2020 was a murderous year for human rights defenders in Colombia

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – 2020 was the most violent year in more than a decade for human rights defenders in Colombia due to the murder of 199 leaders working for life, territory, or peace, as disclosed Thursday by the non-governmental program Somos Defensores, which described it as “nefarious.”

That figure represents an increase of 60.4% in relation to 2019, a year in which 124 murders.

“From 2010, when 32 events were recorded, it went to 199 murders in 2020, which represents an increase of 522 % (167 more cases), surpassing even 2018, which at the time presented the highest figure with 155 cases,” warned Somos Defensores.

Of the 199 murders, 124 were allegedly committed by unknown persons, 30 by paramilitaries, 25 by FARC dissidents, nine by the National Liberation Army (ELN) guerrillas, eight by the security forces, and three by “others.”

The organization also registered 969 individual aggressions against 942 human rights leaders, indigenous, peasant, communal, community, victims, environmental, LGBTI, youth, women’s, or academic sectors.

“This translates into an increase of 15% in relation to 2019,” said Somos Defensores, who considers the aggressions an attack against “the health of Colombian democracy.”

According to the study, 62.3 % of the aggressions were threats; 20.5 % murders; 8.2 % attacks; 3.1 % arbitrary detentions; 2.9 % judicializations; 2.6 % disappearances and 0.4 % theft of information.

VIOLENCE IN THE MIDST OF A PANDEMIC

These data demonstrate the ineffectiveness of government policies to provide security guarantees to social leaders, a problem aggravated by the coronavirus pandemic because “the communities and their leaders were left even more unprotected and exposed to violence and impunity”, he adds.

“2020 is consolidated as a disastrous year for the exercise of the defense of human rights, with an average of 2.64 aggressions per day, which is even more worrying if one takes into account that a good part of the year the country was subjected to the measures of social isolation decreed to face the pandemic of covid-19”, reads the report.

Most of these aggressions occurred in areas where the FARC guerrillas exercised control before the 2016 peace agreement, places with little state presence, and where the implementation of the agreement with the government remains tangled.

Somos Defensores counted the highest number of aggressions in the troubled department of Cauca with 193 cases, followed by Bogotá (119), Antioquia (81), Nariño (77), La Guajira (70), Norte de Santander and Valle del Cauca (43), Santander (34), Putumayo (31) and Bolívar (30).

“The communities and especially the people who exercise leadership in specific processes have had to face the increase in violence alone,” warned Somos Defensores, stressing that it is not clear why in areas with a high presence of public forces, the aggressors mobilized without any difficulty.

DOUBLE RISK FOR INVISIBLE LEADERS

As warned by different organizations, last year, the armed groups consolidated violence against the main victims of homicides who were members of Community Action Boards, community, indigenous, peasant, and Afro-descendant leaders.

“Social leaders in rural and remote areas in the center of the country, therefore invisible, are the main victims of violence,” warned Somos Defensores and stressed that “the impunity that characterizes aggressions” in general “and homicides, in particular, remains very high.”

Somos Defensores documented that in the regions, those who protect the environment and natural resources, as well as their own economies and defend the autonomy of the communities continue to be targets of aggression “due to a combination of legal and illegal interests, or both, which makes their presence uncomfortable”.

In this sense, aggression is “the most effective mechanism to control the territories, by breaking organizational processes and forcing communities to continue to be subjected to the trap of illicit crops, among other things, as the only way to survive”.

“A terrifying panorama faces people who defend human rights in the country” since in the last four years, aggressions have increased considerably, and more and more forms of violence are used. However, this work “continues to advance in every corner of the country despite the threats and the gaps in the State”, highlighted the report.