Abelardo Duarte becomes the 18th social leader assassinated in February 2023. (Indepaz)

Six months of the administration of President Gustavo Petro are over and still it was not possible to prevent crimes against social leaders in the country, despite the President’s efforts to prevent the gruesome murder toll of these people who represent and work for their communities from continuing to grow, and to which must be added the name of Abelardo Duarte Moncada, whose lifeless body was found in Tame (Arauca) on the morning of Monday 27 February.

At the Institute for Development and Peace Studies (Indepaz) reported that Duarte was allegedly kidnapped since last Saturday, February 11, after being abducted from his home in the rural area of ​​the capital Arauca. However, on Monday they found his body with evidence of gunshot wounds.

The murdered leader He was recognized for his work in the Community Action Board (JAC) of the village of El Rosario in the Araucanian capital, of which he became presidenthighlighted in Indepaz.

In this NGO, they also reported that the The Office of the Mediator has launched the early warning 006/21 reporting attacks on the life, integrity and freedom of the inhabitants of this department in eastern Colombia.

“The panorama of threats, kidnappings and extortion that have affected the civilian population of the municipality of Arauca in 2021, it seems to mark a trend of aggravation and configure a serious crisis of security and protection of the population”, they underlined.

With this new crime, the macabre average of 13 murdered social leaders that were recorded monthly in 2022 and a total of 1,427 homicides of those people who work for their communities or for the defense of human rights are reached, since the signing of the peace agreement between the disappeared FARC guerrillas and the Colombian State, according to figures from Indepaz.

Before the violent death of Duarte Moncada, Saturday February 18 and Sunday February 19 the crimes of Jorge Alejandro Chica in Carepa (Antioquia) and of Milton Rocha Peña in San Sebastián (Magdalena) were reported.

The murder of a girl was perpetrated with a knife while moving in the Villa Esperanza sector in the aforementioned Antioquia municipality, reported to Indepaz.

They added that this person was recognized in the community for his work as a leader and advocate for labor rights. Besidess, worked as a trade union leader of the Colombian Association of Bank Employees and employee of a financial institution in the municipality.

While The Milton Rocha crime happened on Saturday evening on the road that connects the hamlet of San Valentín to San Sebastián, where the social leader was shot dead, reported in the governorate of Magdalena through a statement.

The organization explained that this crime occurs in a context where For more than five years, peasant families from the corregimiento (hamlet) of San Valentín, jurisdiction of San Sebastián, have been occupying lands under study and clarification of the legal situation.

“The community of San Valentín has suffered threats, intimidation and now the crime of Milton Rocha Peña, one of the main leaders in the process of recovering the lands on which they work”, they added.

For this reason he asked that criminal investigations be carried out to shed light on the murder of the leader of the community.

And it is that According to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), Colombia is the country in which the highest number of murdered social leaders has been reported, with 46 victims. in 2022.

of these cases 26 have been confirmed and 20 others are in the process of being verified, most of the profiles correspond to indigenous, Afro and ecological leaders, only in the last two months of the year, the IACHR He counted eight murders.

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