PBI-Colombia accompanied CAJAR, FCSPP and CJL contribute to “The misrule of the apprentice” report on Duque presidency

Earlier this month 500 social organizations in Colombia released a 442-page report on the first two years of the presidency of Ivan Duque titled: The misrule of the apprentice – Authoritarianism, war and pandemic.

The full report (in Spanish) can be accessed through the website of the PBI-Colombia accompanied Inter-Church Justice and Peace Commission here.

Five chapters are written by PBI-Colombia organizations:

-The consolidation of corporate governance by the “José Alvear Restrepo” Lawyers Collective (CAJAR), page 33

-The Colombian state and paramilitarism. The Background of Insufficient Strategies to face it by the Foundation Committee in Solidarity with Political Prisoners (FCSPP), page 50

-Public policies with a focus on human rights co-authored by CAJAR, page 197

-Persistence of the prison crisis by FCSPP, page 259

–Antioquia 2018 – 2020. For their work, they are persecuted by the Corporation for Judicial Freedom (CJL), page 354

The report concludes:

“The government’s failure to comply with the commitment to implement the Agreement for ending the conflict and building a stable and lasting peace, signed in 2016, can explain many of the serious problems that have flared up and deepened in the country: violence, with an accentuated expression in massacres; inequity, poverty, serious risk of the balance of powers, fiscal management, deforestation or setbacks in rights such as to peace, life, freedom, non-discrimination, health, education, food, access to water, and more.”

And the section titled “Achieve effective guarantees for defenders” (on pages 421 to 424) in the conclusion also notes:

“[The Duque administration] seeks, in different areas, to impose a state of fear to prevent the collective act to improve their living conditions. This is observed with the increase in repressive violence, the murder of women leaders and social leaders, the increasing powers of the military and police forces to contain, through their aggressions, nonconformity and social protest and with the appeal to illegal and extra-institutional methods (illegal espionage, executions extrajudicial, favoring paramilitarism).”

The Colombia Reports article on the report notes: “Duque’s complacency with the paramilitary terror that allegedly has killed more than 200 human rights defenders and community leaders this year alone was in stark contrast with his brutal crackdown of peaceful anti-government protests last year, the report said.”

The full report can also be found in two parts by clicking here.