Originally published in Spanish by La Liga Contra el Silencio.
“Help! Shooting in Siloé. It’s 9:25. They are shooting us,” says a trembling man filming a group as they run away. “They are killing us,” someone says amid screams and confusion in another video showing people sprawled on the floor, wounded and bleeding.
These accounts, shared on social media and essential in broadcasting the national strike, depict what happened on the night of May 3 in a popular neighborhood known as Siloé, in the Comuna 20 in west Cali. They reflect the hours of terror and the police’s excessive use of force against demonstrators. The human toll: 19 people wounded, mostly by bullets, and three young people killed: Kevin Antoni Agudelo Jiménez, Harold Antoni Rodríguez Mellizo, and José Emilson Ambuila.