diario Putumayo’, she “was forcibly taken from the reservation by armed men who took her to an unknown destination. His body was found on the outskirts of the town. with firearm impacts & rdquor ;.