PBI-Colombia accompanies “Defender La Libertad” verification mission at International Women’s Day march in Bogotá

Published by Brent Patterson on March 12, 2025March 12, 2025

PBI-Colombia has posted on Instagram:

“This past March 8, in the framework of International Women’s Day and the protest marches that took place in the capital [city of Bogota], we accompanied one of the Verification Commissions. Its objective is to guarantee the free exercise of the legitimate right to protest and demonstration, in the context of the ‘Defend Freedom’ campaign, of which the accompanied organization Committee of Solidarity with Political Prisoners/CSPP is part of. #humanrights #march8”

Defender La Libertad has explained: “The Defend Freedom: A Matter of All Campaign is a network of organizations that works to denounce arbitrary detentions, judicial persecution, and the criminalization of social protest in Colombia. …The Defend Freedom Campaign promotes the formation of a National Network of Verification and Intervention Commissions of Civil Society in scenarios of social mobilization.”

And the Spanish news agency EFE reported: “In front of the mural of ‘The cuchas are right’, a symbol of the struggle of mothers of victims of forced disappearance, hundreds of women met this Saturday [March 8] in the streets of Bogotá to raise their voices collectively, demand their rights, talk about resistance and paint the city purple and green during the feminist demonstration of 8M.”

The “cuchas” can be translated as “old ladies” and refers to the women who for decades have stated that a garbage dump in the city of Medellin has been used as a clandestine burial ground for some of the thousands of people who have been disappeared by gangs, paramilitaries and Colombian security forces.

More on this: PBI-Colombia accompanies NOMADESC in Cali as mural painters highlight paramilitary and state violence in Medellín (January 29, 2025).

The EFE article adds: “According to the Femicide Observatory Colombia, 886 women were victims of femicide between January and December 2024.”

That article also notes: “That figure [on femicides in Colombia] shakes the hearts of the participants in the mobilization, which also became the stage for tributes such as the one made by Nury Rojas, who wore a T-shirt with the face of Angie Paola Baquero Rojas, her daughter, killed during the September 2020 protests in Colombia against police brutality.”

On September 9, 2020, Angie Paola Baquero Rojas was shot by a police officer after she attended a vigil for law student Javier Ordóñez who was killed by police after being repeatedly tasered by police, an incident that evoked for Colombians the killing of George Floyd in the United States.

Peace Brigades International has accompanied the Committee for Solidarity with Political Prisoners (CSSP) since 1998.