Colombian guerrillas are using coronavirus curfews to expand their control
Lorena Paredes sat in the passenger seat of a silver SUV as it sped through the night roads of Colombia's Pacific coast. The 28-year-old lawyer was nervous. She was returning from a doctor's appointment late — well past the start of a coronavirus curfew that can be as deadly as the virus itself.
Armed groups in this violence-fraught nation of 50 million are imposing new levels of control during the coronavirus outbreak, and enforcing some of the strictest lockdown measures in the world — with harsh penalties for violators. In the port city of Tumaco, a narco-trafficking hub in the Colombian southwest, guerrillas posted pamphlets declaring all curfew violators “military targets.” In a warning to all, a medical transport responding to a call after curfew was torched in early May, its driver and patient killed.
Paredes, driven by a friend, thought she might get lucky. Then she saw the roadblock.
Enforcers with shotguns and automatic weapons opened fire, piercing the SUV. Paredes felt stabs of pain as three bullets struck her leg. Her friend, hit in the face and arm, nevertheless managed to pull over, where the pair begged for their lives. They were released with a warning, to seek assistance on their own.
“Absolutely no one helped us,” Paredes, a prosecutor in Tumaco who handles domestic abuse cases, said from the safety of a neighboring city. “One person approached us, because I screamed. I begged for help because my friend was bleeding out horribly. He came close to the window of our car and told us, ‘Hey, quiet, because here, it is prohibited to help.’ ”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/colombia-coronavirus-farc-eln-guerrillas/2020/07/25/927d3c06-cb64-11ea-bc6a-6841b28d9093_story.html
