COLOMBIA CONFLICT
Bogotá, 4 April (EFE) .- So far in 2022, 50 social leaders have been murdered in Colombia, a figure that reflects the increase in violence that the country is going through at the beginning of the year, which, according to the Institute for Development and Peace (Indepaz) the bloodiest since the peace agreement.
The latest reported victim was José Pascual Quevedo Velásquez, who was murdered Sunday in the municipality of Puerto Concordia, Department of Meta (center), when gunmen asked him to leave a public facility where he was chatting with other people to see him shoot .
Quevedo was a community leader and a member of several social organizations such as Cooagroguaviare and Ascatragua that operate in the neighboring department of Guaviare.
The Office of the Ombudsman has issued a warning noting that Community Action Board (JAC) presidents and captains or governors of Indigenous reservations are vulnerable populations because the resolution of inter-ethnic and inter-communal conflicts depends on them.
In addition, they are also endangered by the order of the territories and are a fundamental building block for the implementation of the peace treaties.
There is a presence of FARC dissidents and local gangs in the area where the leader was assassinated, according to Indepaz, which is following the list of leaders killed so far this year.
Quevedo is the latest victim of a weekend in which two ex-guerrillas and an indigenous leader were murdered in Colombia.
Carlos Humberto Siabato in Bogotá and Edwin Andrés Sánchez Varón in Guaviare, both signers of the peace, were ambushed and killed, while in the Caribbean department of La Guajira, the teacher and indigenous leader Alexander Fonseca was killed along with two other relatives in a massacre by gunmen.
In the first quarter of the year, Colombia saw an increase in violence and killings of leaders and former guerrillas, worrying social organizations and international organizations.