After the United States, Colombia.
The capital, Bogota, and the neighboring town of Soacha were the scene of violent riots on Wednesday, September 9, after the death of a man victim of a police blunder.
Five people were killed and a reward was offered by the Colombian Minister of Defense, Carlos Holmes Trujillo, to allow "the arrest of the perpetrators of the homicide".
At the origin of these riots, the arrest of a man by the police.
The scene filmed and broadcast on social media shows witnesses begging the police to stop administering the dumps.
Images that shocked the country.
"Please stop"
The nearly two-minute footage shows two Colombian police bikers, both helmeted, knocking 46-year-old lawyer Javier Ordoñez to the ground and then repeatedly giving him long shocks with their electric pulse pistols.
"Please stop," the man on the ground is repeated repeatedly.
Witnesses to the scene also called out to the police: "Please stop, we are filming you" with a cell phone.
This police blunder is reminiscent of the one in which the African American, George Floyd, was suffocated to death by a white policeman who ignored his calls, immobilizing him during his arrest.
After his death, protests, sometimes very violent, were organized across the United States.
"Police abuse"
According to Bogota's police chief Colonel Necton Borja, officers were responding to disorder caused by "alcoholic people" and Javier Ordoñez tried "to hit the police" before being knocked down.
The colonel considered that the victim "was subjected to a non-lethal weapon" before being transported to the police station where she presented "medical complications".
Taken to hospital, Javier Ordoñez, father of two, died some time later.
The mayor of Bogota, Claudia Lopez, considered it to be "police abuse".
On Twitter, she called for "an exemplary sentence" against the police and called for "a deep and serious restructuring within the police force".
Defense Minister Carlos Holmes Trujillo told reporters that "the two agents are already the subject of a disciplinary and criminal investigation".
Riots against police stations
In the afternoon, hundreds of people gathered to protest outside the police station, where the victim was taken before dying.
Protesters sprayed the facade of the building with red paint and threw stones, chanting "resistance", an AFP journalist reported.
Police attempted to disperse the crowd with stun grenades and tear gas, but protests spread to other areas of Bogota.
Local media reported riots, fires and attacks on a dozen police stations in the north and west of the capital.
Riots also occurred in Medellín (north-west), Cali (south-west) and Neiva (center).
President Iván Duque also deplored "the abuses (...) committed by members of the public force".
"We have seen painful events today", said the head of state, calling for "appropriate sanctions to be adopted".
Colombian police have in the past been implicated in several abuse of force scandals.
In November 2019, Dilan Cruz, an 18-year-old young man who was participating in an anti-government demonstration, was fatally wounded in the head by a packet of lead balls fired by a special forces agent.
In August 2011, a street artist, Diego Becerra, was shot dead while painting graffiti in Bogota.
The UN warned at the end of February of the killings and other alleged abuses committed by soldiers and police in Colombia.
Alberto Brunori, representative of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights in Colombia, noted that in 13 cases of death involving State agents, "unnecessary" use was observed and / or disproportionate force ".
With AFP
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