Death of two babies heightens criticism of Colombia protestors’ roadblocks

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – A baby is born with a reserved prognosis (low probability of survival with dignity) in Buenaventura, a city where 42% of Colombia’s foreign trade is conducted, but there is no Neonatal Intensive Care Unit in the public hospital.

They decide to intubate her and rush her to Cali, over 100 kilometers away. It is midnight and a medical team starts a journey that in normal times would take two hours. But a few kilometers from the port, in a location known as La Delfina, they run into a roadblock, another feature of the Colombian protests, and only one of seven roadblocks along this route.

What comes next is the doctor’s account, a video record confirming that the newborn has died. “They wouldn’t let us through, the baby began to experience complications. We tried to resuscitate her, but she didn’t react. The men at the blockade told us to change her transport, but we couldn’t because the baby was intubated,” recounted the woman who was in the ambulance with the driver, an assistant, and the baby’s father.

Then she says they turned around and were surrounded by tear gas. “Then two men came on a motorcycle, telling us that the ambulance could pass. While we were passing, they began hurling explosives and tear gas at us. We are here unable to return the baby to the hospital and our lives are in danger,” says the woman.

The newborn’s story has sparked tension and polarization among those who accuse the blockade’s protesters and those who believe that the ambulance could not pass through because of the tear gas the police often use. It is still unclear.

The truth is that the baby’s death adds to the half a hundred victims after almost four weeks of demonstrations, riots, police repression and roadblocks. And it is not the only one. During the first days of protests, another ambulance was blocked and attacked while carrying a woman in premature labor. The baby died inside the vehicle.

Attacks on medical infrastructure

The attacks on medical infrastructure are raising tensions in the country and authorities are demanding that the roads be opened to prevent further deaths. “Doesn’t anyone take responsibility for this new death in a new attack on medical infrastructure in Colombia? It seems that some deaths don’t matter,” wrote Health Minister Fernando Ruiz, tagging Human Rights Watch, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, the World Health Organization and UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michele Bachelet.

The warning calls are multiplying throughout the country. “In Cauca Valley we have seen 163 attacks on medical infrastructure, 49 cases against ambulances, which left 3 dead, this baby, a woman traveling between two municipalities and another person who needed dialysis,” Maria Cristina Lesmes, Health Secretary of the department, the region in Colombia’s Pacific where both Buenaventura and Cali are located.

Meanwhile, in Bogota some protesters have been seen stopping ambulances to check what they carry inside and attack them. According to the National Bureau of Medical Infrastructure, the attacks include personal injuries and threats against health personnel and against the ambulances, their crews and the patients on board.

But this is not an issue exclusive to the protests. In its annual review, the International Committee of the Red Cross reported that 325 attacks on health workers occurred in 2020. “The highest number recorded in the past 24 years,” the report said.

Misinformation on social networks – officials say – is a common factor in the attacks suffered in Bogotá and the Cauca Valley. “Fake messages that claim that ambulances carry ammunition are circulating and they are attacked,” Lesmes adds. In the country’s capital the weekend saw 16 police officers injured, one of them burned.

“In an irresponsible and untrue way, posts were made on social networks saying that some of the ambulances were carrying war material and that whenever an ambulance picked up a wounded youth they weren’t handed over to hospitals but rather to the police. This is a methodical effort to attack the medical infrastructure,” said Bogotá Health Secretary Alejandro Gómez.

Humanitarian corridors

Amid the pandemic’s highest peak – with 21,669 daily cases – blockades also affect the transportation of medicine and food. In Bogotá home oxygen is scarce, and throughout the country alerts are being issued by kidney patients. The main plant supplying dialysis patients is located in the Cauca Valley, one of the regions most affected by the roadblocks.

With the help of churches, some humanitarian corridors have been opened to allow passage of medicines and food, as well as ambulances. On the road to Cali where the newborn died, the Association of Indigenous Communities Valle del Cauca Pacific Region authorized road traffic for 24 hours. The unblocking of roads is one of the Iván Duque’s government demands to the protest committee, while the latter is demanding that the president openly condemn the attacks of the public forces against demonstrators.

No one has done so and talks are protracted. “Whenever traumatic events are discussed one must be careful. (…) But the repudiation by all players of what happened between Buenaventura and Cali must be forceful (…) It will not be the last ambulance needing to pass and the reaction can not be repeated,” says the editorial of the newspaper El Espectador, “An inhuman blockade.”

Source: El Pais