The government of President Ivan Duque and his far-right political party are the main promoters of deadly political violence in Colombia, centrist Senator Antonio Sanguino said Friday.
In a column in newspaper El Espectador, the veteran politician argued that the Democratic Center’s categorical rejection of the country’s peace process and their systematic stigmatization of those who support peace in Colombia are the primary catalysts of the political violence that has cost the lives of hundreds of people over the past three years.
This is aggravated by the stigmatization of social protest or opposition by members of Duque’s cabinet, in particular Defense Minister Guillermo Botero, said Sanguino of the opposition Green Alliance party.
Senator Antonio Sanguino
Botero’s unsubstantiated claims were followed by death threats by far-right group “Aguilas Negras,” and multiple murders of leaders of indigenous peoples who were protesting at the time to demand an end to government neglect and the return of stolen land.
Sanguino went on accusing the president himself of promoting violence while on campaign in January last year when Duque claimed that “populism wants to reign in the remote regions of Colombia by stigmatizing business, stigmatizing sectors of the economy and promoting class hatred and supposed social protest.”
But the worst offenders are the far-right lawmakers that make up Duque’s party in Congress, according to the Green Alliance senator, who reminded that Senator Maria Fernanda Cabal called indigenous protesters “vandals” and that Senator Carlos Felipe Mejia who in March said that “what the indigenous are doing is no social protest, it’s vandalism.”
Senator Paloma Valencia, who has engaged in multiple verbal attacks against the FARC after the former rebels disarmed and entered congress as part of the peace process, said she would never accept that “the terrorists of this country, who raped, who murdered, come and tell us what ought to be the doctrine of the military,” Sanguino reminded.
Party leader Alvaro Uribe, who is investigated on charges related to his alleged formation of a death squad, said on Twitter that “the FARC is making advances in the south of Tolima, recovering the country after [former President Juan Manuel] Santos’ surrender to those who commit violence.”
Duque himself also stigmatized the FARC earlier this month when claiming that “the criminals of the FARC, now in dissidence, return to Huila,” a province in the southwest of the country.
Senator Antonio Sanguino
Sanguina also recalled a recent interview with Uribe in which Duque’s political patron falsely claimed that “5,000 former members of the FARC have returned to the battlefield” and that the reintegration sites are “armories and places where drugs are kept.”
The senator made an urgent call to the president to end the systematic stigmatization of disarmed FARC members, opponents of the government and social leaders.
Senator Antonio Sanguino
Since the beginning of the peace process, at least 134 demobilized members of the FARC have been assassinated, 11 have been forcibly disappeared and more than 30 family members of FARC members have been murdered.
More than 700 community leaders and human rights defenders have been assassinated since the beginning of the peace process in late 2016, independent conflict monitor Indepaz said last month.