President Ivan Duque said Tuesday that indigenous protests in southwest Colombia are receiving the support of illegal armed groups after alleged guerrillas attacked riot police.
The indigenous groups in the Cauca province have been protesting for a more than week and closed the highway connecting central Colombia to Ecuador to force the president to talk about ongoing state neglect and violence perpetrated by illegal armed groups in their reservations.
Colombia’s indigenous block road to Ecuador in anti-government protest
In a televised speech, Duque said he had evidence the indigenous protests were “infiltrated by armed groups” and vowed that the violence “would not remain in impunity.”
President Ivan Duque
Security forces told local media that dissident guerrillas of the demobilized FARC group ambushed police, killing one official and injuring six others.
But the local community said that following the murder of the official, police opened fire on civilians, injuring six.
CRIC
The alleged guerrilla attack on alleged violent police attack on protesters followed days of brutal repression of the protests that began 10 days ago. According to the protest organizers, multiple participants in the protests had already been injured in the protests.
Indigenous leaders, who categorically reject any armed action in their territories, additionally claimed that they have received death threats since the beginning of the protests.
The locals rose up early this month to demand talks with Duque over his administration’s chronic failure to implement peace policies in the troubled Cauca regions and seek solutions for ongoing land disputes between indigenous peoples and large landowners.