Statement regarding the recent acts of violence in Colombia
From the Representation of Colombia in the Latin American Council of Social Sciences (CLACSO), we express our concern and rejection of the systematic assassination of social leaders and human rights defenders in Colombia, a situation that this year alone has claimed the lives of 75 people, following the worrying trend of increasing these crimes in recent years.
It is alarming that these events are taking place in the context of the implementation of the Havana Peace Agreements, a process that is going through serious difficulties in the current situation, where judicial decisions of the ordinary justice system call into question the action of the Special Jurisdiction for Peace – JEP and all the progress made as a whole.
In particular, Colombian universities have been the target of threats and intimidation from criminal organizations still operating in the country. We condemn the serious incidents reported by the Colombian public university movement, in which student leaders and organizations participating in last year's university strike have been subjected to threats to their physical safety and intimidation aimed at forcing them to abandon their academic and union activities at the National University, the University of Antioquia, the University of Cauca, and others.
These events raise concerns about the resurgence of persecution and stigmatization of critical thinking within Colombian universities. It is important to recall events such as the escalation of violence in the late 1980s at the University of Antioquia, which, in 1987 alone, claimed the lives of 17 people, including students, activists, professors, and union leaders; the assassinations of professors and student leaders in the 1990s on the campus of the National University of Colombia because of their academic work; the persecution and murder of students in the early 2000s at the University of Córdoba at the hands of paramilitary groups; among other events that demand close attention to current events, so that such widespread violence against academia is not repeated.
We call upon the international academic community, especially the Latin American community, to join the peace efforts and support the social and popular movement in Colombia, to monitor and act against the regressive events in social and political rights that are currently taking place not only in Colombia, but also throughout the region.
Representation of Colombia in CLACSO
Bogotá, May 24, 2019
