Bogota | Eleven dead, hundreds injured, dozens of police stations destroyed in two days: clashes between police and protesters revolted by a police blunder continued through the night from Thursday to Friday in Bogota and other cities in Colombia .
The dead are mainly young demonstrators, including seven shot dead in Bogota, according to the mayor of the capital, Claudia Lopez.
Three others died in Soacha, on the outskirts of the capital, and a woman was hit by a bus stolen by “a vandal”, according to Defense Minister Carlos Holmes Trujillo.
The latter returned Thursday evening to the demonstrators responsibility for the violence, condemning “two days of systematic and coordinated vandalism”, in an audio statement to the media.
At nightfall on Thursday, clashes with the police resumed in Bogota, according to AFP journalists on the spot, rallies having reformed during the day in several neighborhoods of the city.
Violent clashes also broke out overnight in Medellin (north-west) and Cali (south-west), AFP journalists noted.
The government announced the sending in reinforcements of 1,600 police officers and 300 additional soldiers.
The clashes, according to the authorities, also left 209 civilians and 194 among the police, and dozens of police stations were destroyed.
The mayor of Bogota, who is an activist in opposition to President Ivan Duque, was outraged that dozens of demonstrators were shot and wounded.
“Yet we are not on a battlefield,” she said. “There is strong evidence of indiscriminate use of firearms by the police (…) What kind of training do they receive to have this absolutely disproportionate response to a protest?”
According to the government, 56 police stations were “vandalized” and 77 people arrested for “violence against the police”.
“We are facing massive acts of violence,” denounced the Minister of Defense.
“Police assassins”
On Wednesday afternoon, hundreds of people gathered to protest in front of the police station where Javier Ordoñez was taken during his violent arrest on the night of Tuesday to Wednesday. The 43-year-old engineer, who was completing his law studies, died a few hours later in hospital.
Clashes broke out and then spread to several districts of the capital as well as other large cities, such as Medellin, Cali or Barranquilla (north).
In videos shared on social media, we can see terrified people fleeing in the middle of gunfire. A man shouts: “He has been hit! He was hit! ” while another, bloodied, lying on the ground, is dragged by the demonstrators.
Viral video
Anger to denounce police violence erupted after the dissemination on social networks of the violent arrest of Javier Ordoñez. The video shows police officers repeatedly giving him long shocks with their pulse pistols.
According to the police, the agents had been dispatched after a disorder caused by “alcoholic people” and Javier Ordoñez tried “to hit the police”.
“Please stop”, we hear repeatedly the man on the ground, father of two children.
According to Bogota’s police chief, Colonel Necton Borja, the victim “was subjected to a non-lethal weapon” before being transported to the police station where she presented “medical complications”.
The ongoing investigation and autopsy will determine whether the victim was beaten at the police station, as his family denounces.
The two agents were suspended, announced the Minister of Defense, and Thursday the president Ivan Duque promised an investigation “with a total rigor in order to have absolute certainty on the facts”.