President Gustavo Petro He came out again in defense of the release of the youth on the front line. Several of them are imprisoned by order of the judges after having participated in acts of vandalism during the social outbreak.
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“Why is it that the Ibero-American extreme right is so phobic that young people can be free?” asked the president, referring to an opinion that set off alerts for the release of the defendants from jail.
“We are building a democracy where protesting does not mean death or jail,” said the president.
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Why is it that the Ibero-American extreme right is so phobic that young people can be free?
We build a democracy where protesting does not mean death or jail. https://t.co/8oscEqz0pH
— Gustavo Petro (@petrogustavo) December 14, 2022
President Petro’s statement came after a statement from the Democratic Initiative of Spain and Latin America (IDEA) in which he rejects the release of the protagonists of these violent actions during the demonstrations in 2021 against the president’s policies ivan duke.
IDEA It is an ad hoc forum made up of former heads of state and government. In a joint statement signed by other leaders such as Luis Lacalle (Uruguay), Mauricio Macri (Argentina) and Sebastian Pinera (Chile), Felipe Calderon (Mexico), Juan Carlos Wasmosy (Paraguay) Alfredo Cristiani, (El Salvador), Jose Maria Aznar (Spain) and the one who also belongs to the ex-president Duke, reject Petro’s proposal.
“The defense of democracy requires as an essential element the unrestricted respect for the independence of powers, in accordance with the provisions of the Inter-American Democratic Charter, and in its relationship with the American Convention on Human Rights.”
“The orderly functioning of the independently formed powers recognizes the powers that different constitutions of the region grant to the heads of state to grant pardons, to the legislative powers to agree on amnesties and, of course, to the judicial powers to impart justice,” they point out. .
“Under this premise, it is worrying that the Government of Colombia intends to make it easier for people with serious evidence against them of the commission of common crimes, through collective actions, to evade their responsibilities before justice. To achieve this objective, it plans to treat their cases under legal figures that have only been applied exceptionally to members of organized armed groups in the context of peace processes,” they add.
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“If so, a progressive weakening of the independence of powers in Colombia and the autonomy of its justice system will be taking shape, essential elements of one of the oldest democracies on the continent,” the statement added.
“For this reason, we support the concerns of various Colombian judicial authorities through the media and call on the international community to carefully observe the outcome of this issue and ensure that there are no alterations to the constitutional State and democratic rule of law in Colombia”, they add.
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