Death of Colombian teenager drives protesters back to streets

Two days after a police projectile sent 18-year-old Dilan Cruz to the hospital, his sister spoke at his high school, pleading for peace in Colombia after five straight days of anti-government protests.

“What we want most right now is for him to recover,” his sister, Denis Cruz, said Monday. “We want what happened with Dilan not to be used for more riots, to create more violence.”

“The only thing we’re also asking for from my family,” she said, “is peace.”

But that night, Dilan Cruz died of the head injury, and protesters again flooded into the streets of Bogotá on Tuesday, calling the teenager a victim of police brutality.

The death has fuelled still more anger among the tens of thousands of people who have for days protested against corruption and the conservative policies of President Iván Duque.

Duque tried to quell the anger by meeting Tuesday with protest leaders for what he called a “great national dialogue.” But it was unclear what the meeting accomplished, other than having given protesters a forum to air grievances.

For now, the crisis appears to have no end in sight.

Why are people protesting?

The protests began with a general strike last Thursday. More than 200,000 people took to the streets on the first day, the police estimated.

The strike was organised by students, unions and indigenous people opposed to proposed changes to Colombia’s pension and labour laws.

But as the days passed, thousands of other Colombians joined the marches to express anger about inequality, corruption and possible austerity measures. In recent months, wallet issues have also driven mass protests in Chile, Lebanon and other nations.

Cruz was the fourth person to be killed in the demonstrations, which for the most part have been peaceful, though a few have deteriorated into riots and looting.

The protesters are also demonstrating against rising violence in the countryside, which has been linked to drug traffickers, rebel groups like the National Liberation Army and former members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or the FARC, who have returned to arms.

Although Colombia and the FARC reached a peace agreement in September 2016, thousands of militants have resumed fighting, and at least 500 activists and community leaders have been killed. Duque’s government, which took over in August 2018, has been accused of being slow to put the terms of the agreement into action.

What happened to Dilan Cruz?

Videos of the moments before and after Cruz was struck by a police projectile on Saturday showed riot police officers walking down a street, behind crowds of protesters. After a loud bang, Cruz can be seen collapsed on the street, with people rushing to help him.

Cruz had a visible head injury. The police have not said what struck him, but some protesters say it was a tear-gas canister.

His death prompted an outpouring of grief and anger. Protesters marched late into the night, banging pots and pans and chanting, “Dilan didn’t die, Dilan was killed.”

The president, police officials and the nation’s prosecutor general all expressed their condolences, and Duque said he had ordered “an urgent investigation to clarify quickly what happened and determine responsibility.”

His critics have demanded greater accountability.

Sen. Iván Cepeda Castro called Cruz a “symbol of the policy of human rights violations” that the president has been pursuing. And José Miguel Vivanco, executive director for Human Rights Watch in the Americas, called for immediate measures from the attorney general and the Defense Ministry to ensure that there are no more fatalities.

“Besides condolences, we need justice,” he said.

For protesters, Cruz’s name has become a rallying cry, and they have called for another national strike. One student association said he represented “a generation that was robbed of its rights but that will not be robbed of dignity.”

Protest organisers planned more demonstrations in his memory on Wednesday.

How has the government responded?

Duque, Colombia’s president, met with a committee of protest leaders on Tuesday, but the talks appeared to end inconclusively after two hours.

The protesters have demanded talks outside of Duque’s “national dialogue,” but so far the president has insisted on meetings that include representatives from the courts, the business community and other sectors.

Duque has denied supporting rumoured changes to the pension system and labour laws, including a cut to the minimum wage for young people.

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