Argentine NGO activists travel to Colombia to “be physically present where massacres are taking place”

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Several Argentine social organizations advised this Friday that they would form a delegation to travel to Colombia as a result of the protests that the country is experiencing, and stressed that the reason for this trip is not to dialogue with the Government of Iván Duque, but “to show up and be present just like any other young Colombian”.

“We are going to travel, and we are going to travel not to talk with political leaders and with some international organization, but we are going to travel, and we are going to be in the territories where massacres are taking place. (…) We will show up and be physically present just like any other young Colombian fighter”, said social leader Juan Grabois at the press conference organized by the International Solidarity with the Colombian People network.

Grabois indicated that in the next few days, the list of people who are going to travel would be drawn up and the program they will carry and asked the Argentine Government “to guarantee security conditions by talking diplomatically through the appropriate channels with the Duque Government”.

This delegation in the fight against police violence, repression, and intimidation intends to travel next week, and they hope that this initiative will be replicated in other Latin American countries, the United States, and Europe.

“We believe that this is a necessity and we are going to ask our friends from other Latin American countries, our friends from the United States, friends from Europe, to be present as well, to make the economic effort and to ask for solidarity from Members of Parliament to go there”, he asserted.

The proposal of this delegation will be the same as that of the Colombian organizations: “That repression and militarization cease, to be able to establish a political dialogue on the serious social situations the country is going through”.

The social activist, who already participated in a similar delegation that traveled to Bolivia during last year’s conflicts, warned of “a new Condor Plan flying over the region” and gave as an example the repression experienced last year by Chile and Bolivia while denouncing censorship of the material posted on the Internet by young Colombians.

“We have seen the videos, and there is indeed censorship. I could see videos last week that I cannot see today. I do not like conspiracy theories, but evidently, they are downloading them from social networks”, he said.

Before his speech, several human rights organizations took the floor, including several young Colombians, who provided data on the repression in Colombia after several days of a national strike in response to a tax reform that President Duque has already withdrawn.

In this presentation, they detailed that between April 28 and May 6, they registered 1,708 cases of police violence, 222 victims of physical violence by the police, 37 homicides, 831 arbitrary detentions, 312 violent police interventions, 110 police firearms shots, and 10 victims of sexual violence perpetrated by the security forces.