Duque out! A youth-led rebellion in Colombia redflag.org.au - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from redflag.org.au Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
by Vijay Prashad / May 13th, 2021
Tiger Tateishi (Japan),
Samurai, the Watcher (Koya no Yojinbo), 1965.
Ugliness defines the mood of state violence from Cali (Colombia) to Durban (South Africa), each context different and the depth of the violence particular to the location. Images of security forces cracking down on people trying to express their political rights have become commonplace. It is impossible to keep track of the events, which move swiftly from public manifestations to courtroom scenes, from the dissipation of tear gas to the invisible frustration of the prison cell. Yet, underlying these events and amidst the range of feelings that shape them lies a sense of refusal, the Great Refusal, the refusal to accept the terms dictated from those in power and the refusal to express this dissent in polite terms.
Colombia s police force, built for war, finds a new one
9 minutes to read
By: Julie Turkewitz and Sofía Villamil
Police spent decades fighting left-wing guerrillas and paramilitaries. Now, they re cracking down on protesters, and igniting a wider demonstration movement in response. In Colombia s decades long conflict with violent rebel groups, the country s national police often fought on the front lines, wielding tanks and helicopters as they battled guerrilla fighters and destroyed drug labs.
It was a force built for war, and now it has found a new one on the streets of Colombia s cities, where the police stand accused of treating civilian protesters as battlefield enemies.
Colombia enters third week of protests as Bogotá and Washington prepare to escalate repression
A protest demonstration in Colombia, last Saturday (Source: Twitter)
The “strike” was called by the National Strike Committee, which is composed of the main trade union confederations and farmers associations, after it suspended talks with the government of far-right President Ivan Duque during the first day of the so-called “National Dialogue” on Monday.
Since 2019, the unions and the government have repeatedly employed a combination of talks with intermittent calls for “National Strikes,” during which the unions fail to mobilize the powerful oil, automotive and other industrial sectors, while working to dissipate popular anger.
Richard Gardiner is a senior campaigner working on corporate accountability with Global Witness.
Talk of a green, equitable recovery from the pandemic is all-consuming. While Joe Biden in the U.S. is also promising to ‘build back better’, 2021 presents a chance for the EU to do just that with a new law, one that could fundamentally reshape the often-toxic relationship between powerful, unaccountable corporations and people and our planet.
Our consumption culture often has impacts beyond our immediate horizons. In the early hours of 24 February, 2016, Colombian soldiers gathered outside the small village of Roche, on the Guajira Peninsula, and set up a road block.