BOGOTA, May 21, 2021 (BSS/AFP) – Nearly 200 human rights and labor activists were killed in Colombia in 2020, the worst toll in 11 years, an NGO said as the country battles ongoing violence despite a 2016 peace deal ending decades of civil war.
Attacks have increased during the coronavirus pandemic, with activists “left unprotected and exposed to violence” while under national lockdown, the Somos Defensores group said in its annual report.
Guerilla and paramilitary groups as well as government forces have been implicated in the killings, which are rarely punished, according to the NGO.
Many people were attacked “in places close to or inside their homes” while under strict stay-at-home orders from March to September last year, Somos Defensores said.
The 199 human rights defenders and trade union leaders who were killed in 2020 represent an increase of more than 60 percent from 2019.
Colombia is one of the most dangerous places in the world for human rights and environmental activists, according to Global Witness, an international NGO.
The country is facing its worst wave of violence since the signing of the 2016 deal, with dissident FARC rebels who refused to lay down arms, ELN guerillas, armed drug-trafficking groups and rightwing paramilitaries all battling for control of the lucrative cocaine and illegal mining markets.