In Colombia, a country still reeling from six decades of civil war and battling ongoing spurts of violence, fears have been raised of a creeping militarization as police and soldiers have forcefully clamped down on protests.
Colombia’s human rights ombudsman said that 19 people — 18 of them civilians — had been killed and more than 800 injured in clashes with uniformed officers deployed as tens of thousands of protesters took to the streets in anti-government rallies.
With the backing of the army commander, President Ivan Duque on Saturday said that he would use “military assistance” to combat “those who through violence, vandalism and terrorism seek to intimidate society.”
Photo: AFP
The Colombian Ministry of Defense said that 47,500 military personnel were put into operation countrywide.
For many Colombians, deploying soldiers against a civilian population “was received negatively, as a militarization” of public order policing and as a form of “repression,” said Eduardo Bechara, a professor of public policy at Colombia’s Externado University.
After six decades of armed conflict not quite quelled by the signing of a 2016 peace agreement with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) rebel group, the Colombian government is more accustomed to waging battle than dealing with urban protests, Bechara and other experts said.
The government blames the chaos on “premeditated” violence “organized and financed by dissidents of the FARC” who did not accept the peace deal, and the ELN or National Liberation Army — the last active guerilla group in the country.
The first target for military deployment on Friday last week was Cali, a city in western Colombia with a longstanding problem of violent crime blamed on warfare between rival drug cartels.
Colombian Minister of Defense Diego Molan announced the deployment of 700 soldiers to the city to confront “criminal organizations” that he said were fomenting violence.
However, Ariel Avila, deputy director of Colombia’s Foundation for Peace and Reconciliation, said that the move was a warning to protesters.
“It is the strategy of old ... a message to shut down the protests,” he said.
In Bogota and Medellin, opposition mayors declined military help, yet soldiers were seen patrolling the capital by presidential order.
Colombia, a country of about 50 million people, has more than 266,600 military personnel and nearly 160,000 police officers.
The police fall under the ministry of defense.
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