The Pan-American highway in Cauca is blocked again. Since yesterday, the communities in the south of the country have gathered in the Las Cruces village, in Timbío, and at this time they keep the international corridor between Popayán and Pasto closed.
Since yesterday, nearly 2,000 farmers have blocked the Ruta del Sol, one of the main roads in Colombia that connects Bogotá with the Caribbean coast, in the hope that the Government will respond to the humanitarian emergency reported by several regions of the country and the murders. selective and forced displacement.
Besides: Veterans of the Police and the Army once again have Allowance 14
The protesters denounced that what they intend is to direct the Government’s attention to the threats, detentions, forced displacements and murders that “those who defend their rights and the land suffer,” the Minga Association reported this Wednesday in a statement.
The blockades are also located in areas such as the Cruces de Timbio village, on the Pan-American highway that connects Cauca and the south of the country, and also on the one that connects Quibdó and Pereira.
One of the spokespersons for the blockade on the Panamericana, Nelson Valbuena, said that the paramilitary groups are found where there was a presence of public forces: “The communities lived very calmly, because they have their rules of coexistence; today they were broken by the actions of paramilitarism.”
You are interested in: In the face of crisis, San Andrés seeks to revitalize tourism with new flight rates
Valbuena stressed that they need international visibility and that their requests be echoed because the territory that “is wanted for the construction of life” is in the experience of “the farmer, the small miner, the landowner…”.
Yesterday, a group of young Embera indigenous people blocked access to the headquarters of the Colombian Ministry of the Interior to protest these same humanitarian and security issues.
They also added to their requests the dismantling of paramilitarism: “The humanitarian situation that we are experiencing in the territories due to paramilitarism, systematic murders and the persecution of social leadership must be made visible,” María Guillón, part of the Joel Sierra de Arauca Human Rights Foundation, reported to EFE yesterday, who insisted on the request to install a dialogue table.
The farmers reiterated their hope that the Government delegates will sit down to talk and agree on the “minimum guarantees that the communities need.”
With information from EFE.
