BOGOTA (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 01st June, 2021) The Colombian government's response to demonstrations is increasingly violent, as can be seen in the city of Cali, and aims to impose military control, the co-director of the NGO Temblores, Alejandro Lanz, told Sputnik.
Cali has been the epicenter of protests which started in Colombia in late April. The rallies involve violent clashes between protesters and law enforcement troops.
"On the 28th we experienced one of the most critical days in Cali... it was one of the worst days when the violence of the public forces against the protesters has intensified, and this has added to the fact that government's response was to continue militarizing the daily life of the social mobilization and give a war treatment to the social protest," Lanz said.
On Friday, Colombian President Ivan Duque arrived in the province of Valle del Cauca, of which Cali is the capital, to hold a security council session and discuss the unrest with the regional government. He pledged to deploy more military personnel to the area.
In this context, Temblores, which keeps a record of complaints of police violence, has documented between 13 and 14 homicides over the weekend in Cali alone, and in total there are already 45 cases of people killed in the area since the beginning of the demonstrations.
Temblores and other NGOs are pushing for the government to allow international organizations such as the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights into the country, as well as suspend the use of firearms in protests.
Since April 28, Colombia has been gripped by protests against tax hikes, which have carried on in spite the authorities dropping the initiative. Labor and student organizations are instead demanding social and healthcare reforms, the demilitarization of cities, and dissolution of the mobile Anti-Disturbance Squadron forces.
