BOGOTA, Aug 10 (NNN-Prensa Latina) — The National Indigenous Organization of Colombia (ONIC) declared Friday a humanitarian emergency due to the assassination of 158 indigenous people since the signing in 2016 of the Peace Agreement between the Colombian government and the former FARC-EP guerrilla.
The humanitarian situation and the strategy of territorial dispossession in which our native peoples live, can no longer be ignores. We are facing physical and cultural genocide, the organization said.
Luis Acosta, national coordinator of the Indigenous Guard, called for ‘state agencies to pay attention to the genocide suffered by native peoples today.’
Since the signing of the Peace Agreement, more than 750 social leaders have been killed in Colombia, 158 of them belonging to indigenous peoples. During the year since President Iván Duque came to power, 94 members of those communities were assassinated, the ONIC said.
In Colombia, there are 102 ancestral villages and eight in voluntary isolation, 70 of the 102 are at serious risk of physical and cultural extermination, 31 at risk of extinction, 39 in imminent physical and cultural extermination, according to the Auto 004 of 2009 of the Constitutional Court.
The Regional Indigenous Council of Cauca, a pioneer organization of the Indigenous Movement in Latin America, also recently denounced the increase in murders, threats, accusations and persecutions against those who build peace in Colombia.
‘We communicate to the national and international community the continuous and systematic threats against those who are committed to peace, who are subject to the authorities and the native guard in northern Cauca as well as the rural communities, who seek a good life for society,’ the Council stated. — NNN-PRENSA LATINA