Colombian President Ivan Duque announced Friday he was deploying military troops to the city of Cali, as international alarm grows over the policing of deadly anti-government protests across the country in recent weeks.
Friday marked a full month of nationwide protests, which began over a proposed tax increase but have since morphed into a broader anti-establishment mobilization. Three people died during protests in Cali on Friday, authorities said, bringing the officially reported toll over weeks of unrest to 49, two of them police officers. After chairing a security meeting in the city, Duque announced “the maximum deployment of military assistance to the national police” would begin immediately. The latest deaths occurred in clashes between “those blocking and those trying to get through” a barricade, Cali mayor Jorge Ivan Ospina said in a video posted to social media. A representative from the Cali prosecutor’s office said an off-duty investigator had shot at the crowd, killing a civilian, before being lynched by protesters. Video footage showed a man lying in a pool of blood and another nearby wielding a gun, who was then attacked by a group of people. Ospina said he regretted what he described as an “insane situation of death and pain.” “We cannot allow these circumstances to keep happening in Cali. We must not fall into the temptation of violence and death,” he added. Human Rights Watch, which puts the death toll higher than the official one, at 63, said the situation in the city of 2.2 million was “very serious.” Jose Miguel Vivanco, the rights group’s Americas executive director, urged Duque to take “urgent measures to de-escalate, including a specific order prohibiting agents of the state from using firearms.” “Colombia can’t mourn any more deaths,” his tweet concluded.
