The mass killings of Colombia’s community leaders and human rights defenders dropped in the first half of this year, according to both the government and independent observers. Death threats, however, are through the roof.
President Ivan Duque’s Human Rights adviser, Francisco Barbosa, said Wednesday that the killing of social leaders dropped 50% since November, since the government implemented its Rapid Response Plan (POA).
Government not being honest, but not lying either
Barbosa’s statistics are flawed because he excluded the reported assassinations that are still being verified by the United Nations.
Nevertheless, the top official’s claim that the mass killing of social leaders has gone down has been confirmed by multiple independent organizations, most recently by the Fundacion Ideas Para la Paz (FIP).
According to FIP, 51 leaders were assassinated in the first half of 2019, a 16% drop compared to the 61 who were murdered in the same period last year, the most violent year for social leaders in recent history.
This is the first drop registered by the think tank since 2016, the year that the FARC signed a peace deal with the government of former President Juan Manuel Santos.
H1 assassination of social leaders
Source: Fundacion Ideas para la Paz
Death threats maintain terror
While the FIP did confirm the government’s claim that the killing of social leaders has gone down, it did warn that the number of death threats went up 160% from 144 in the first semester of last year to 230 in the first half of 2019.
According to the think tank, the trend in death threats is opposite to those in homicides; death threats to social leaders steadily dropped from 533 in the first half of 2015 to 144, but also this trend seems to have reversed this year.
H1 death threats sent to social leaders
Source: Fundacion Ideas para la Paz
Impunity, a remaining challenge
The biggest challenge to reduce violence against human rights defenders and community leaders remains stigmatization and the staggering impunity rates in cases of aggression against Colombians who stand up for their rights or the interests of their community.
The Prosecutor General’s Office claimed in May that it has clarified 58% of social leaders’ murders, but this is false.
In order to conceal its own ineffectiveness, the prosecution has been saying a homicide is “clarified” if they have identified a suspect, any suspect.
Of the 285 homicides verified by the UN since 2016, only 32 people have been convicted. No information is available about how many people who allegedly ordered the killings have been deemed a suspect. This means that at 89% of these cases remain in impunity.
