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July 19th, 2017 
Awake Goy 
nsnbc : Colombia’s Foundation for Peace and Reconciliation (PARES) stresses that every four days, one social leader in Colombia is killed.
PARES released a report, stressing that it has registered 55 assassinations of community leaders and rights activists this year alone. PARES monitors the peace process and reconciliation in Colombia – including the alarming rate of violence against community leaders following the demobilization and disarmament of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia – People’s Army (FARC-EP). In its report, the foundation states that:
“Every four days a homicide is committed against a social leader in Colombia, and every two days, there is one threatened. … The vulnerability of leaders and human rights defenders in Colombia remains critical. The acts of violence against this population show high degrees of systemic behavior.”
37 political and grassroots leaders have been assassinated since the demobilization and disarmament of the FARC-EP. PARES stresses that these crimes are motivated by “participation of social leaders in politics” and that these assassinations and threats “impede processes of truth building, land restitution, and environmental protection”, among others.
Since the signing of the peace accord between the Colombian government and the FARC-EP in November 2016, states PARES, there have been a total of 181 acts victimizing social leaders and human rights defenders recorded by July 11, 2017.
PARES, which liaises with the UN Mission in Colombia, released its report only one week after the UN Mission formally agreed to oversee the reintegration of FARC guerrilla into civil society. The report was also released about one week after the UN Mission in Colombia, in an extraordinarily harsh statement, blasted the Colombian government for failing to release demobilized FARC members and guarantee their protection.
The lack of security provided for social leaders and rights activists, especially in formerly FARC controlled areas, rekindles disturbing memories from events during the 1980s -90s and a repetition of massacres. In 1985 then President Belisario Betancour from Colombia’s Conservative party, launched peace talks with the FARC and allowed guerrilla to join leftist organizations to form the Patriotic Union.
Lack of protection of Patriotic Union and FARC members and not least collusion between right-wing paramilitaries and the military and conservative political circles, led to a string of massacres of a magnitude unseen since the 1940 – 50s. By 1994 more than 3,000 Patriotic Union party members had been killed, the party was virtually eliminated, and the FARC resumed its armed struggle more determined than ever before.
CH/L & A/N – nsnbc 19.07.2017
Source Article from https://nsnbc.me/2017/07/19/every-four-days-one-social-leader-in-colombia-is-killed-pares/
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