Officials confirm deaths during Friday protests marking a month of demonstrations
Four people have died in Colombia as tens of thousands of protesters marked a month of demonstrations across the country, while talks between the government and the national strike committee were stalled.
Related: Colombia politician tells protesters hurt by police to ‘stop crying over one eye’
Continue reading...At least 43 protesters have been killed by police and 46 people have suffered eye injuries
After a month of protests in which 46 people have suffered eye injuries from police teargas rounds and rubber bullets, a Colombian politician has prompted outrage by saying that supporters of the anti-poverty demonstrations should “stop crying over one eye”.
“Don’t fool Colombians and don’t fool the international community and stop crying over one eye,” said Paola Holguín, a senator from the ruling Centro Democrático party, to opposition politicians during a virtual floor speech on Wednesday afternoon.
Continue reading...A wave of anti-government protests entered their fourth week on Wednesday as unions, student groups and others demand social change amid intermittent talks between the government and strike organisers
Continue reading...Poor and indigenous protesters have been met with deadly force by armed civilians and police representing interests of the wealthy
A convoy of brightly painted buses descended from Colombia’s westernmost mountain range, heading for the city of Cali, where tens of thousands had taken to the streets demanding a shake-up of the country’s deeply unequal status quo.
Along the way, well-wishers cheered on the caravan and drivers honked in approval. But as the procession approached Cali’s prosperous southern reaches, it reached a roadblock set up by men in civilian clothing, believed to be from wealthy neighbourhoods nearby. Then the shooting started.
Continue reading...The presence of armed civilians attacking protesters has added a worrying dimension to a wave of unrest that has claimed 47 lives
On a recent evening, Andrés pulled on his gas mask and helmet and headed for the barricades at the entrance to his rundown neighbourhood in Cali, a city which has become the center of Colombia’s anti-government protests.
But as he approached the roadblock of rocks, rubble and barbed wire, he saw a motorcycle speeding towards him. In an attempt to turn the vehicle back, another demonstrator shone a laser pen in the driver’s eyes.
Continue reading...A roundup of the coverage on struggles for human rights and freedoms, from Colombia to China
Continue reading...Demonstrations that began with a general strike on 28 April quickly descended into violence, with as many as 37 protesters killed across the country
Yina Reyes, a 39-year-old nurse from the downtrodden neighbourhood of Siloé in the Colombian city of Cali, knows only too well what Covid-19 can do to a person – and to a community. Her mother was hospitalized with the disease, and came close to death.
As a home care nurse, she has seen patients get sick and neighbours die. In the early days of the pandemic, her husband lost his job as a chauffeur, leaving her to provide for their daughter and his parents, who share their home.
Continue reading...As many as 37 people have died and at least 89 reported missing since protests began on 28 April
Colombia has entered its second week of violent unrest as riot police continued a brutal crackdown on nationwide protests against poverty and inequality exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic.
Related: ‘No food and no fuel’: Colombia torn by protests and violent crackdown
Continue reading...23 protesters and one police officer killed after general strike over unpopular tax reform met with heavy-handed response
Mass protests were held across Colombia on Wednesday after a night of unrest in the capital city, as street violence continued after more than a week of angry anti-government demonstrations.
Twenty-three protesters and one police officer have been killed in the unrest that began with with a general strike over an unpopular tax reform but has grown into an outburst of rage over poverty exacerbated by the pandemic, human rights abuses and the authorities’ heavy-handed response to protests.
Continue reading...The UN has condemned the violent repression of protests in Colombia after clashes between police and demonstrators left at least 18 dead and 87 people missing. The demonstrations began with a general strike last Wednesday over an unpopular tax change but quickly escalated when protesters were met by riot police armed with teargas, bean-bag rounds and billy clubs. The now-axed policy would have hiked taxes on individuals and business during a coronavirus pandemic that continues to ravage public health and the economy
Continue reading...There is more to this rich and varied country than Gabriel García Márquez, coffee and its violent past. Novelist Julianne Pachico shares her favourite books about her childhood home
Growing up in Colombia in the 1990s, I rarely saw any tourists. That has changed dramatically in the past decade, especially following a historic peace deal with the Farc in 2016. My novel The Anthill examines the transformation of Medellín from a war-torn city wracked by violence into a trendy, rapidly gentrifying destination for digital nomads, bitcoin investors and self-righteous religious groups. But the past is never easily shed.
It’s wonderful that more people are interested in Colombia, but there’s so much more to it than Gabriel García Márquez, coffee, and its violent past. It’s unlikely that any of us are going on any international trips anytime soon, but in the meantime, here’s a list of my favourite books about the country, which will hopefully help keep the travel bug in check, and better acquaint readers with depictions of Colombia beyond the headlines.
Continue reading...Riot police rampage across streets, shoot protesters and charge at crowds with motorcycles in week of unrest across the country
The United Nations has condemned the violent repression of protests in Colombia, after clashes between police and demonstrators left at least 18 dead and 87 people missing.
In a week of unrest across the country, riot police have rampaged across the smoke-filled streets, shooting protesters at point-blank range and charging at crowds with their motorcycles.
Continue reading...At least 16 demonstrators and one officer dead after police fired at protesters and rammed crowds with motorcycles
Colombia is bracing for further unrest after a weekend in which largely peaceful nationwide demonstrations were met with a violent police reaction which left at least 16 demonstrators and one police officer dead and hundreds injured.
Videos shared on social media over the weekend showed police firing at protesters sometimes from close range, ramming crowds with motorcycles, and bashing demonstrators with their shields.
Continue reading...President Jair Bolsonaro’s prediction that the crisis was nearing an end was misguided in Brazil and many of its neighbours
South America produced some of the most horrific episodes of the pandemic last year, with mass graves dug in the Brazilian Amazon and bodies dumped on pavements in the Ecuadorian city of Guayaquil. But at the end of 2020 there was some hope that with the onset of vaccination the worst might have passed. Brazil’s president, Jair Bolsonaro, even claimed the crisis had reached its “tail-end” in December.
Such predictions have proved grotesquely misguided. Brazil’s death toll has since more than doubled to more than 400,000, after an explosion of infections caused a catastrophic healthcare collapse. At least 100,000 Brazilians have died in the last 36 days and 100,000 more are expected to lose their lives before July.
Continue reading...Armed Belgian police raids have lifted the lid on a sinister new front in the drugs war
At 5am on a chilly Tuesday morning last month, 1,600 police officers and balaclava-wearing special forces, bristling with arms and battering rams, were ordered into action around the Belgian port city of Antwerp.
More than 200 addresses were raided in what was the largest police operation ever conducted in the country and potentially one of the most significant moves yet against the increasingly powerful narco-gangs of western Europe.
Continue reading...Rights groups warn that children across the world are being pushed into abusive situations, from early marriage to child labour
Across the world 800 million children are still not fully back in school, Unicef is warning, with many at risk of never returning to the classroom the longer closures go on. There are at least 90 countries where schools are either closed or offering a mix of remote and in-person learning.
The UN agency’s chief of education, Robert Jenkins, told the Guardian that the closures are part of “unimaginable” disruption to children’s education.
Continue reading...Nearly 5,000 refugees holed up in small Colombian town of Arauquita, having fled intense and continuing battles
Lizeth Iturrieta, a journalist in the small town of La Victoria on Venezuela’s western border with Colombia, was woken by the rumble of armoured vehicles rolling past her home. Hours later the sounds of gunfire and explosions shook the walls, and she and her husband dived for cover.
“Out of nowhere we were in the middle of a war zone,” Iturrieta said in a video call from a refugee camp on the Colombian side of the frontier. “After a day of hiding at home in absolute silence, we ran for our lives to the boat to Colombia. We almost fell into the river in the panic.”
Continue reading...Latin American countries scramble to protect themselves from a country where nearly 60,000 people are expected to die in March alone
It has long been regarded as a soft power superpower, the sun-kissed, culturally blessed land of Bossa Nova, Capoeira and Pelé.
But Brazil’s shambolic response to coronavirus under far-right president Jair Bolsonaro has cast Latin America’s largest country in an unfamiliar and unpleasant role: that of a Covid-riddled, science-shunning, politically-unstable outcast on whom many regional neighbors are now shutting the door.
Continue reading...The vastly popular Colombian singer is challenging outdated views of women in Latin pop – but her naive racial politics have sparked controversy
I catch Colombian singer Karol G in a rare moment of calm, while she is in a car on her way to a hotel. She has just landed in New York to film a music video, but home is Miami, she clarifies, the engine humming in the background. “I love it there because there are so many Latinos!”
Born Carolina Giraldo Navarro in Medellín, Karol G, 30, is one of Latin America’s biggest pop stars, an expressive performer who uses beautiful hooks for lyrics that explore female desire and sexual agency – a rarity in the male-dominated Latin music scene, where, she says, women have historically been treated like “products”.
Continue reading...Rodrigo Londoño led the leftwing Farc guerrillas, while Salvatore Mancuso was head of a rightwing death squad during the civil war
Two of Colombia’s most notorious warlords will appear together before a truth commission on Thursday, in the latest move to shed light on crimes committed during decades of bloody civil war.
Rodrigo Londoño, better known by his wartime alias Timochenko, once led the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc), in a bloody struggle against the Colombian state that left 260,000 dead.
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