Colombia special: “Silencing the revolt, at all costs”

On April 28, Colombians took to the streets to protest against a government tax reform plan, accused of harming the middle and popular classes. This project was withdrawn on May 2, but the demonstrations then continued to denounce more broadly the inequalities, corruption, the assassinations of social leaders, or police violence.

From April 28, many videos posted on social networks reported violence committed by the police against protesters on a daily basis. According to Colombian NGOs Temblores, Indepaz and Paiis, 44 people would have been killed by the police during the first two months of demonstrations. In May, footage also showed armed civilians lashing out at protesters, with police sometimes standing by their side.

In our special, the editorial staff of France 24 Observers looked at events that occurred in the towns of Cali and Popayán, between May 9 and June 4.

Behind the scenes of our special “Colombia: silence the revolt, at all costs”

Several articles on this violence were first published on the France 24 Observers website.

>> READ ON THE OBSERVERS:

– Protests in Colombia: videos reveal “dangerous” use of grenade launchers by police

– Investigation in pictures: Men in civilian clothes shoot at indigenous protesters in Cali, Colombia

– Colombia: story in pictures of an evening of deadly protests in Cali

Working with amateur images always means checking them: were they really taken in such and such a city? Are they not already old?

Several factors sometimes made this task difficult, starting with the fact that a large part of the videos of police abuse were filmed at night. When everything is dark, it is often more difficult to identify the exact spot where an image was taken, and there are generally fewer witnesses.

Another difficulty: the incessant flow of images broadcast every day on WhatsApp, Twitter, Telegram, Facebook or even Instagram, during the first weeks of the social movement, making it impossible to see and check everything.

Interestingly, images taken out of context or accompanied by fake captions have finally been relatively rare since April 28.

A culture of “citizen journalism”

However, certain “citizen journalism” reflexes helped the verification work. In many videos, the demonstrators took care to specify the place, date, and time at which they were filming. These indications, which are invaluable for professional journalists, have notably enabled our editorial staff to reconstruct the events of the evening of June 4 in Cali, in the Villa del Sol district. The posting on social networks of several videos of the same incident also aided in the work of verifying the events.

But these reflexes of “citizen journalists” are not without risks in Colombia. During the first two months of the protests, 38 people were harassed for filming the police, according to NGOs Temblores, Indepaz and Paiis. However, any police procedure can be filmed, according to the Colombian Police Code.

Latent tension in Cali

To produce this program, our team also visited the field in Bogotá, Cali and Popayán.

In Cali, we notably went to the Villa del Sol neighborhood in mid-June to interview Luis (pseudonym), a paramedical professional who had taken care of the injured on the evening of June 4, in a first-aid station. When we arrived there, the tension was still latent. Esmad agents – the riot police – were stationed near a street where bullet holes were visible on the trees. The aid station was further down this street. It had been installed at the start of the social movement, to treat the wounded during clashes between the police and protesters.

When we interviewed Luis, we learned that this first aid post now had a “social” vocation: the inhabitants can go there at any time of the day to be treated there, a godsend in a country where the he access to healthcare is profoundly unequal.

Luis asked to be filmed from behind, due to the numerous threats received by health workers since the start of the social movement, including through anonymous phone calls. Some caregivers claim to have received donations – food, drink or even medicine – containing poison or broken glass.

“And why don’t we make him disappear?”

In Cali, we also met Álvaro Herrera, a young musician arrested by armed civilians on May 28, who then handed him over to the police. That day, he affirms that one of the police officers would have said to him: “And why do not we make him disappear?”. This sentence is not trivial, because hundreds of people have been missing in connection with the protests since April 28. In mid-June, the Public Prosecutor’s Office announced that 335 people had been found, but continued to look for 84 more. Since that date, he has not released any new figures.

The circumstances of Álvaro Herrera’s arrest seem to reveal the existence of a complicity between the police and armed civilians. In May, armed men in civilian clothes were repeatedly involved in violence against protesters in Cali. Police officers were sometimes found alongside these armed civilians.

Who are they ? Some are probably plainclothes policemen, but others are ordinary locals, like Andres Escobar, an entrepreneur from the Ciudad Jardín de Cali neighborhood.

In a video published at the end of May on his social networks, Andres Escobar indicates that he has created a group with his neighbors to defend their neighborhood against the violence of some protesters. Enough to revive the specter of paramilitarism, a particularly strong phenomenon in Colombia, especially in the early 2000s.