Activist killings in Colombia spark protest
Colombian school principal Farid Salgado says the positive movement “has been threatened.” Tuesday rally will urge Canada to monitor fragile peace accord
Colombian Canadians, alarmed at the number of human rights leaders murdered in the South American nation, will gather in Toronto to condemn what they see as a threat to the country’s long-fought peace.
On Tuesday, a rally will be held at 6 p.m. at the Mark Cohen Park near Bloor St. W., and Spadina Ave., to protest the violence and send a message to Colombia’s newly elected rightwing president Ivan Duque to uphold the 2016 Peace Accord.
The agreement, signed by then-President Juan Manuel Santos and rebel leader Timochenko, ended Colombia’s 50year guerrilla war which left more than 220,000 dead and countless missing and displaced. Rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), was disarmed and demobilized, and a transitional justice system was estab- lished to seek out the truth of the conflict.
Since then, the country’s civilian murder rate has reached an all-time low — 24 people per 100,000 last year — however, there has been a surge of killings of community activists who had been trying to enforce the peace agreement.
According to Colombia’s Human Rights Ombudsman, Carlos Alfonso Negret, 311 social movement leaders have been murdered in the country since January 2016, more than 100 of them killed this year alone by what locals called “Fuerzas Oscuras” in Spanish or “dark forc- es” in English.
“The accord has failed to open up a space where people can advocate for themselves without themselves being targeted,” noted Ilian Burbano of the Colombian Action Solidarity Alliance, a Toronto-based advocacy group. Burbano fears that Duque, who will be inaugurated on Tuesday, will stall the full implementation of the accord.
“It’s not easy for the government to backtrack but it is a concern for everyone if the accord fails.”
Academics, activists and Colombians in Canada have started a petition to call on Ottawa to use its economic muscle — with bilateral trade totalling $1.73 billion in 2017 — to protect Colombian rights leaders and monitor the implementation of the peace process.
Ottawa has committed more than $78 million to projects in support of Colombia’s peace efforts, such as demining and rural education, and recommended the new government improve the human rights situation through strengthening security, timely investigations and addressing impunity.
“Canada has strongly condemned continued attacks against human-rights defend- ers in Colombia,” said Global Affairs Canada spokesperson Krista Humick. The Colombian Embassy in Ottawa did not respond to the Star’s repeated requests for comment about the murders or Duque’s plans for the peace accord.
Sheila Gruner, an Algoma University professor who has done extensive research on displacement and rural development in Colombia, said the recent violence could be attributed to the fact that the peace deal did not target active armed groups, who have since stepped into the vacuum left by FARC. Many of the killings, she said, happened in outlying rural communities where the government has little presence.
“We can’t track who is doing the killing, but we see who’s being killed. It’s not company CEOs. It’s social movement leaders,” Gruner said. “Displacement is still taking place. This should be concerning to all governments.”
Colombian school principal Farid Salgado, who lived in Belgium for eight years, is one of many expatriates who returned home in 2012 at the start of the peace negotiations.
The international community must keep the pressure on the new government, Salgado said. “The positive movement has been threatened. We can lose all we have achieved so far with the peace deal.”