Government says it "effectively" responded to alerts to protect leaders

The Colombian government badured Thursday that it was "effectively" dealing with cases of threatened social leaders and human rights defenders. The Ministry of the Interior said in a statement that, during the year 2018, it had received 60 early warnings from the Ombudsman's office, which "were being processed immediately".

They "started monitoring by the entities that make up the Inter-sectoral Commission for Early Response to Early Alerts", he added.

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In the information it is specified that 60 alerts correspond to 22 departments and 98 municipalities. Of which two are of a national character: one related to the electoral process and the other to human rights defenders.

According to the director of the elite police corps for the protection of social leaders, Colonel José Restrepo, Fewer than 178 of these militants have been killed in the country since November 2016, when the peace agreement between the government and the FARC was signed.

Meanwhile, the Office of the Ombudsman said in a report that 311 chiefs were murdered on June 30, 2018.

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