On the National Day against Police Brutality, the National Movement of Victims of State Crimes – Movice, the Coordination Colombia Europe United States – CCEEU, the Defend Freedom Campaign and the Campaign No + Rights Violated by the Uniformed, call attention to the need to recognize the victims of police violence and once again express their concern over the entry into force of the Citizen Security Law, which legalizes urban paramilitarism by legitimizing the use of lethal force in the hands of private citizens, criminalizing the exercise of human rights defense when it comes to verifying the legality of police procedures, and perpetuating impunity for serious human rights violations committed by the police and ESMAD.
As a consequence of the above, human rights organizations and members of Congress filed an action of unconstitutionality against 13 articles of Law 2197 of 2022, demonstrating the way in which it disregards not only rights enshrined in the Constitution but also in international human rights treaties recognized by Colombia. The “Citizen Security” Law of the national government goes against the rights of citizens; instead of offering frank solutions to the problems of insecurity that may come from criminal acts, it takes up the old formula of punitivism and punitive populism, adding a new risk to the security of people: that of an authoritarian State, which can legally act against fundamental rights such as freedom, equality, social protest, freedom of expression or due process.
It is inconceivable that this concept of “citizen security” stigmatizes and criminalizes those who exercise their right to social protest, as well as those who have advocated for the defense of rights under the role of verification commissions, health brigades and alternative media, being singled out and prosecuted under flimsy arguments that seek to destabilize and appease social mobilization. It is unacceptable that no alternatives are proposed for the prosecution of those responsible for serious abuses of authority and disproportionate use of force in a context in which human rights violations committed by State agents have no recent precedent in the history of Colombia, especially those committed in the context of the National Strike of 2021.
The Campaign Defending Freedom: Everyone’s Business[1] registered a total of 7,620 aggressions in the context of social protest during 2021: 89 homicides, 1,929 injured people, 106 gender-based violence, of which 23 correspond to sexual violence, 343 aggressions against human rights defenders, 3,546 arbitrary and illegal detentions, and 1,636 complaints of abuse of power and police violence.
In order to guarantee the rights of the victims of police violence, it is necessary to retake the bases of the Social Rule of Law with: a) a judicial and disciplinary power that effectively and duly investigates and judges human rights violations by State agents; and, b) a timely constitutional control of legislation that ensures the safeguarding and respect of fundamental rights such as social protest and the rights of ethnic, indigenous and peasant communities.
Today we insist once again on the urgency of a profound reform of the police, which will allow us to advance in a public force for peace, the dismantling of the Mobile Anti-Riot Squad (ESMAD), the abolition of compulsory military service and the punishment of all military and police officers involved in serious human rights violations as guarantees of non-repetition.
[1] For more information see: CDLAT Campaign, 2021. The subjugation of democracy. A balance of the right to social protest in Colombia in the year 2021.
