Category Archives: Colombia

‘It opens a window of hope’: case will potentially set precedent for sexual violence survivors in Colombia

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Jineth Bedoya, who’s been seeking justice since she was kidnapped, tortured and raped in 2000, to testify before international court

The Inter-American Court of Human Rights will hear testimony on Monday from a Colombian journalist who was kidnapped, tortured and raped while reporting on her country’s civil war, in a case which could set a precedent for thousands of survivors of sexual violence in the Andean nation.

Jineth Bedoya, who has been pursuing justice for more than 20 years and now campaigns against sexual violence, has so far seen only three of her attackers sentenced.

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Colombia defence chief calls children who died in bombing ‘machines of war’

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  • Diego Molano used phrase after airstrike on dissident rebels
  • Comments provoke incensed calls for minister’s resignation

Colombia’s defence minister is facing calls to resign amid growing indignation over his callous response to the death of at least one child in a government airstrike against dissident rebels.

After reports that several minors were among the dead left by the bombing raid, Diego Molano said on Wednesday that any young victims were “machines of war” who had been indoctrinated by the guerrillas.

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Hong Kong activists and plight of the Uighurs: human rights this week in photos

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A roundup of the coverage on struggles for human rights and freedoms, from Colombia to the Sahara

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Colombian police killed 86 people in 2020, report reveals

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Instances of violence pointed to ‘structural and systematic’ abuses within the police force and sparked calls for reform

Police officers in Colombia killed 86 people last year, according to a local NGO which reported “structural and systematic” abuses in the South American nation’s police force.

Temblores, an non-governmental organization that monitors state violence, also documented 7,992 cases of assault and 30 cases of sexual violence, with migrant communities and Afro-Colombians often the victims.

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Colombia’s ‘capital of horror’ despairs amid new wave of gang violence

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President urged to act as rival gangs use death and intimidation in their brutal turf war for control of Buenaventura

Clenching a fist, Tatiana Angulo talked about the killings of her neighbours’ two teenage sons.

“They got mixed up in it,” said Angulo, 34, who runs a peace theatre group, reenacting the stories of local victims. “We used to be able to hang out and have a laugh on the street corners, but now that’s where the killings happen.”

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Colombia tribunal reveals at least 6,402 people were killed by army to boost body count

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The killings, which took place between 2002 and 2008, were declared combat kills in order to boost statistics in war with rebel groups

A special peace tribunal in Colombia has found that at least 6,402 people were murdered by the country’s army and falsely declared combat kills in order to boost statistics in the civil war with leftist rebel groups. That number is nearly three times higher than the figure previously admitted by the attorney general’s office.

The killings, referred to in Colombia as the “false positives scandal”, took place between 2002 and 2008, when the government was waging war against the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (or Farc), a leftist guerrilla insurgency, which ultimately made peace with the government in 2016. Soldiers were rewarded for the manipulated kill statistics with perks, including time off and promotions.

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Indigenous peoples face rise in rights abuses during pandemic, report finds

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Increasing land grabs endangering forest communities and wildlife as governments expand mining and agriculture to combat economic impact of Covid

Indigenous communities in some of the world’s most forested tropical countries have faced a wave of human rights abuses during the Covid-19 pandemic as governments prioritise extractive industries in economic recovery plans, according to a new report.

New mines, infrastructure projects and agricultural plantations in Brazil, Colombia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Indonesia and Peru are driving land grabs and violence against indigenous peoples as governments seek to revive economies hit by the pandemic, research by the NGO Forest Peoples Programme has found.

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At least 331 human rights defenders were murdered in 2020, report finds

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Two-thirds of those killed worked to protect environmental, land and indigenous peoples’ rights, while those providing Covid relief also faced reprisals

At least 331 human rights defenders promoting social, environmental, racial and gender justice in 25 countries were murdered in 2020, with scores more beaten, detained and criminalised because of their work, analysis has found.

Latin America, the most dangerous continent in the world in which to protect environmental, land and human rights, accounted for more than three-quarters of all the murders of human rights defenders in 2020. In Colombia, where activists are routinely targeted by armed groups despite a 2016 peace deal, 177 such deaths were recorded, more than half of the global total. The Philippines was the second deadliest country with 25 murders, followed by Honduras, Mexico, Afghanistan, Brazil and Guatemala.

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Colombia’s ex-guerrillas: isolated, abandoned and living in fear

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A tumbledown camp is home to many former Farc rebels four years after peace accords while hundreds more have been killed

Daniela Márquez, 30, bears the scars of Colombia’s long civil war on her body. Until three years ago, she was a medic with what was then South America’s most powerful guerrilla army: the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc).

Five years ago, while her commanders were suing for peace, an airstrike killed seven of her comrades and hurled pieces of shrapnel into her arms, legs and back.

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‘Nowhere is safe’: Colombia confronts alarming surge in femicides

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Vice-president joins activists in calling for zero tolerance of ‘machismo’ that has left hundreds of women and girls dead

When authorities pulled the lifeless body of four-year-old María Ángel Molina out of a river in rural Colombia on 13 January, the South American country mourned what was the 14th documented case of femicide this year.

Her murderer, Juan Carlos Galvis, also kidnapped María’s sister, and later admitted to authorities that he committed the brutal crimes in order to punish the girls’ mother for seeing another man.

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Alarm at Colombia plan to exclude migrants from coronavirus vaccine

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President Iván Duque says undocumented Venezuelans will be denied access in a move denounced as unethical and impractical

Colombia will refuse to administer coronavirus vaccines to hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan refugees within its borders, President Iván Duque has announced, in a move which stunned public health experts and prompted condemnation from humanitarian groups.

Speaking to a local radio station on Monday, Duque that only Venezuelans with dual nationality or formal migratory status will have access to the vaccine when it is eventually distributed in the country.

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The Guardian view on Amazonian cave art: a story about the environment, too | Editorial

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Astonishing rock paintings discovered in Colombia hold a lesson for today’s rainforest

In the past week, remarkable images of ancient cave art have hit the headlines: rock paintings made in South America around 12,000 years ago. The art, created on rock faces in the Serranía de la Lindosa, on the northern edge of the Colombian Amazon, is a riot of ochre-coloured geometrical pattern, handprints, and images of animals and humans. Until recent excavations, the works of art had been unknown to the international community. Their exuberant creativity will soon be revealed to a broad audience in the UK thanks to the Channel 4 series Jungle Mystery: Lost Kingdoms of the Amazon.

The people who made these works of art were, it is believed, among the earliest humans to occupy the region, after migrations across what is now the Bering Strait some 25,000 years ago. Preliminary study of the iconography of the art has led scholars to speculate that among the deer, tapirs, alligators, bats, serpents, turtles and porcupines, long-extinct megafauna are also represented: mastodons, American ice-age horses, giant sloths, camelids.

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The ‘false positives’ scandal that felled Colombia’s military hero

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When the Colombian army defeated the Farc guerrillas, ending decades of conflict, General Mario Montoya was hailed a national hero. But then it was revealed that thousands of ‘insurgents’ executed by the army were in fact innocent men

On a chilly October afternoon in 2008, Jacqueline Castillo found herself staring down into a mass grave in Colombia’s northern region of Santander. Five bodies, naked and dirty, were squeezed together like sacks of potatoes. Forensic doctors, wearing white suits, masks and rubber gloves, were pulling them out, one by one. They placed them beside her, and asked her to examine their faces.

Castillo was looking for her brother, Jaime, who had disappeared a few months earlier in Bogotá, more than 600km away. His was the last body they pulled out. When he was placed on the ground next to her, Castillo fell to her knees, screaming. The doctors told her he was a criminal, a member of one of the many guerrilla armies that had been fighting the Colombian state since the mid-1960s, and that he had been killed in combat. But Castillo knew that was impossible. Her brother had been a homeless beggar, not a guerrilla insurgent.

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Hurricane Iota lashes Central America – video

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Hurricane Iota has made landfall on Nicaragua’s Caribbean coast, threatening catastrophic damage. Huge waves crashed into the Colombian island of San Andrés as the storm churned through the region, lashing Nicaragua with winds of up to 155mph (250kmh). 

The latest storm hit just two weeks after Hurricane Eta, which caused havoc across the same parts of Central America. The presidents of Honduras and Guatemala have called on wealthier countries to help deal with the cost of the climate crisis

• This video was amended on 17 November 2020 to remove unrelated footage that had been mistakenly included in a report by the Associated Press

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Armed groups target Colombia’s children as reform process slows

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For families in province of Cauca, time is running out as drug gangs and guerrilla groups exploit Covid chaos


Luis Troches was walking home from the shop in late July when armed men stopped him along a dirt road in south-west Colombia. They gave the 14-year-old an ultimatum: he could join their group – dissidents from the demobilised Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc) – or they could take him and his 11-year-old sister by force.

“He came home scared and distant,” said his mother, Luzmery. Both knew that the men, who control their hamlet in the north of Cauca province, would be back for an answer. “He told me, ‘I don’t want to go. What should I do?’”

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‘Prevent, discourage, confront’: South American states tackle Chinese trawlers

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Huge fleets’ intrusions into Pacific fishing territory prompt Chile, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru to join forces

Related: 'It's terrifying': can anyone stop China's vast armada of fishing boats?

Four South American countries have joined forces in a bid to combat illegal fishing by huge Chinese fleets off their coasts.

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‘We have a right to be at the table’: four pioneering female peacekeepers

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Twenty years after a landmark UN resolution, leading figures share insight on women’s vital role in mediating conflict

In October 2000, the UN security council adopted resolution 1325 – the first resolution that acknowledged women’s unique experience of conflict and their vital role in peace negotiations and peacebuilding. Twenty years on, we speak to four women helping keep the peace around the world.

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US embassy warns Colombian politicians not to get involved in US elections

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At least three senior Colombian lawmakers have been accused of acting as surrogates for Donald Trump in Florida

The American embassy in Bogotá has warned Colombian politicians to “avoid getting involved” in the US election, amid a growing row over allegations that far-right lawmakers from the South American country are campaigning in support of Donald Trump.

At least three senior Colombian politicians have been accused of acting as Trump surrogates in Florida, a pivotal battleground state which has been flooded with political advertising and fake news aimed at Latino voters.

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Colombian rebel leader Uriel killed by security forces, president says

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Commander of the ELN guerrillas known for media appearances and online videos is described as criminal by president Iván Duque

Colombian security forces have killed a rebel commander known best by his nom de guerre Uriel, during an operation in the coastal Pacific province of Choco, president Iván Duque has said.

Uriel, whose real name was Andres Felipe Vanegas Londono, was a leader in the National Liberation Army (ELN) and was known for his media appearances, online videos and a Twitter account.

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‘We’re being massacred’: Colombia accused of failing to stop murders of activists

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At least 223 social leaders have been murdered this year as Amnesty International report condemns government inaction

Activists in Colombia have warned that they continue to face extermination despite the coronavirus pandemic, as Amnesty International accused the country’s government of doing little to protect them.

At least 223 social leaders – community activists defending human, environmental, and land rights – have been murdered this year, according to local watchdog Indepaz.

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