Killing leaders, the worst legacy



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New measures taken by the national government to protect the lives of social leaders. The treatment of the badbadination of leaders and human rights defenders, definitely, is another.

It is no longer a "mess", as the Minister of Defense said months ago Luis Carlos Villegas ] is, in the words of the Minister of the Interior, Guillermo Rivera the most serious problem facing the country today, and arguably the most difficult one facing the next government.

The phenomenon of Social Leaders' murders are difficult to quantify. The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, which reports to the government, has certified 178 homicides from 1 January 2016 to 29 June this year, but the Ombudsman has registered in this case. same period, 311.

The difference of this statistic is given because "there is no unified criterion for defining this type of violence. The United Nations Office uses the term human rights defender on the basis of a resolution of its own; the Office of the Ombudsman, according to an extremely vague criterion of the complaint, and the Office of the Prosecutor seeks a more precise one. As a country, we must build this concept, "explains Jorge Restrepo director of the Conflict Analysis Resource Center (Cerac), who was invited to the session of the Security Council of national security held yesterday at the Casa de Nariño

Precisely at this meeting, the president Juan Manuel Santos gave instructions so that state entities and social organizations speak the same language and can unify as much as possible, a "The President insisted that we validate all the work done by the UN office, because it is a neutral entity, because they do the verification on the ground to establish the condition of leadership in the people who are murdered, "said Minister Rivera

Investigations from the Attorney General's Office indicate that" the perpetrators of these crimes are, in larger clans of the Gulf and organized crime groups, who engage in the cultivation and trafficking of drugs and drug trafficking ", followed by dissidents ELN and Farc who have minor responsibility in these cases.

According to the hypothesis managed to profiling the body of investigation to establish the paternity of 50% of homicides (impute 184 people, tie 211 to investigations and reach 16 convictions) "after l & # 39; The FARC's abandonment of arms is characterized by the emergence and reinforcement of criminal organizations, the real armies in the service of drug trafficking, which has generated new conflicts in the areas where these gangs are present, struggling for their positioning and consolidation through the control of illicit crops and in addition to seeking to maintain the dominance of drug trafficking corridors. "

Background, said Attorney General Néstor Humberto Martínez the dead are social leaders and human rights defenders, "who lead philanthropic struggles for their communities to emancipate them from illicit cultures and this war throughout the territory. "

And these weeks, after the elections, they showed a very marked phenomenon of political violence against the leaders of the presidential campaign of Gustavo Petro (Colombia Humana) .To deal with this situation, Santos ordered that Minister Rivera be in constant conversation with the representatives of this campaign and, if necessary, devise plans for protection and prevention.

All this occurred despite the efforts of the government. create an entire institutionality to protect the defenders, as stipulated in the agreement: a research unit at the prosecutor's office, a special unit in the police (Unipep), strengthening early warnings and creating plans María Victoria Llorente Director of the Ideas for Peace Foundation, who also participated in the meeting, explained that "design and create all this institutional scaffolding. end of time and that's what the government has done these two years. "

That is why he considered that it was important that" adequate splicing be achieved because it is one of the shock measures can be taken as those that the President has taken today (see clues), but in reality, faced with this problem, long-term measures must be maintained because they are related to the security conditions in the territories. "[19659003CisalsothePresidentSantosadeclaredattheendoftheCouncil'ssessionhopingthat"theprotectionoftheSocialRegulatorswouldbeapriorityforthenewgovernment"

For this, he leaves tools beyond the institutions mentioned above.For example, in the law on the submission of criminal gangs, sanctioned last Monday, the 39, the offense of threatening social leaders has been established, which gives the prosecutor more power to act in such cases and bring those responsible to justice.

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