Featured image: Protesters participate in a protest against the Government of Colombian President Iván Duque in Cali, May 19, 2021. (Photo: AFP).
The Attorney General’s Office and the Office of the Ombudsman of Colombia located 290 people reported as missing in the three weeks of demonstrations against Duque.
419 Colombians disappeared during the recent protests against the government of President Iván Duque, between April 28 and May 23. The Prosecutor’s Office, in a joint statement issued with the Office of the Ombudsperson of Colombia on Monday, confirmed that 290 of those who disappeared during the uprising have been accounted for. On the other hand, 129 continue to be filed as “missing,” known in Spanish as the infamous desaparecido.
“The teams made up of the two institutions have found 290 people who had been reported as missing,” read the statement. “The Urgent Search Mechanism (MBU) is still active with respect to 129 (search) requests.”
According to the statement, these organizations activated 35 teams made up of a prosecutor, investigators, police officers, and regional defenders to search for the disappeared.
The statement also added that 43 people died, although it alleged that only “17 of them are directly linked to the protests.” It also reported that the majority of deaths took place in the department of Valle del Cauca (southwest).
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The anti-government demonstrations and the national strike are still ongoing in Colombia, reaching into their third week, following the Executive’s failure to reach agreement or offer a rapprochement with the leaders who demand, among other things, an end to police violence and brutality, and solutions for mounting unemployment and poverty.
What has put the Duque government in the eye of the hurricane are the repeated cases of police brutality against protesters, sexual abuse, as well as measures by the Casa Nariño [seat of the presidency] that militarized the streets of Colombia in order to suppress the social movement.
Featured image: Protesters participate in a protest against the Government of Colombian President Iván Duque in Cali, May 19, 2021. (Photo: AFP).
(HispanTV)
Translation: Orinoco Tribune
OT/JRE/SL
