Rebecca Sprößer: the German who came to Cali on vacation and ended up being part of the front line

Almost two months after the start of the protests of the national strike in Colombia, the name of Rebecca Linda Marlene Spröße began to resonate on social networks. Using her mobile phone, the 34-year-old woman from Germany recorded the conversation she had with some police officers during the protests in Cali, one of the cities most affected by the violence and where she repeatedly denounced the abuse. of force and power by the uniforms, against the population. It was on June 21 that Linda questioned these law enforcement officials about their actions against the community. Today, Linda denounces threats to her work alongside young people who are on the front line, and claims to fear for her life.

The story of this German woman was highlighted in one of the most recent publications of the Colombian newspaper El Espectador, where she herself revealed some details of her stay in Colombia, a country in which she arrived, initially, for the sake of fun. and vacations. . Linda just wanted to see the salsa capital of the world: Cali.

The German began her journey on March 15, 2021, when she confirmed to her Facebook contacts that she was at the airport in Frankfurt, Germany, ready to take a plane that would take her to the sky branch.

In addition to the deep love she feels for Afro-Caribbean music and rhythms, Colombia has become a new destination on the agenda of Linda, who for 15 years has dedicated her life to traveling and knowing. Latin American countries in particular. She studied journalism, business administration, industrial engineering and received special training to be a hostess. This last book has enabled her to pay for some of her trips thanks to the preferential rates they offer her and, to date, the German woman estimates she knows about 75 countries.

“When I arrived in Cali I totally fell in love with the people, the way of life and decided that I wanted to live here a little longer. I started working as a volunteer and community leader at a well-known dance school called Arrebato Caleño, but when the national strike started and the curfews intensified, they could no longer teach the classes that were taking place. held the night and they stopped. It was a strong motivation to join the people who started to protest. Later, I thought that since I had worked in journalism in Mexico, I could also document here what was happening with my eyes. So I started recording testimonies and abuses by the police and sending this to my contacts that I had in the press ”, Sprößer commented in his dialogue with this medium.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lC9BlL7mRxQ

Although Linda deleted from her social networks this video where she questioned the police for her abusive behavior and compared her to the authorities in her country on the pretext that in Germany, men in uniform are “the citizens’ best friends” , someone else took a nearly nine-minute video capture and posted it to YouTube as “A courageous young German woman confronts the Colombian police and leaves them without arguments.”

According to what Linda told El Espectador, after this dialogue with these police officers, in the district of San Judas, in Comuna 10, south-east of Cali, she, accompanied by a friend, decided to record this night of demonstrations, without. that fear and danger began to haunt him. “A day later, around 11:00 pm, I got a call saying they were going to take me, kill me and disappear, and they were going to blame the demonstrators.”She said and added that on June 22, men in civilian clothes threatened her friend. Linda and her friend, whose identity is reserved for security purposes, they point directly, and in all certainty, the national police for these verbal attacks against them.

From what she commented in El Espectador, and what she had already denounced on her social networks, Linda has not lived peacefully since, in fact, she assures that she constantly changes her place of residence to prevent these complaints do come true. Linda was the victim of an attempted robbery on July 4, but was helped by her neighbors when motorized men got into a fight with her. At the same time, a friend of hers was attacked with a gun, “they were going to kill her, but she fell to the ground.”

In addition to his YouTube video, Rebecca Linda Marlene Sprößer had already shared several recordings of testimonies of citizens who had denounced, among other things, illegal arrests, shootings, beatings and abusive treatment by the public forces, and had also testified before national and international media . Just as he spoke for the local TV station, Channel 2, he told about what was happening in Cali for media such as WDR and the German newspaper Frankfurter Rundschau.

In front of a representative of the international press committee, Linda declared herself as yet another protester of the Colombian social riot, and not as a journalist. “Because I sympathized with the people and their cause and directly criticized the national government, the international press association has distanced itself from me. The German press has always been an impartial and neutral institution. As a journalist, it is essential to cover the press code at all times, which I did not respect when I joined the resistance movement. For the good and honor of the German press, I specify by this declaration that since April 28 I act autonomously and all my publications on the national strike do not represent the institutional criteria of the German press ”, a- he assured.

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