Thousands of citizens have left on Tuesday to the streets of Colombia to demonstrate in favor of Gaza during the second anniversary of the Hamas attacks on October 7, who gave rise to the Israeli offensive that has already killed more than 67,000 Palestinians. The epicenter of the protests has been Bogotá: at least 500 people – according to officials of the Mayor’s Office – concentrated in the afternoon around the United States embassy to reject the support of the US government to Israel “for their genocidal actions.” From there, people have mobilized towards the city center, along with other groups of public universities such as the national, district and pedagogical, and more than 3,000 people have joined, according to the district. The protesters have demanded that Colombian businessmen cut their commercial and economic relations with Israel and have called the boycott of the industries that do not.
The choice of the headquarters of American diplomacy as the beginning of the protest has not been random. With a giant Palestinian flag placed at the entrance of the building, the people cried out against the support of the Donald Trump administration to the government of the Israeli prime minister, Benjamín Netanyahu, and rejected their current peace plan. “The United States is guilty, guilty, guilty,” several shouted during the plant. “Today a human butcher shop is happening in Gaza. It is the most criminal genocide in human history,” said a woman with a microphone in hand.
The demonstrations on Tuesday, convened by the Palestine Action Front – a collective of 132 organizations – occur after a week of several mobilizations throughout the country against the Andi headquarters, the most important business union in Colombia. The union then denounced the “intimidation” and “harassment” to the officials of their headquarters and the destruction of their infrastructure in several cities. A group has re -protest on Tuesday around its headquarters in the Colombian capital.
Given the fears of disturbances such as those of last week, in which there were broken glass and graffiti in police venues and companies such as Starbucks, the US Embassy in Bogotá said Monday that “the right to free expression (…) does not imply freedom to damage or destroy property” and requested support to the national government to protect its facilities. President Gustavo Petro assured that he would do so, but that he would also respect the “Colombian people meeting”. On the mobilizations, the president has indicated that the protest in Bogotá is “massive”, but regrets that they are not “millions throughout the country.” “Why is it not? Because even popular classes believe that Israel is the chosen people of God and do not realize that Jesus changed that idea, because the people of God is humanity,” he has complained in X.
Although the government openly supported the protests, and several of its protesters are associated with the left, harangues and songs have not focused on national or electoral messages. The opposition has taken advantage of the protest to criticize the president’s attitude. “Petro is on the side of Hamas, do you have doubts?” He has written on his social networks the ultra -right -wing candidate Vicky Dávila. For her part, the Uribista applicant María Fernanda Cabal, has claimed that “nobody has the right to cause terror in the streets with gunpowder or shouting violent harangues.”
In the end, although there were riot police deployed at the US embassy in Bogotá, there has been no affectation to the diplomatic headquarters, located in the western city. A few meters from the enclosure, several protesters burned two flags made of paper from Israel and the United States; And others walked with giant cuts from Trump’s and Netanyahu faces, bloody and a mustache emulating Hitler.
Among the crowd, Elisa Charpentier, a Colombian activist who was at the beginning of the Global Sumud flotilla trip, celebrates the release of her companions Luna Valentina Barreto and Manuela Bedoya, who were arrested in Israel during the interception of vessels that were heading to Gaza with humanitarian aid. “They are fine, they are improving and we are working to analyze when they are sure to return home.” On international action, in which activists from all over the world participated, such as the Swedish Greta Thunberg, and international media, including the country, Charpentier points out that it was “a success.” “The political and media strategy worked. The pressure against Israel increased in the flotilla route.”
William Rojas, a teacher and member of the Colombian Solidarity Committee for Palestine, argues that “Colombia must cut all commercial and economic ties with Israel” and that it is “completely legitimate to demand from entrepreneurs to cut their relations with a genocidal state.” Rojas points out that having chosen the US embassy as a starting point of the central march of Bogotá had a clear intention: “Without the United States there would be no genocide against the Palestinians. Their weapons are used against the Gazaties.”
The protests have happened calmly in several cities in Colombia, such as in Manizales, Armenia, Barranquilla or Cali. In Medellín, the second city in the country, the Mayor’s Office has deployed the riot police before “the existence of acts of violence on El Poblado Avenue,” said Medellín Security Secretary. Several videos shared in social networks show protesters facing members of the authorities while around it explode stunned grenades and tear gas used to disperse the marches. Petro has blamed the mayor of the city, Federico Gutiérrez, of the escalation of violence: “El Parecero” of the US Embassy, ordered the violence. Fascism as in the government of Israel. ”
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