Second Opposition Leader Assassinated in Colombia in Less than a Week
News from Colombia |
on: Thursday, 4 November 2010
A leading member of the Democratic Pole opposition party in Colombia has been killed just five days after another party leader was murdered in the latest upsurge in violence against opponents of the regime in Bogota. Elizabeth Silva Aguilar, a party activist in the city of Bucaramanga who had played a key role for the party in elections earlier this year, was shot twice in the head on Saturday evening after a masked assassin entered her home.
Her death follows that of Juan Carlos Arredondo earlier in the week in the region of La Guajira. Mr Arrendodo, a founding member of the Democratic Pole, was shot by two men outside of his home in the town of Manaure.
In a statement on the latest killing, the Democratic Pole called on the authorities to take action to apprehend the perpetrators but also insinuated that the Colombian police may have been involved in her death.
As well as working with the political opposition, Ms Silva Aguilar was the president of an association of displaced people in Bucaramanga, Colombia’s seventh largest city, which is home to over half a million people including tens of thousands of displaced families. In June this year three other members of her association were also assassinated in an incident that the National Displaced Coordination, a group representing displaced people all over the country, accused the Colombian authorities of attempting to cover up.
