The Institute of Studies for Development and Peace (Indepaz) denounced this Wednesday that the wave of violence in Colombia in recent days, following the assassination of another social leader and two new massacres, one in Medellín and one in Bogotá, has left new victims has demanded, which was added 25 far into 2022.
In the municipality of Argelia, Valle del Cauca (west), social leader Richard Betancourt was killed, while the illegal armed group Carlos Patiño massacred between five and six people.
Another department, Antioquia (Northwest), also reported the killing of three people in the region’s capital, Medellín.
According to Indepaz, gunmen shot dead Richard Betancourt, the 43rd social leader killed in 2022 and the 1,329. since the signing of the peace agreement in 2016, near his home last Sunday.
Betancourt chaired the Santa Clara District Community Action Board and participated in processes to help people displaced by the armed conflict.
His death is attributed to members of the Carlos Patiño irregular group and irregular armed organizations.
Indepaz also denounced this Wednesday the 24th massacre of this year in Medellín, which killed three people, including two of Venezuelan nationality.
The victims were identified as Edinson Noel Pineda (20 years old), Darwin Alejandro Ochoa Batista (21) and Víctor Hugo Echeverri Moreno (48) and their bodies were disposed of in a landfill.
By disseminating this fact, Indepaz drew attention to the fact that, according to the Ombudsman’s Office, in the country’s second largest metropolitan area, the Aburrá Valley, where ten municipalities converge, including Medellín, the actions of 140 armed criminal groups are reported at different levels.
According to the organization, these groups are interfering with the exercise of residents’ rights to life, liberty, integrity and security, including the Gaitanist Colombian SelfDefense Forces (AGC) and others.
The 25th massacre, which left two men and a woman killed by a firearm inside a house, was committed today in the town of Usme, in the Compostela district of this capital.
Last year the Office of the Ombudsman issued an alert warning that the attitude taken by some authorities towards illegal armed actors and their presence in the capital is confusing.
The Santa Clara Ecomun Multiactive Agroforestry Cooperative (Cemas), in turn, condemned the kidnapping of about 20 people in Algeria on March 18 by members of the Carlos Patiño group.
That structure still holds ten of the hostages and in the hours that followed murdered between five and six of them, all young (including a 14yearold girl), on the pretext that they had used psychoactive substances.
Cemas reminds that the use of illicit substances, as stipulated in the peace agreement, is multicausal and must be addressed as a public health problem.
It states that the practice of order by murdering young people who consume “leads to much more serious social problems. The answer lies in social, cultural and structural change, he affirms.
In his statement, Cemas demands that the Colombian state guarantee the life and integrity of the Algerian people.