The European Union and the Protests in Colombia | Por Gearóid Ó Loingsigh | We have been through over one month of the strike in Colombia and slowly but surely everyone has been forced to make a statement on the issue. Poor Santos, the murderer behind the false positives with a long history of reforms against the working class came out of his refuge to declare "it wasn't me". However, the European countries have not said much and neither have their embassies in Colombia said a great deal either, although they have issued statements. For many years the NGOs told us that the Europeans were not like the North Americans, they were concerned about the human rights situation in Colombia. Even when Colombia signed a free trade agreement with the EU, which was very similar to the one signed with the USA, which was heavily criticised they came out to say "don't worry the Europeans are going to put a human rights clause into it" as if that would solve the European plunder of Colombian land, water and oil. But now, where are these champions of human rights and their precious clause? On June 2nd, Senator Iván Cepeda reported on his Twitter account the following balance "276 homicides, 988 injured by the police, 74 eye injuries, 87 gunshot wounds, 151 human rights defenders assaulted, 491 female victims of police violence."1 A serious situation deserving of a strong and direct statement from any human rights defender. So, what did our little friends in the embassies say? Little or nothing. The EU Ambassador, Patricia Llombart, limits herself to asking for dialogue without acknowledging that one of the parts in that supposed dialogue is killing youths in the streets. On May 29th, she tweeted: The 17 Ambassadors of the EU in Colombia give our backing to dialogue and negotiation as the only path to a sustainable solution to the crisis. We call upon the parties to take advantage of the meeting tomorrow to reach the necessary consensus. The country demands reconciliation and an end to the violence.2 Nowhere does she say anything about what has to be reconciled and less still about which violence has to be brought to an end. There aren't 76 dead cops, there are three, the first one in Soacha was in plain clothes as an infiltrator and we don't know who killed him and the last one in Cali, an officer who died as he lived after murdering two demonstrators.
1
https://twitter.com/IvanCepedaCast/status/1400269449014484994?s=20
2
https://twitter.com/llombartpatUE/status/1398759623331622914?s=20