I carefully followed the editorial by journalist and member of the Kamentsá indigenous community, Sandra Chindoy, on the public broadcaster RTVC Noticias following the attack by a group of Misak indigenous people on the Semana facilities last Friday.
Colleague Sandra begins her intervention with a strict rejection of the acts and acts of violence against the media company’s headquarters, but after spending twenty seconds rejecting the day’s events, she goes on to talk for another minute about the ways in which indigenous peoples in Colombia have been treated historically were seen mistreated and stigmatized.
She says, and rightly so, that Indigenous peoples have suffered discrimination and unfair accusations for decades and that what happened to Semana should prompt us all to open a dialogue about why it happened. In his words: “I call to reject this violence, but the same call is also to have a dialogue to understand why these cases happen.” I don’t know if I misunderstood that or if it is an excess of insight, but after an attack on a media outlet, the public media justify the attack with the injustices and accusations suffered by the perpetrators of the attack?
I reiterate: we must acknowledge that Indigenous peoples have been stigmatized. But I absolutely do not believe that discrimination, neglect or racism can justify sowing terror and fear in a union or in the population. Sandra remembers well in her editorial that the protection of indigenous peoples is enshrined in Colombia’s political constitution and therefore it is not the obligation of a few, but rather the duty of all, to ensure that these communities are respected. Maybe we didn’t succeed. But that’s not just the media’s fault. From governments to indigenous peoples, who in some parts of the country preferred to become allies of groups outside the law, they have not achieved this goal. However, that does not justify last Friday’s violence.
Accepting a dynamic of turning a blind eye to violent events because they are the result of past or present mistakes opens the door to all kinds of violence and even more to the justification of all kinds of horror.
The governments that accepted paramilitarism looked the other way because it supposedly helped contain the guerrillas. See the consequences. Looking the other way is what politicians and governments have been doing against corruption for decades. Look where we are.
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The rejection of violence should not be given asterisks or footnotes. Violence, terrorism, threats are vigorously rejected and that’s it. The space for a debate about the structural causes of violence will emerge. But saying no to attacks, including certain exceptions, is the same as saying, “He did wrong, but he had his reasons,” an expression that is the seed of much violence that public television should never welcome.
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