A number of NGOs have condemned as “arbitrary and unjustified” the expulsion of German activist Christina Friederika Müller from Colombia.
At the time of her expulsion, Müller was accompanying an international committee investigating human rights abuses.
“We condemn before the national and international communities and we categorically reject the arbitrary and unjustified way in which the Administrative Security Department (DAS for its Spanish initials) proceeded to expel her from the country,” said a press release by several NGOs reported by Spanish press agency EFE.
In the words of her backers, state security agency DAS believed she put “in danger the national security, the public order, the public health and the social tranquility.” No official government response was available.
The NGOs charge Müller “was victim of various arbitrariness, illegal privation of liberty, being held incommunicado and expulsion with a prohibition on return for seven years.”
The report by EFE did not list what NGOs had spoken out.
The activist had been invited by various human rights organizations belonging to the Brotherhood and Solidarity with Colombia Network to investigate the impacts of human rights abuses in various regions of the country.
Müller was in Cali with a member of a local NGO when five people began interrogating her without showing documentation. By Wednesday, she had been thrown out of the country. Her only chance to speak to a lawyer came fifteen minutes before being leaving the country.
The events “constitute a clear attack against the labor of defense of human rights in Colombia,” according to the NGOs.