Colombians took to the streets Wednesday, on the eve of talks with the government, in a third week of demonstrations that have been marked by police abuses and dozens of civilian deaths.
The talks, due to resume Thursday, have stumbled over the government’s reticence to renounce violence by the police, and on Wednesday Nobel Peace laureate Juan Manuel Santos, a former Colombian president, urged incumbent Ivan Duque to recognise the misuse of force.
Some 8,000 people attended protests in the capital, Bogota, the mayor’s office estimated. It added in a statement that all demonstrations were peaceful, but urged people to begin going home by 4 pm.
Protesters also mobilised in Cali, Medellin and other cities, with no early reports of clashes.
At least 42 people, mostly civilians, have died in clashes with security forces since demonstrations started on April 28, according to official figures, and more than 1,700 have been injured.
NGOS say the casualty number is higher.
“We need more gestures, we need more empathy and more humility, and for the state to recognise: ‘look, we committed abuses,’” Santos told W Radio.
Such a move would go a long way, he said, towards breaking a deadlock with demonstrators who initially took to the streets against a proposed tax reform.
The plan was quickly shelved, but protests have since morphed into a broader demonstration of anti-government sentiment.
Health reform abandoned
Colombian lawmakers voted against a health system overhaul bill Wednesday, giving protesters another victory after three weeks of protests.
Health Minister Fernando Ruiz defended the proposal, saying it would give the health care system the tools needed to deal with emergencies like the coronavirus pandemic, which has infected more than 3 million people in the South American country with a population of 50 million, and caused 82,000 deaths.
Critics of the bill said it could lead to health care monopolies by strengthening the role of private “health promotion companies,” which administer resources and contract services, and by allowing mergers in some cases of private health providers with public hospitals. It would have also increased focus on disease prevention.
“The people’s struggle in the streets against years and years of injustice has achieved the shelving of a reform that would have destroyed health as a right and commercialised it even more in favour of a few,” leftist Sen. Alexander López said on Twitter after the vote by Senate and House of Representatives committees.
Police violence remains critical issue
Yet protests showed no sign of letting up, with police violence remaining a central issue.
Former president Santos added his voice to a chorus of criticism from NGOs and governments around the world over Colombia’s handling of the protests.
Santos was awarded the Nobel Prize for negotiating a 2016 peace accord with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and bringing an end to a half-century of armed conflict between the leftist guerrillas and the state.
He said the security forces’ reputation “has deteriorated a lot” due to the perceived repression of protesters demanding profound societal change as the country reels from the effects of the coronavirus pandemic.
Santos offered to act as a mediator between the government and demonstrators.
Colombia has come under fire from NGOs, the United Nations, European Union and United States over the police response to the uprising.
President Duque has acknowledged there were individual cases of police abuse but blames the violence mostly on “vandalism” and road blockades.
The protesters are demanding a stop to police violence and more broadly a better life in a country battling a poverty rate in excess of 40 percent.
Almost a third of young Colombians are neither working nor studying, according to official data.
(FRANCE 24 with AFP, AP and REUTERS)
