The International Criminal Court issued an interim report on the Colombian military’s “false positives” extradjudicial killings, finding official complicity up the chain of command.
An “Indigenous and Popular Peace Proposal” has been issued to bring demands for territorial autonomy to the talks between the Colombian government and FARC rebels.
With peace talks underway in Oslo, Colombian politicians warn that the FARC’s Southern Bloc is continuing to recruit with an eye towards continuing the insurgency.
Colombia's President Juan Manuel Santos on Día de La Raza issued an official apology to indigenous communities in the Amazon for devastation caused by the rubber boom.
Authorities from four countries cooperated in a months-long operation that led to the arrest in Venezuela of Daniel Barrera AKA "El Loco"—dubbed the "last of the great capos."
Colombia's President Juan Manuel Santos rejected a proposal by the FARC for a ceasefire during talks set to begin in Oslo next mont to end to the country's long civil war.
Colombia’s FARC guerillas released a YouTube rap video to announce peace talks with the government. The talks are to open next month in Oslo, with Cuban mediation.
Embera indigenous communities on Colombia’s Pacific coast came under bombardment by army helicopters, while an Awá community expelled illegal gold miners from their land.
Lisandro Tenorio, a traditional elder in Cauca, Colombia, was shot dead by unknown assassins—the latest backlash against indigenous demands that armed actors leave their lands.
Under pressure to address the ongoing wave of targeted assassinations in Colombia, President Iván Duque for the first time spoke before the National Commission to Guarantee Security, formed by the previous government to address continuing violence in the country—which has only worsened since he took office last year. Duque said 4,000 people are now under the government's protection program for threatened citizens. But his office implied that the narco trade is entirely behind the growing violence. Interior Minister Nancy Patricia Gutiérrez told the meeting: "This great problem is derived from the 200,000 hectares of illicit crops that we have in Colombia." However, it is clear that the narco economy is but part of a greater nexus of forces that fuel the relentless terror—all related to protecting rural land empires and intimidating the peasantry. (Photo via Contagio Radio)
In a joint anti-drug operation code-named Armagedon, Peruvian military and National Police troops carried out a series of raids in the remote Putumayo river valley along the Colombian border this week, arresting some 40, destroying four cocaine laboratories, and seizing large quantities of cocaine sulfate and harvested cannabis. The majority of those detained were Colombian nationals, and authorities said they suspect the presence of "dissident" FARC units, who are trying to establish the zone as a staging ground to keep alive their insurgency. More than 350 troops have been deployed in the operation, with five helicopters and three planes as well as boats. The operation is being coordinated with Colombian security forces, who are carrying out similar missions on their side of the Río Putumayo. (Photo via El Comercio)
Colombia’s voters elected conservative Iván Duque as the country's president, handing a decisive defeat to leftist candidate Gustavo Petro in a run-off vote. Duque is political protege of ex-president Alvaro Urbe, a bitter opponent of the peace process with the former FARC guerillas, and campaigned on a pledge to revise the peace deal. A popular referendum on overturning the legislation that was passed to implement the peace deal has been broached.
