After 19 days in which tens of thousands took to the streets to express their discontent, the National Unemployment Committee (CNP) spoke this Sunday for the second time with the Government and asked for guarantees for “the exercise of the protest” to begin to negotiate a way out of the crisis that Colombia is experiencing.

In a meeting that began at 2:00 p.m. local time (7:00 p.m. GMT) and that lasted all afternoon, the CNP – made up of unions, workers’ centrals and social and community organizations – also confirmed the call for a new “great mobilization” for the next Wednesday, May 19, in rejection of police brutality and government policies.

That is also a message of pressure to the authorities in the middle of the beginning of the meetings to find solutions to the protests, which represent the biggest crisis in Duque’s mandate and one of the most difficult in Colombia in recent times.

“Today the organizations that are part of the National Unemployment Committee have presented a document that has two fundamental parts: one that refers to the guarantees for the exercise of the protest and another of guarantees for the negotiating tables,” said Miguel Ceballos, the Government spokesman, who is also the High Commissioner for Peace, after a meeting between the parties.

POSTURE OF THE UNEMPLOYMENT COMMITTEE

In fact, before the first “face to face” the Committee also made it clear that the only point it will deal with this Sunday is that of “guarantees and prerequisites to stop state and parastatal violence against those of us who have been protesting.”

Then they say that so that this requirement can be agreed and verified once “the different negotiations can begin.”

That point, that of police brutality, is fundamental for the Committee because since the protests began on April 28, 42 people, 41 civilians and a police captain have lost their lives.

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