Indigenous leader Edwin Mauricio Capaz pulls on a bulletproof vest every day bef...
SANTANDER DE QUILICHAO, Colombia - Indigenous leader Edwin Mauricio Capaz pulls on a bulletproof vest every day before getting into the armored car he uses to travel around the restive part of southwest Colombia he calls home.
The 2016 peace accord with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia rebels ended more than 50 years of war between the government and the group. But though violence fell overall after the deal, so-called “social leaders” continue to be threatened, attacked and killed – many in cases which remain unsolved.
“The drug trafficking economy is very powerful and is the principal threat because they’re using indigenous land,” said Capaz, the father of a 9-year-old son, as he prepares to travel the steep mountains of his community in the company of a driver and a bodyguard. “When you threaten or kill a leader or human rights defender, you attack democracy,” said human rights ombudsman Carlos Alfonso Negret. “Without social leaders there is no democracy, so this is supremely serious. We don’t want to repeat these assassinations.”The killings have sparked fears of an organized assassination campaign like the one carried out against the left-wing Patriotic Union party in the late 1980s.
“These groups that kill, that threaten - what they want is to silence free voices,” he said. “Human rights defenders are bastions of democracy - silencing these voices puts an end - a limit - to freedom of expression, among other freedoms.”
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