Third Opposition Leader Assassinated in Less Than a Month in Colombia
News from Colombia |
on: Wednesday, 17 November 2010
Miler Avendano Penaranda
Another senior member of the ‘Democratic Pole’ party has been assassinated in the latest of a string of killings perpetrated against activists of the principle opposition party in Colombia. Miler Avendano Penaranda, the chair of the Regional Executive of the ‘Democratic Pole’ in El Tarra, in Norte de Santander province, was shot dead by unidentified assailants yesterday near the village of Los Cedros.
Mr Avendano Penaranda, 28, was also a well-known community leader in the region and had been the Democratic Pole’s candidate in recent local elections. The national leader of the party, Clara Lopez Obregon, condemned his assassination and pointed out that his killing brought to 12 the number of leaders of her party that had been murdered in the past six months. She also called on the authorities to take action to protect the lives of Democratic Pole members.
As reported on this website, Elizabeth Silva Aguilar, one of the party’s leaders in the city of Bucaramanga, was assassinated on October 30th, whilst on October 25th another senior member, Juan Carlos Arredondo, one of the founders of the Democratic Pole, was gunned down in the town of Manaure.
Last month the Inter-Parliamentary Union announced they were sending a team to Colombia to investigate the murders of opposition politicians. The delegation, which was made up of parliamentarians from around the world, investigated killings of members of the Patriotic Union, the main opposition party in the 1980s and early 1990s, which was decimated when around 4,000 of its members, including virtually all of its elected members of Congress, were assassinated.
The killings, which included those of two Patriotic Union presidential candidates, were blamed by human rights groups on the security forces, primarily the Army. Several cases that have gone through the Inter-American Court of Human Rights have found the Colombian Government to have been responsible for the murders and ordered them to pay compensation to family members. Many others are still pending.
