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Municipal elections are approaching, violence is increasing against candidates, elected officials and election officials. Killings, attacks, disappearances, abduction threats succeed one another. Two reports raise the alarm, one from the Election Observation Mission, the other from the Peace and Reconciliation Foundation.
With our correspondent in Bogota, Marie-Eve Detoeuf
In terms of electoral violence, Colombia is backing down. Homicides, attacks and threats against candidates and officials are nothing new. But they had decreased a lot since the signing of the peace agreement with the FARC guerrillas in 2016. The lull will have been short-lived. In total, more than 150 acts of violence have been recorded in the last twelve months and have increased in the last five weeks. Twenty candidates were murdered.
Armed militias are now fighting over territories and trafficking abandoned by the guerrillas. The map of pre-election violence closely overlaps that of illegal economies - be it cocaine or gold trafficking -. Violence has various explanations. The sponsor of an assassination may want to oust a rival. Or simply to let the other candidates in the running know that he is the strongman of the territory and will have to deal with him. Violence affects mostly rural areas. All parties are targeted, impunity remains the rule. In more than two-thirds of the cases reported, the local police and the authorities do not know who is the perpetrator of the crime. Or pretend to ignore it.
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