Hemisphere Weekly: A resurgence of mass violence in Colombia

Four years after ending one of the longest-running armed conflicts in the world, Colombia is experiencing an alarming uptick in mass violence. The United Nations has documented at least 33 massacres this year, up from 11 in all of 2017, the year after the peace accord was signed. The surge in violence has been felt most acutely in Colombia’s rural areas, which have long borne the brunt of Colombia’s armed conflict. Indeed, many of the same communities that suffered during the war between the FARC and the Colombian government are today back in the eye of the storm, with groups fighting over territory in ways reminiscent of some of the most violent days of the war.

Unrest has reached urban areas in Colombia as well. In the beginning of September, thousands of Colombians took to the streets to protest the death of Javier Ordonez while in police custody. According to authorities, at least eight people were killed and 400 injured in the protests, including 66 individuals who sustained bullet injuries. As Christine Noriega writes in The Nation, “Despite the recent attention paid to police violence in Colombia, demands for institutional reform are not necessarily new . . . For decades, Colombia’s police has been shaped by the country’s long history of political turmoil and relentless war, making any sort of reform difficult.”

President Iván Duque, for his part, has condemned the spate of mass killings but at the same time played down the recent surge. He further defended security forces in a speech, calling the police “heroic” and “hard-working.” In response to the protests, the Public Ministry has announced the appointment of a delegate for the defense of human rights to comply with orders given by the Supreme Court of Justice to the government and other state entities guaranteeing the rights of citizens to protest.