OP ED: Makes me sick to my stomach. “JB”

https://www.prensa.com/mundo/Asesinan-candidata-alcaldia-personas-Colombia_0_5387461213.html

A candidate for the elections to be held in October in Colombia was killed along with five people in a “massacre” perpetrated in a municipality in the southwest of the country on Sunday night, authorities said Monday.

The armored vehicle in which the candidate for mayor of the municipality of Suárez circulated, Karina García was “subjected to an attack with long-range weapons” in the convulsive department of Cauca, and subsequently incinerated, Jair Rossi, Defender told AFP of the Regional People (Ombudsman).

In a tweet, the Ombudsman’s Office condemned the “massacre perpetrated”, where Garcia’s mother, an aspiring councilman and three people for whom the identity is unknown, also died.

The area where the Liberal Party candidate died, who had received threats registered by the Ombudsman, “is an indigenous community sector” that has been repeatedly affected by violence related to drug trafficking and illegal mining, Rossi added.

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So far, the authorities have not indicated the identity of the aggressors or the motives of the homicide, it is not known whether there were survivors of the attack.

In October, elections to mayors and governorates will be held throughout the South American country.

The Liberal Party regretted in a tweet the death of Garcia at the hands of “terrorists” and demanded guarantees to President Iván Duque to participate in the electoral contest.

With the death of the liberal candidate and her five companions, 12 people died in the last 48 hours in the area.

A man and two women died on Saturday in a first event in the municipality of Cerro Tijera, while the bodies of three men tied with barbed wires and with their faces covered by black plastic bags appeared yesterday in the municipality of Corinth, he said. Rossi

Seriously affected by the bloody Colombian armed conflict, the department of Cauca has a strategic position for the exit of cocaine to the United States through the Pacific and the cultivation of narcocultivos.

After the disarmament and transformation into a FARC party in 2017, ELN rebels, dissidents of the former communist guerrillas and drug traffickers – including emissaries of Mexican cartels – dispute the territory.

These groups are indicated by the prosecution to be behind the murder of social leaders and human rights defenders. A total of 462 have died since January 1, 2016 across the country, mostly in Cauca, according to the Ombudsman’s Office.

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