Colombia’s President Iván Duque had ordered the deployment of a total of 7,000 soldiers in ten regions of the country; according to agency reports, more than 1,100 of them are now deployed in Cali. In the megacity, the remains of barricades and mountains of rubble bear witness to chaotic protests against Duque’s government.
Cali City Council public safety officer Carlos Rojas said the confrontations on Friday were close to “urban war” levels. It was “unacceptable” that protesters wanted to “turn the city into a battlefield,” he added.
“Fuel in the fire”
Many Cali residents are afraid of the soldiers who have now been transferred to their city. “We feel threatened, we feel in greater danger,” a 31-year-old told the AFP news agency. “If something happens, we can’t call the police because it’s them who are killing us.” Political scientist Luis Felipe Vega criticized the military reinforcement for the police as trying to put out a fire “by pouring oil on the fire”.
The situation in Cali is “very serious”, said the America director of the human rights organization Human Rights Watch, José Miguel Vivanco. He called on Duque to take immediate action to defuse the situation. Among other things, state representatives must be prohibited from using firearms.
Mourning for killed protesters
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The protests in Cali and other Colombian cities were originally sparked by a planned tax reform, which has since been withdrawn. The protests are now generally directed against the political leadership. The demonstrators are demanding better working conditions, reform of the pension system, better protection of human rights defenders and the full implementation of the peace agreement with the left-wing ex-guerrilla movement FARC.
The riots are the bloodiest in Colombia since the peace agreement in 2016. The number of deaths since the demonstrations began at the end of April rose to 59, according to official figures. More than 2,300 people were said to have been injured.
The Foreign Office in Berlin issued a conditional travel warning for Colombia. The nationwide protests are “partly connected with massively violent riots”. Further escalations cannot be ruled out, and an end to the unrest is not yet in sight.
wa / cw (afp, dpa)
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