Social leaders traveled from Colombia to Washington DC this week to meet with the Inter-American Commission for Human Rights (IACHR) and US officials to seek protection after the assassination of more than 340 since 2016.
Around the time President Ivan Duque met his American counterpart Donald Trump in New York, social leader Hector Marino Carabali from Cauca arrived at the iACHR offices to talk about the mass killing of land claimants, human rights defenders and other activists.
While all the camera crews were in New York, Carabali met with State Department officials, US senators and human rights organizations to draw attention to the plight of Colombia’s social leaders.
“The world must know that they are killing us and the government does nothing,” Carabali told newspaper El Espectador.
The social leaders who fight for peace with social justice and for the defense of the countryside are an obstacle for those who have historically lived off the war and who do not want the peace agreements to be implemented. In other words, the crime that we social leaders commit is to defend the lives of all Colombians.
Hector Marino Carabalí
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Carabali was forced to flee his home in Buenos Aires in July after masked men kidnapped and murdered his friend Ibes Trujillo, and the “Aguilas Negras,” an elusive far-right collective, threatened that he would be next.
The Cauca native is not sure when or if he can go home, he told El Espectador. Carabali is not the only one, partly because Colombia’s Prosecutor General’s Office is apparently reluctant to adequately investigate the violence, or arrest the alleged masterminds behind the killings.
IACHR officials reviewed some cases of murdered leaders and which are part of the organization’s body of evidence to make the coming human rights reports on Colombia. They are extremely concerned, because despite the recommendations they have made to the Colombian government, the murders and threats against social leaders continue. In addition, there is a concern about the role that the Prosecutor General’s Office ought to play and does not want to do well.
Hector Marino Carabali
According to Carabali, the situation only worsened after the June election of Duque, a conservative who opposes the peace process promoted by many of the killed and threatened social leaders.
There is a general alert in the countryside because of the bills that the Duque administration is presenting in Congress and that go against the peace agreements. For example, the modification of the Victims and Land Restitution Law, and the bill that seeks to criminalize small farmers growing coca, marijuana and poppy. We are also concerned about the criminalization of social protest and the violence that could be unleashed in the face of protests in the countryside over the activation of fumigation [of illicit crops] with glyphosate.
Hector Marino Carabali
Carabali and US human rights organizations have been seeking support in Washington in particular, because of the US’ involvement in counter-narcotics and counter-insurgency operations.
“Colombia’s peace is also the United States’ peace, many of that country’s citizens say,” according to Carabali, who bashed the apparent discrepancy between Duque’s promise before the UN to promote peace while escalating tensions in Colombia.
Last week, President Duque was in New York and quoted Nelson Mandela’s words to say that Mandela was a man of peace who gave his all to bring about social change in South Africa. However, Duque’s rhetoric is contradictory to what is happening in Colombia. Through Congress they want to take away the autonomy of the territories where we survive and they kill us for opposing this.
Hector Marino Carabali
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To further seek Americans’ attention for the plight of Colombia’s social leaders, Carabali will be present at a screening of the documentary “They Are Killing Us” of filmmakers Tom Laffay, Emily Wright and Daniel Bustos in New York on Friday before returning to an uncertain future in Colombia.
