Peacetime Spells Death for Colombia’s Activists by Nicholas Casey – New York Times
After signing a peace deal with its largest rebel group, the FARC, the country saw its homicide rate fall to the lowest point in decades. Now killings are on the rise.
… Colombia’s government officially declared an end to more than five decades of civil war in 2016, when it signed a peace deal with the country’s largest rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, FARC. Within a year, the homicide rate fell to its lowest level since 1975, a remarkable turnaround for a country where a half-century of conflict had taken at least 200,000 lives.
But a chilling aspect of the bloodshed isn’t falling: Killings of the nation’s activists, including union organizers, local councilmen, indigenous leaders and environmentalists who are under vigorous attack across the country.
If anything, the killings appear to be on the rise in peacetime…