PRESIDENT DUQUE DECLARES WAR ON THE STRIKE

Colombia is arriving to the month of National Strike that will be on the 28th, where the mobilization and social protest of millions of Colombians is facing repression and police brutality. Iván Duque decided to confront social protest by means of militarization and repression as is the ideology of his boss Uribe Vélez and the ruling party Centro Democrático and allies.

They have launched a fierce opinion campaign to discredit the strike with the arguments that Gustavo Petro is the instigator of the strike, when they are not saying that it is financed by drug trafficking as stated by the now Chancellor-Vice President on a trip to the US to wash the face of police brutality. According to her, the indigenous Minga is financed by drug trafficking just like the National Strike. Of course, and it is also financed or directed by Cuba, Venezuela, Russia, Iran, the Sao Paulo Forum, the Puebla Group, by extremist portals from Bangladesh, Turkey and Myanmar, etc.

Both President Duque and his Minister of Defense Molano, who is undergoing a censure motion debate in the Congress of the Republic, as well as the Attorney General and other rulers have launched the accusation of "vandalism-terrorism" towards the National Strike, have turned millions of Colombians, especially young people, into military targets, into the "internal enemy", because according to their insane ideologues it is the application of the "molecular revolution dissipated from communism". But they say nothing about the conditions of the country: 100,000 dead by Covid19 between proven and possible, more than 21 million poor, where young people between 15 and 25 years old more than four million have no future in this society of oppression and capitalist exploitation and fascist government. Nothing is said that hundreds of cities write on their walls or on posters "no more Uribism".

The demands of the popular movement and the National Strike Committee (CNP) to the Duque government without which there is no negotiation are: demilitarization of social protest, withdrawal of the police and ESMAD from the streets, recognition by the government of police brutality, of the 54 dead and more than 100 disappeared, of the 18 women raped and 3 for gender violence, of the 33 with eye injuries. But while all this is being discussed, repression continues to dismantle the points of resistance in Cali, Popayan, and Bogota. Forced disappearance is a crime against humanity and the government of Iván Duque, Defense Minister Molano and the high commanders must answer for it. The government has prevented the IACHR from coming to Colombia with the dangerous argument that it must do so after the "control entities" such as the Attorney General's Office and the Ombudsman's Office do so when everyone knows that what they are doing is cleaning up the evidence of the brutal repression.

The government ordered to unblock the roads with public force. Since the beginning of the National Strike, or the popular uprising until today there have been 2,800 road blockades or roadblocks, with the participation of 300,000 demonstrators and it is not as the government says that they are "groups of delinquents" and that blocking is a crime. The road blockades are a legitimate form of struggle of the popular mobilization, and by giving military treatment it aggravates the situation. They have already controlled 500 blockades and others have withdrawn and others are emerging. As long as the government does not give guarantees for the popular protest, it will be very difficult to negotiate the "Pliego de Emergencia" of the CNP. On the 26th and 28th new mobilizations, in a National Strike that has already achieved triumphs: temporarily overthrowing two reforms, the tax and health reforms, overthrowing two ministers, preventing the America Cup from being used as a government circus to cover up the depth of the National Strike, leading to the downgrading of the risk rating agencies, to the shipping companies not arriving at the ports, to an unprecedented institutional crisis in general and in the government.

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)