Fragile Peace: Another Campesino Activist Murdered in Colombia
Fragile Peace: Another Campesino Activist Murdered in Colombia
Published 2 November 2016
As President Juan Manuel Santos boasted that there haven't been any deaths since the launch of a bilateral cease-fire, another activist was murdered.
Another trade unionist and human rights defender was murdered Tuesday in the northeastern department of Cauca, one of Colombia's regions hardest hit by over half a century of civil war between government forces and left-wing guerrilla armies.
Jhon Jairo Rodriguez, a 34-year-old rural activist, member of labor unions and the Marcha Patriotica movement, and father of four children, was found dead Tuesday around 6:40 p.m. local time, sprawled on the ground near his motorcycle with three bullet wounds in his body near the community of Santa Rita.
The murder comes on the heels of a wave of assassinations of left-wing political activists and human rights defenders in recent years. Marcha Patriotica, a political movement uniting some 2,000 social organizations, reports that more than 120 of its activists have been killed since it was founded four years ago. In Cauca alone, where Rodriguez was shot dead, at least 24 Marcha Patriotica members have been killed since 2012, four of them just this year. Earlier this year, the Ministry of the Interior signaled that 133 murders of Marcha Patriotica members were under investigation.
More:
http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Fragile-Peace-Another-Campesino-Activist-Murdered-in-Colombia-20161102-0019.html
