Colombia’s far-right President Ivan Duque will not be attending indigenous people who claim to be the victim of a genocide on Monday. He will be opening a fashion event.
While all eyes are on Bogota where thousands of indigenous have arrived to demand talks with Duque, the president said Sunday he would attend the Latin-American Fashion Congress.
The native Colombians want Duque to implement peace policies, surrender land the Nasa people were promised in 1995 already and stop acting like a tin-pot dictator.
The president wants to talk about creative industries and let his chief of staff, Diego Molano, accuse the indigenous of being infiltrated by “terrorists.”
The Nasa people have seen 67 of their people assassinated so far this year already and don’t care if Duque wants to dig his own grave talking by “promoting the culture of entrepreneurship from the creative sector within a framework of sustainability.”
The indigenous will be joined by students, labor unions and countless other social organizations on Wednesday, and the president can only hide from reality for so long.
Furthermore, Bogota Mayor Claudia Lopez has made it clear the native Colombians are welcome in Bogota and that Duque could have attended the indigenous concerns long ago already.
The president has been avoiding talks with the indigenous since early 2019 when police killed three native Colombians in an attempt to quell their protests.
The indigenous traveled to Colombia’s third largest city Cali last week and were ignored again after which they took to Bogota with no intention to leave.
The Supreme Court condemned Duque’s attempt to violently quell public protests and ordered his government to take concrete action to respect the Colombian people’s rights.
The ruling left the president with the option to attend the mass killing of his own people either before or after the Latin-American Fashion Congress. The native Colombians know this.