The United Nations criticized Colombia’s prosecution on Tuesday, saying the entity is “confused” about the “extermination” of the country’s social leaders.
In an interview with newspaper El Espectador, the UN’s Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders, Michel Forst, said that the numbers about the prosecution’s self-proclaimed successes in the investigations on the mass killings “do not convince.”
UN Special Rapporteur Michel Forst
Forst spent the past 10 days traveling through Colombia in order to file a formal report on the crisis and criticized President Ivan Duque for failing to provide security guarantees to Colombians who resist rights violations or defend their communities.
While Forst acknowledged that Duque displayed a “political desire” to take action, the plan presented by the head of state “was not enough to improve the global situation of the defenders,” according to the UN official.
The Duque effect: one social leader is assassinated in Colombia almost every day now
More than 416 leaders have been assassinated in Colombia since a peace process with the FARC guerrilla group was signed in December 2016, according to latest figures by the conflict monitoring NGO Indepaz.
The figures span across a variety of groups in Colombian society including community leaders, farmers trying to reclaim dispossessed land, human rights activists and those involved in crop substitution programs that are part of the country’s peace process and attempts to curb cocaine production.
While the government and the prosecution have blamed drug traffickers for the killings, social leaders and the UN rapporteur stress that economic and political forces are also behind the violence, and that even police and military officials are accused of murdering social leaders.
UN Special Rapporteur Michel Forst
The UN official in particular highlighted the possible involvement of the private sector — in particular mining, banana and palm oil companies — that could be implicated in the killing of farmers seeking the return of land that was dispossessed during the armed conflict.
UN Special Rapporteur Michel Forst
Among the companies could be multinationals “that are investing in the country that could be causing harm,” warned Forst.
UN Special Rapporteur Michel Forst
The findings of the UN representative also extended to the security forces and police who are suspected to be complicite in the mass murder of social leaders over the past two years.
Violence in Colombia has increased since last year – particularly with the killing of social leaders — in spite of the peace process that has been opposed by Duque, who is by political allies and economic backers who in some cases are suspected of or even convicted for crimes against humanity.