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The violent protests against police brutality, unleashed by the death of Javier Ordóñez in Bogotá and which left ten fatalities the day before, continued this Thursday with riots in different cities of the country.
The hectic day began very early with the authorities’ first assessment of what happened the day before, in which seven young people between 17 and 27 years old died in Bogotá and three more in Soacha.
In Bogotá alone, the chaotic night on Wednesday, in which there were fires of police facilities and buses in various parts of the city, there were 379 injured, of which 66 were hit with firearms.
Riots in Bogotá
On the night of this Thursday, the target of the protests were again the CAI of the Police, attacked with stones and other objects and in some cases forced the intervention of anti-riot units.
The highest concentration occurred in the CAI of Villa Luz, where the two uniformed men involved in the death of Javier Ordóñez worked, whose death fueled street protests.
Although there were disturbances there and even agitators tried to set fire to the police facility again, the most difficult situations were seen in other neighborhoods in which there were clashes with the Esmad of the Police.
In those riots the protesters They set fire and destroyed the CAIs in neighborhoods such as Las Ferias and La Macarena, and even returned to attack what was left of those of La Gaitana and Verbenal, destroyed the day before, among others.
In the Zona Franca neighborhood, in the western town of Fontibón, some neighbors formed a human chain to prevent them from attacking a CAI.
However, that did not prevent stones and sticks from falling against the infrastructure and a confrontation between the protesters and Esmad from unleashing until the situation reached a point where citizens reported on social media that uniformed officers fired shots at the air.
There were also disorders in other cities such as Medellín, Cali, Barranquilla, Manizales, Pereira and Cúcuta.
However, One of the most serious situations occurred in Cajicá, a municipality near Bogotá, where a riot occurred and the Mayor’s Office decreed a curfew for the excesses from 5 in the afternoon.
Despite this, there were those who remained in the street at night and entered the Mayor’s Office, which was looted.
“This is not the way to protest, this is not the way to react (…) They have destroyed the municipal administration, they have destroyed the police station and they are destroying business premises,” said the mayor of the municipality, Fabio Ramírez.
Retention of human rights defenders
The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights warned that there were human rights defenders detained by the Police in Bogotá and Villavicencio, capital of the central department of Meta.
“In fulfillment of our mandate, we are following up on the cases of human rights defenders detained in Bogotá and Villavicencio. It is essential to offer guarantees for the defense of human rights during days of social protest,” said the organization in their social networks.
The José Alvear Restrepo Lawyers Collective also reported that the Police had detained 25 people “irregularly” in a police station in the Usaquén neighborhood, in the north of Bogotá. Later, the Cajar indicated that “they were released.”
The complex security situation that Bogotá is experiencing forced the Mayor’s Office to advance from 11:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. local time the closure of the operation of the Transmilenio bus system.
Cry of the families
Regarding the deaths on Wednesday, the case of Julieth Ramírez Mesa, a psychology student about to turn 19, was one of the most stupid, as her family says she died when she was hit by a stray bullet when she went out to meet with a friend was not participating in the protests.
“I don’t know if he’s part of the Police or the thugs, what do I know, they killed my daughter”Harold Ramírez, father of the young woman, told reporters, who was shot when he was left in the middle of the disorders in La Gaitana, a neighborhood in the northwest of Bogotá.
Similarly, the couple of the young Jaider Alexander Fonseca, 17, another of the fatalities, told local media: “I demand justice, that they bring the full weight of the law to bear on those responsible” and blamed the Police for “leaving a child seven months without father. “
Fonseca was wounded on a street in the Verbenal neighborhood, in the north of Bogotá, and died at the Fundación Cardio Infantil, where he was admitted with gunshot wounds.
“He had no education because he did not have access to education, he did not have a job, he was excited because he was going to turn 18 and he was trying to get a job because he had a seven-month-old child, it is a family that is left without a father,” he said, for his part, Luz Mary Fonseca, the young man’s aunt.
In memory of Fonseca and Cristian Hernández, who worked as a messenger, residents of Verbenal made a candle tonight on a street in the neighborhood in which they also asked for justice since, according to they said, neither of them participated in the disorders when they were killed. to bullets.
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