Protests in Colombia: 11 deaths have already been recorded during the riots registered in different parts of the country

At least eleven people died, mostly young people who were shot, and hundreds more are injured after protests against police violence that shook Bogotá between Wednesday and Thursday, according to authorities.

The clashes and riots broke out in repudiation of the aggression suffered by Javier Ordóñez, 43 years old, at the hands of uniformed men who subjected him to several shocks with an electric weapon on the ground.

The engineer died after being taken to a police station under circumstances under investigation.

On Thursday night new protests broke out, although they seemed less intense in Bogotá than in cities like Medellín (northwest) and Cali (southwest), where reporters from the AFP they observed strong clashes with the public force.

The Minister of Defense, Carlos Holmes Trujillo, denounced in an audio to the media “two days of systematic and coordinated vandalism.”

As the mayor of Bogotá, Claudia López earlier regretted that the police, the target of the riots, made “indiscriminate use” of force and firearms.

“What kind of training do they receive to have that absolutely disproportionate response to a protest?” Asked the opposition leader.

In Bogotá, seven young people between the ages of 17 and 27 perished from gunshot wounds, while three more people died in the neighboring municipality of Soacha, according to authorities.

The cities of Bogotá, Medellín and Barranquilla are the scene of demonstrations against police brutality. In different areas there have been riots and clashes with the security forces.

Some of the scenes were captured on video and shared on social media. One of them takes place in the vicinity of the CAI in Villa Luz, Bogotá, where Ordoñez was taken after he died.

Another in the vicinity of the journalist’s park, in Medellín, where an armored vehicle can be seen launching roar bombs into the air in the direction of a crowd that escapes down the street.

The protests left 10 dead and more than 200 injured on Wednesday. In addition, there are 188 injured police officers. Bogotá registered the highest number of victims: 7 deaths and 209 people admitted to hospitals in the city.

For this reason, Mayor Claudia López, an opponent of the government of Iván Duque, called on the public this Thursday to stay in their homes from 7 pm “to avoid tensions.” However, she emphasized that the suggestion does not mean a curfew.

“To decree a curfew is to tell citizens that they cannot go out, that if the police see them on the street, they will make them enter their house.Do we really want one more reason for confrontation between the Police and the public? “said the mayor and explained that her objective is not to generate more conflicts.

López denounced on Thursday that the police used force and firearms indiscriminately in the incidents on Wednesday. “From the Bogotá mayor’s office, we can affirm that last night there was (…) indiscriminate use of force, of firearms in various parts of the city by members of the police, who of course had no authorization to use those weapons”, noted in a statement by Facebook.

In the morning, the two agents who killed Ordoñez were separated from the force. Both were notified of the opening of a formal investigation into the events after hearing their version. In principle, the sanction will last for three months.

“Now, please, no more,” Ordoñez is heard pleading with the police in the footage uploaded to social networks that catalyzed the protests. For his part President Iván Duque promised an investigation “with total rigor to have absolute certainty about the facts” and increased the force in the capital. However, he rejected the “stigmatization” of those in uniform for specific “responsibilities” of some of them.

A woman was run over by a bus stolen by “a vandal,” Trujillo said.

The protests also leave 209 civilians and 194 uniformed injured, along with dozens of destroyed police posts and damage to public service vehicles.

López remarked that such violence was not registered even “in a combat during the worst times of the armed conflict in Colombia.”

One of the injured is Frankpierre Charry, 23, who according to his family was caught up in one of the clashes in the south of Bogotá. Today he is on the verge of death in a hospital.

“The police started shooting like crazy, he ran off, went down a block, met two policemen who were hiding and shot him,” his mother Blanca Clavijo told AFP.

“The doctors say they shot him in the back, from very close, which hit his stomach and damaged his intestines, his colon,” she added disconsolate.

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The mayor of Bogotá asked citizens to stay at home “to avoid tensions”