'Colombia's power brokers also behind mass killings of social leaders'

[Judi Lynn]

by Adriaan Alsema February 4, 2019

Elites that have traditionally maneuvered between Colombia’s legal and illegal economies are behind many of the killings of the country’s social leaders, according to a leading judicial expert.

Camilo Bonilla of the Colombian Commission of Jurists led a group of 11 organizations that analyzed the staggering increase in homicides and came to the conclusion that masterminding many of the killings are “individuals and families belonging to certain sectors of political and economic power who have historically passed between legality and illegality and who feel their privileged position threatened, and therefore turn to armed groups to maintain that position,” he told newspaper El Espectador.

According to Bonilla, the 2016 peace deal between the FARC and the State threaten the interests of families and clans that have long been obtaining power through both legal and illegal means.

. . .

The judicial expert compared today’s violence targeting social leaders is similar to what happened in Colombia in the 1980s and 1990s when paramilitary groups, supported by ranchers, businessmen and Colombia’s so-called “narco-elite” all but exterminated the leftist Patriotic Union party.

More:
https://colombiareports.com/colombias-power-brokers-behind-many-mass-killing-of-social-leaders/