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News > Colombia

Colombia: Social Leader Survives Bomb Attack

  • Yaneth Mosquera, Colombia, 2020.

    Yaneth Mosquera, Colombia, 2020. | Photo: Twitter/ @JUANCAELBROKY

Published 28 July 2020
Opinion

At least 289 social leaders have been murdered in this South American country so far.

Colombia's social leader Yaneth Mosquera Tuesday survived a bomb attack on her, as violence in the country rises.

RELATED:

Colombia: Another Social Leader Killed In Corinto Municipality

At the time of the attack, Mosquera was heading to a house after leading a Peace Fund project meeting against children recruitment by illegal groups.

Although the explosive device damaged the building and the vehicle carrying her, no one was injured.

On June 26, 2019, Mosquera denounced receiving a letter containing intimidating words, warning her and other social leaders to stop their activism.

“They wrote that the order was to kill us, that our time had come,” she said then.

“Yaneth Mosquera, a leader at risk for defending the territory of the Northern Cauca has received many death threats. She reported a bomb attack on her and still no one is helping.”

Besides leading the "Woman with Courage" foundation, Mosquera is the Popayan region’s Africa community council coordinator.

In 2007, she was awarded the Cafam Woman Prize, a recognition to those women whose work has an important impact on their society.

At that time, despite the violence in the region and living in a marginal neighborhood, she managed to change her community's conditions.

From 2016 to date, 230 social leaders and 59 farmers leaders have been murdered in Colombia. In the northern part of the Cauca, violence threatens anyone who displays a leadership role.

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