Latin America
Related: About this forumTorture sites and mass graves reported in Colombia as repression intensifies against mass protests
Dominic Gustavo
4 hours ago
A May 23 report prepared by the human rights organization Justicia y Paz stated that fascistic paramilitary groups, which operate in concert with the far-right and US-backed regime of Colombian President Ivan Duque, have created torture sites and mass graves in an attempt to suppress protests in the city of Cali, which has been the epicenter of continuing countrywide demonstrations.
The report described chop houses in Ciudad Jardín, a neighborhood of Cali, where protesters kidnapped by fascists were tortured and dismembered. Residents, the document asserts, were generally too frightened to denounce these chilling crimes, for they knew that they had the sanction of the police and the state.
The report went on to describe mass graves, where the bodies of many young people were taken, in the cities of Yumbo and Buga. It noted: The people who have shared their testimony indicated that the youths were detained, some of them have been reported missing by their friends or families, and in Guacari, in Buga, 45 minutes from Cali, they were executed. Some of the survivors of the executions were found with gunshot wounds in health centers and today are terrified and in hiding.
Protesters clash with police in Madrid, on the outskirts of Bogota, Colombia, Friday, May 28, 2021. (AP Photo/Ivan Valencia)
Thousands of people involved in protests have been arbitrarily detained and often subjected to brutal treatment, sometimes including torture. Of these, hundreds have been disappeared. The Ombudsmans Office of Colombia had reported 548 missing persons as of May 7. In Cali alone, human rights groups reported 206 missing persons as of May 20.
The corpses of murdered protesters have begun to turn up in rivers, some showing signs of torture, others dismembered. In one particularly grisly instance, the severed head of a missing protester was found in a plastic bag. Other bodies have been found alongside abandoned roadways. Among those murdered was Beatriz Moreno Mosquera, a Buenaventura teacher and syndicalist, whose body was found bearing signs of torture.
More:
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/05/31/colo-m31.html
(Clearly Colombia's right-wing paramilitaries have been employing the tactics they used up to and throughout the Presidency (or dictatorship) of vicious Álvaro Uribe, the puppet master and mentor of Colombia's current President Ivan Duque.)
Judi Lynn
(160,527 posts)Colombias judicial branch shuts down to join anti-government protests
by Adriaan Alsema May 25, 2021
~ snip ~
During the first four weeks of protest, human rights organization Temblores received almost 3,000 reports of police brutality.
The Missing Persons Search Unit additionally raised the alarm after hundreds of protesters went missing.
Human rights NGO Justicia y Paz said locals from the area around Cali, Colombias third largest city, reported police has been dumping the bodies of executed protesters in mass graves.
While the strikes organized by the National Strike Committee have been largely peaceful, there have been a growing number of reports of violent protests and even attacks on members of the loathed National Police.
Duques response to the strikes has made him the least popular president in the history of polling in Colombia.
https://colombiareports.com/colombias-judicial-branch-shuts-down-to-join-anti-government-protests/