Policemen shooting on the crowd, patrols of special forces agents who hunt young demonstrators at night, all captured by cell phones and broadcast online. The protests in Colombia against the government continue and the repression of the police continues, with its epicenter in the city of Cali. Even the United Nations, from Geneva, condemned the action of the police forces, a concern was also expressed by the European Union and by various South American politicians. At the moment there are 20 dead, about ninety people missing and over 800 injured. The protests began last week, immediately after the announcement by President Ivan Duque of a fiscal maneuver that would have increased VAT and the tax base, especially affecting the middle class.
A necessary reform according to economists, but which was conceived and announced at the worst possible moment, in the midst of the economic crisis produced by the pandemic. In one year, poverty and unemployment increased by 10%, thousands of factories closed; the growth of the first months of the year stalled with the arrival of a third wave of infections even stronger than that seen in 2020. The first to take to the streets were the students, but the protest spread to the rest of the population with a strength not seen since the demonstrations two years ago, which targeted the economic model and the privatization of essential services. Faced with popular discontent, President Duque was forced to withdraw the tax reform project, his finance minister resigned. “We must open a dialogue table – said Duque – for a new reform based on general consensus”. A consensus that is difficult to imagine in the current state of affairs. The harsh reaction of the police caused a wave of general indignation even at the international level. The government’s response, once again, was unsatisfactory. The defense minister blamed the incidents on elements infiltrated in the demonstrations, although several videos have been circulating on social networks for days where agents can be seen savagely beating unarmed demonstrators or shooting in the direction of the barricades.
The former conservative president Alvaro Uribe, Duque’s political godfather, also put fuel to the fire, and in a tweet, later deleted, he justified the police repression. Analysts agree that this is the worst time for the executive. With less than a year to go until the end of his term, the president’s popularity is at an all-time low, just as Colombia faces the worst economic crisis of the last 20 years.