Colombia Reports

President Abelardo de la Espriella’s antiterrorist statute would criminalize political opposition, social movements, and social protest, and essentially form a dictatorial regime, said opposition leader Ivan Cepeda on Wednesday. In a video, Cepeda said that the true purpose of the bill that was leaked earlier seeks “to advance in the formation of essentially a dictatorial regime,.. which, moreover, has such a regime prostrate to drug trafficking.” “The true objectives of this s

President Abelardo de la Espriella announced that his Miracle Fund received COP1 trillion ($309 million) for the reconstruction of western Colombia, which was hit by a 7.4M earthquake on August 10. The announcement followed announcements by the press, which reported that the Finance Ministry allocated ($192 million) COP625 billion to the fund almost two months after the disaster. Thank you for your patience, but please understand that the government’s bureaucratic inertia and the situation we’ve

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The government of President Abelardo de la Espriella will present Colombia’s Congress with a comprehensive “counterterrorism statute,” which would give authorities enhanced powers to fight designated terrorist organizations. A 116-page draft bill, which was leaked to Caracol Radio, would facilitate a military approach to combat illegal armed groups and organized crime groups, for example through air strikes. The Antiterrorism Statute would additionally create a National Registr

The mayor of Sincelejo claimed Sunday that armed men intimidated him during a meeting with Colombia’s President Abelardo de la Espriella. In a video message, Sincelejo Mayor Yahir Acuña said that armed men positioned themselves behind him while the president accused the mayor of corruption and threatened to pull municipal funds. The accusations were partly published on the social media pages of the president, who accused Acuña of being “a person who, like you, faces 13 corruption cha

The director of one of Colombia’s most powerful business associations, Bruce Mac Master of the ANDI, resigned amid tensions with President Abelardo de la Espriella. In a letter to the ANDI, Mac Master said that “it is time for me to step down from my role as head of the National Association of Entrepreneurs of Colombia.” According to the former ANDI boss, “unexpected and troubling circumstances” made working for the association “particularly complex” and

Colombia’s government published a draft decree that seeks to tighten regulations on public protests. The draft was published weeks before labor unions and social organizations plan regional anti-government protests ahead of a national strike that is set for November. The draft seeks to update the Decree #3 of 2021, which was issued months before a national strike that was violently repressed by the police and the military. In an attempt to prevent another bloodbath, the decree seeks to reg

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Colombia’s Foreign Ministry said Thursday that it had broken diplomatic ties with Iran and designated the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a terrorist organization. The foreign ministry made the announcements in two separate statements that were published in its website. In the first statement, the government claimed that the decision claimed to defend “national and hemispheric security, and the fight against transnational crime.” According to the foreign ministry, t

Santa Marta-based organized crime group ACSN said Wednesday that the lockdown it has imposed on parts of Colombia’s Caribbean coast will be lifted on Friday morning. In its first formal statement, the ACSN said that “the armed strike announced for 72 hours will end at 7:00AM on Friday 25 September 2026.” The lockdown, which was initially called for 48 hours on Monday, has devastated the legal economy in the port city, particularly after ACSN assassins uploaded videos of them op

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Colombia has withdrawn its participation in South Africa’s genocide case against Israel, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) said Tuesday. In a statement, the court in The Hague said that Colombia’s government “decided to withdraw the Declaration of intervention that it had filed… on 5 April 2024 in the case concerning Application of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in the Gaza Strip.” The decision of the administration o

Santa Marta-based crime group ACSN shut down parts of the city and the surrounding region after Colombia’s armed forces killed one of their commanders. Jose Luis Perez, a.k.a. “Cholo,” and six of his comrades were killed during an offensive on Monday. The son of Fredy Castillo, a.k.a. “Pinocho,” who is one of the alleged bosses of the crime group, was reportedly among those killed during the operation. Shortly after, a pamphlet that was signed by the ACSN ordered an

Colombia’s war crimes tribunal JEP said that it would warn the United Nations and the International Criminal Court about plans of President Abelardo de la Espriella to cut its budget. In a statement, JEP president Alejandro Ramelli raised the alarm warned about a pending proposal by far-right Senator Enrique Gomez (National Salvation) to reduce the tribunal’s budget by COP100 billion ($31.6 million), which received De la Espriella’s support. A second proposal by another far-rig

The government of President Abelardo de la Espriella pulled Colombia out of the international Equal Rights Coalition, which promotes the rights of sexual and gender minorities around the world. The Foreign Ministry announced its departure from the coalition in a letter addressed to the organization of which Colombia was co-president until February next year. According to Caribe Afirmativa, a gay rights NGO that was part of the international initiative, warned that the decision was “a serio

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A Bogota court imposed strict conditions on Colombia’s military authorities if they want to carry out air strikes on illegal armed groups in places where victims of forced recruitment are present. The ruling of Bogota’s 34th Family Court lifted a suspension on the strikes that had been imposed earlier this month in response to a lawsuit. The court imposed the following conditions on air strikes to evade violating International Humanitarian Law, which prioritizes the rights of child v

The United States President Donald Trump maintained that Colombia “failed demonstrably during the previous 12 months to make substantial efforts to adhere to their obligations under international counternarcotics agreements.” In an annual reviews, Trump stressed that the South American country maintains its an unwilling drug trafficking country “solely due to the incompetence and chaos produced by the previous far-left government.” “If, as expected, Colombia makes p

Colombia’s President Abelardo de la Espriella sacked his statistics chief because he claimed he found no anomalies in labor statistics presented by the administration of former President Gustavo Petro. In a press statement, De la Espriella’s press secretary said that DANE director Ricardo Valencia was sacked for claiming “that he had not found any anomalies in the DANE indicators for the month of July, figures compiled during the final month of the previous administration.&#822

Some 1,500 representatives of social organizations and labor unions agreed to begin organizing an anti-government national strike that should take place throughout Colombia either on November 11 or on November 20. The organizations agreed to the mass mobilization during the National Gathering for the Defense of Life, Dignity, Democracy, Peace, Sovereignty, and Social Reforms that had been organized by labor unions in the capital Bogota. The first and fundamental decision of the Meeting is to dec