After failed talks Colombia protesters call National strike  

AFP – Bogota The main group of protesters in Colombia called a countrywide strike for  Wednesday, after a failed meeting with President  Iván Duque to defuse the crisis that triggered the repression of protests in recent days against the government.

“We call on the Colombian population to hold another day of national strike on May 12,” said Jennifer Pedraza, student leader of the so-called Unemployment Committee.

For almost four hours, the organization that brings together unions, social movements, and universities spoke with Duque at the seat of government, without agreeing on a way out of the crisis that leaves 12 days of protests with an official report of 27 deaths and hundreds of injuries.

However, the NGOs Temblores and Indepaz report 47 fatalities, “39 of them due to police violence.”

“We asked that the constitutional right to peaceful protest be respected and that guarantees be given for the mobilization. A simple thing of the social rule of law and, on the contrary, Iván Duque’s speech was complacent with the excessive use of public force, ”Pedraza added.

The spokesmen of the movement insisted that the government, despite its offer to negotiate, did not respond to the request to stop the police violence, which prevented progress in the discussion of other claims.

“There has been no empathy for the victims of violence that has been disproportionately exercised against protesters who have done so peacefully. We have demanded that the massacre stop, we have demanded that the official and private violence against the people who are exercising the legitimate right to protest stop, ”said the labor leader Francisco Maltés.

The High Commissioner for Peace, Miguel Ceballos, on behalf of the executive, assured that there is “zero tolerance” for the excesses of the uniformed, but assured that they cannot forego “the legitimacy of our public force”.

“The attitude of some members of the public force that have affected the Constitution and the law will be investigated and sanctioned,” said the official.

Colombia is going through a new period of upheaval after the protests of 2019 and 2020. On April 28, thousands of people took to the streets against the tax increase that the government was planning, via a legislative project, to alleviate the economic impact of the pandemic.

Duque, pressured by the demonstrations, withdrew the initiative, but police repression increased popular anger against the government. Today the country faces several sources of protest that demand a change of course.