#StandUp4HumanRights Elisabeth Tichy-Fisslberg @tichy-e and Michelle Bachelet @mbachelet
By: Gustavo Bolívar Moreno
“They are killing us”. So says a graffiti painted on Avenida Paralela in Medellín by more than 80 artists on September 12, three days after the September 9 massacre of young people in Bogotá.
The graffiti measures about 220 meters and draws the attention of anyone who passes by. However, not a thousand miles from Bogota to Cartagena, could explain what is being experienced in Colombia since the possession of Iván Duque on August 7, 2018 but especially for a year after the murder Dilan Cruz at the hands of a Police Captain, who despite the videos showing the brutality with which he shoots the 17-year-old’s head, still continues to work in the Police as if nothing had happened. Dilan was hit in the head by a bean bag ammunition with between 300 and 500 lead pellets inside, wrapped in a cloth sack. Some came out to justify the crime in the fact that the boy, who was just finishing his high school, was a vandal, as if being one, although it is proven that he was not, summarily deserved the death penalty.
That death penalty that today, has been instituted by the Government of Iván Duque and his armies indoctrinated with a visceral hatred towards those who think differently from the mind of the sect, today imprisoned for other crimes.
Like a case of misleading advertising, a “harmless” young man of just 41 years old (he turned 42 after being elected), was sold to us as a love affair, who made little heads, played guitar, and did not want to rule with the rear-view mirror. Millions fell into the trap. Once in office, that is, once he deceived the electorate, he became a ruthless human rights violator, the worst monster that Colombia has given birth in the last 50 years, after Alvaro Uribe Vélez, precisely his mentor and puppeteer.
The decline of “Uribism” has made nervous his imminent fall, given the orders, and if he has not given it, we are indeed in the hands of a paramilitary government, which will shoot anyone who disobeys his nefarious orders. Of all those who protest against their disastrous economic, social, and other policies.
In the midst of the decline of Uribism, police and army soldiers have gouged out the eyes of students and peasants, murdered young people and indigenous people, tried to disappear others, raped women in indigenous reservations, and in the Immediate Attention Centers (CAI) in Bogotá, boys from the municipality of Soacha have been burned alive and crowds have been dispelled with shots to the chest and face, as not even in the worst dictatorships have happened. Pure State terrorism that took root in Colombia with the return of Uribism and that has no other purpose to scare people in the face of the wave of protests that arose throughout the national territory tomorrow, exactly one year ago.
After the murder of Dylan Cruz, who remains in impunity, a lot of blood has flowed under the well-vacuumed carpet of the Palacio de Nariño. I illustrate below, only a small part of the cases:
- Harold David Morales Payares was a 17-year-old sportsman who worked washing cars in a business in Cartagena where, on August 24, some police patrols who wanted to wash his motorcycle arrived. They asked the young man to wash their motorcycle for free, but the boy refused. The policemen started kicking him. Harold got scared and ran off. His father says that the uniformed men shot him causing his death. The case is under criminal and disciplinary investigation.
2. ON April 22, in the village of Casacará, in the municipality of Codazzi, Cesar, there were about 70 people demanding food aid due to the crisis generated by the pandemic. Police say that when the markets were finished, a riot broke out, prompting ESMAD to intervene. The community claimed that the agents fired indiscriminately at the protesters, causing a stampede. A young man named Jaider Antonio Brochero, 17, was shot in the back and died while being transferred to a hospital in Becerril. Four policemen are being investigated for this crime.
3. In Puerto Tejada, Valle del Cauca, with an interval of a few weeks, there were two murders at the hands of the Public Force. On April 20 of this year, in the middle of a confrontation between a gang and the police in the sector, Janner García, 22, was murdered. Upon hearing the noise, the young man leaned out of the window, and was shot, his wife says at the hands of a police officer. He says that tear gas was then thrown at him, which made it difficult to provide first aid.
4. Almost a month later, on May 19, 2020, at the door of his home, Anderson Arboleda, 18, was required by two police officers for violating the quarantine. For refusing to sign the subpoena, Ánderson, a young Afro with no prior record, was slaughtered with a ball to the head. Ánderson, died in the clinic due to a skull fracture. The case remains in impunity.
5. On June 25, during a day of resistance, the 15-year-old boy Duván Álvarez was murdered. The protesters wanted to prevent the eviction of several inhabitants from a lot in Ciudadela Sucre, Soacha. Duván was shot in the chest by an ESMAD agent. Neighbors transferred him to a nearby hospital where he arrived dead.
Credit “VizzorImage
6. On June 20, in Cumbal, Nariño, the 23-year-old Angel Revelo was brutally beaten. Some relatives say that after the beating, the young man who was arrested presented vomiting and headaches without receiving first aid. The young man died of head trauma a week after being admitted to an Intensive Care Unit.
7. On July 3 in Bogotá, 23-year-old Kevin Ávila was shot dead while the police in the town of Kennedy tried to fine a group of about 15 people who were breaking quarantine. That is, come in so that you do not expose your life to the covid but they shoot you.
8. On the night of September 8, lawyer Javier Ordóñez left his house late at night in search of a drink, in the company of a witness who is being threatened today. They were stopped by two motorized police officers named Harby Rodríguez and Juan Camilo Lloreda. The story is worse than the George Floyd case, watched in video millions of times, recorded by Ordóñez’s partner, and in which the two policemen are seen repeatedly applying electric shocks while the man pleads with them “no more.” As if that was not enough, the cruelty continues and Javier was taken by the same police to the CAI in the Villaluz neighborhood where he was literally beaten to the ground. According to The legal medicine opinion (I transcribed sections of what was reported by the newspaper El Espectador on September 18):
“The Legal Medicine report indicates that Ordóñez died after suffering severe bleeding in the abdominal cavity, caused by the outbreak of his right kidney. Likewise, according to the forensics, a trauma was found in his right leg, produced by a splinter from a firearm projectile … “The body also showed signs of immobilization due to bruises on the wrists and two injuries to the right thorax that was they would have done with a round object like a cane, stick or rod. Likewise, he had soft tissue trauma, on the back of his hands, knuckles, elbows, knees, face, and legs “.
Similar to what happened with George Floyd and the other murders committed by police officers on unarmed civilians, the cynical came out to justify the crime by the fact that Ordóñez was drugged. However, the forensic report indicates that after performing a test on the victim’s urine, it was negative for psychoactive drugs. They also ruled out the presence of toxic substances in his body. The conclusion is: “On the other hand, in the analysis of the experts it was collected that the injuries by taser weapons do not explain the death of Ordóñez, but they produce intense pain and suffering”
As a consequence of this vile murder committed before the eyes of all Colombians, a wave of indignation was unleashed, similar to the murder of George Floyd in the United States. The video went viral. Spontaneously, the residents of various localities and neighborhoods where these Immediate Attention Centers are located came out to protest against police brutality and abuse. There were excesses, yes, there was destruction, yes, but vandalism is not classified to justify the assassinations of people, because what follows is unthinkable!. The next day the police murdered another dozen people. Some who were protesting and others who simply passed or watched the demonstrations.
9. Jaider Fonseca, a 17-year-old boy, who despite his young age was already the father of a seven-month-old child, was killed by 4 bullets. Jaider was protesting peacefully in front of the Verbenal CAI when, as we saw in an irrefutable video, published by the magazine ” Semana”, several policemen came out of the back of the CAI and opened fire on the crowd. Due to the position of the police officers and the horizontal manner in which they fired their weapons, the video leaves no doubt that the recipients of those bullets were Jaider and other people who were injured.
10. In addition to Javier and Jaider, Andrés Rodríguez, 23, Julieth Ramírez, 18, Jaider Fonseca, 17, Fredy Mahecha, 20, Germán Fuentes, 25, Julián González, 27, also died from shots to the face, head or chest. Angie Baquero, 19, Cristian Hurtado, 27, Lorwan Mendoza, a 26-year-old Venezuelan citizen, Cristian Hernández, 26, and María del Carmen Viuvche, 44. Thirteen lives, thirteen painful histories, thirteen families in deep sadness crying the irreparable loss. And while the families are going through that agony, still the government’s rewards are to locate those who damaged the CAI and not for those who killed these people.
By virtue of due process, investigations must be awaited to determine the culprits, but videos have appeared in which police officers can clearly be seen firing firearms at the crowd. The one presented by Ariel Ávila in the magazine ” Semana” is irrefutable. The policemen camouflage themselves behind the CAI and then as if at someone’s command, they launched their weapons at the protesters. They even launch a smoke bomb to camouflage themselves, so that no one sees the killer. But they forgot that cell phone cameras have eyes and someone was recording them from behind.
And we had not come out of the horror that these images produced when they saw two other videos that evidence the Police’s mental health. One has no major repercussions because the victim did not die, but it demonstrates the insane mental state in which many uniformed men are. One happened in Popayan. A young man is riding his bicycle calmly down an avenue. Suddenly a motorcycle appears with two patrol cars on board, they approach him from the side, and, without saying a word and in motion, they push him. The boy falls into the other road without explaining what is happening. But the second video is worthy of a horror movie. A citizen records, through the window of a CAI, two soldiers who set fire to two young detainees. They burn them alive. According to witnesses, one of them died. The information has not been released by the media.
What is happening in Colombia is of twisted minds. A psychopath, a killer in series is given the orders and if not, we are in the hands of hired killers with the aggravating factor that the salary is paid by us.
11. Most of the victims are young, many of them minors. There is a hatred of some civils and military authorities against this new generation that got tired of the lack of opportunities, bad education, unemployment, police abuse. Many have had their eyes gouged out, such as Esteban Mosquera, a 25-year-old from the University of Cauca who was fired by an ESMAD member with a stun grenade in the face. Today he has a prosthesis and his life has changed.
12. And not to mention the 75 wounded by gunshot wounds, which shows that the intention was to produce a greater kill. Then came the raids. As in “the night of the pencils”, the military boots have resounded through the corridors and the rooms of countless people. Natalia Soto Marín denounces that flyers were taken from her home about the death of Dilan Cruz and his computer, after intimidating several people.
13. Don Justo Ernesto Villaraga, 73 years old, sick with cancer, was taken away without a word. They accuse him of delusional crimes in a man of his age and physical condition.
14. Dozens of young people denounce on social networks the entry into their homes of members of the CTI of the Prosecutor’s Office, sometimes without a search warrant.
It is terrifying to know that we have known almost everything through videos. Have you thought about the infinity of things that have happened that have not been recorded?
Terror is back!. It has returned in the form of a dictatorship. It has returned wrapped in ” black wings”. Terror has returned in the form of Uribe revenge, of hatred to “the different”. The distracting terror of corruption. The terror to scare the one who asks, the one who expels, the one who protests, the one who raises a voice carrying indignation. It is state terrorism that we cannot accept as a society. To do so would mean, neither more nor less than, kneeling on the blood of the victims, standing on the stomach of the children of the future. Doing so means letting ourselves be swept under the dirty carpet of the Nariño Palace. Allowing terror to rule us means our surrender, our surrender, our ignominy. It means the annulment of reason, it means endorsing our human character to brutality. Surrendering ourselves to terror is collective suicide!
How to prevent it? Let’s hide our fear and take to the streets. Let’s internationalize the complaints. Let’s translate this column, the most notorious cases, other columns with the same complaints, and let’s advocate before the IACHR before the ICC, Duque believes that the world is not seeing him and his wrongdoings. The world is staring in horror at the genocides in Colombia. The ineptitude of his defense minister in the face of barbarism. The world is observing the massacres, the murder of social leaders, police abuses, the murder of ex-combatants, the murder of indigenous people and peasants, they are being observed by the international community.
The world already knows that Duque co-opted all powers and they know that Colombia is advancing towards dictatorship. The worst thing is that this does not stop here. The social outbreak will come. Anger has entrenched itself in the hearts of young people and there is no other way to dispel it other than a defeat for Uribism at the polls. But you already know whose hands we are. They will do Fraud. It is in our hands to resist. But to resist with intelligence and that is, non-violent resistance. Don’t give them a chance to shoot us. The eyes of the world are on top of them. Cell phones point to their steady firing hands and big black hearts.
