Human Rights Commission begins visit to Colombia to gather data on protests

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) began its three-day working visit to several Colombian cities to collect testimony of human rights violations during the protests, after a first meeting with the president of Colombia, Iván Duque.

Part of the mission – made up of IACHR Chair, Antonia Urrejola, and Executive Secretaries Camila Koch, Maximiliano Duarte and María Claudia Pulido – met this morning (June 8) with Duque and Vice President and Foreign Minister, Marta Lucía Ramírez, and other members of the government.

It is a private meeting with which the mission inaugurates its work agenda in Bogotá; during the morning, they will also meet with the Police and representatives of several ministries, including the Ministry of Defense -responsible for the Police.

“In these three days of visit, we will meet with various representative sectors of Colombian society, including government authorities, the executive, legislative and judicial branches, representatives of civil society, and all sectors whose rights have been violated”, explained Urrejola in a press conference, in which she indicated that “for the IACHR, there are no vetoed persons or organizations.”

She emphasized that “the Commission’s delegation will seek to listen to the victims of human rights violations and their families in the context of the protests to receive their testimonies, complaints, and communications directly.”

In this way, in the afternoon, they will begin to meet virtually with civil society, where victims of police abuses and crimes committed in the context of the protests will participate.

Since the beginning of the protests, the Attorney General’s Office has reported 20 deaths. At the same time, social organizations such as the NGO Temblores raise the number to 74 fatalities, including 45. They hold the police directly responsible, most of them occurring in Cali.

TRIP TO CALI

Another IACHR working group traveled this morning to the city of Cali, which has been the epicenter of the protests since April 28 and where the greatest human rights abuses have been reported, as well as scenes of clashes between armed civilians, problems of blockades and vandalism.

In this city, the third-largest in the country, the IACHR will have meetings with civil society and will meet with local organizations such as the Municipal Council and the National Institute of Legal Medicine and Forensic Sciences, as well as the state Unit for the Search for Disappeared Persons (UBPD).

Protesters have called for a “big artistic demonstration” in front of the hotel where the IACHR will meet to receive and welcome this mission, which is expected to give a neutral and objective account of what has been happening in the country during six weeks of protests.