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Thousands of indigenous protesters demand public showdown with Colombia’s president

THOUSANDS of indigenous protesters marched through Colombia’s capital Bogota on Monday to demand a public meeting with President Ivan Duque and call for reforms they say are crucial for their survival.

The group of about 5,000 protesters has been travelling for more than a week in brightly coloured buses and pickup trucks in a procession known as the “minga,” an indigenous term for joint community work or action.

The indigenous groups, most from the country’s south-west, are complaining about mining concessions and growing violence that has accompanied setbacks in implementation of a 2016 peace deal between the government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc).

The accord called for improved infrastructure and aid for rural areas, including indigenous territories. But protesters say many of those promises have not been kept and they want a public debate with Mr Duque over social and economic policies that affect their territories.

“We will be here until he shows up, because we want dialogue. We have not come here to fight,” said Richard Flores, an indigenous leader from Cauca state who joined the demonstration with a ceremonial baton and a machete strapped across his chest.

Mr Duque has refused to hold an open meeting with the protesters, with his advisers saying that debates about public policy should be held in congress.

The demonstrators come largely from rural areas that have been affected by rising violence exerted by criminal groups that are fighting over drug routes and other illicit resources abandoned by Farc rebels following the 2016 peace deal.

Organisers of the protests also want the government to remove the military from indigenous areas and to improve safety for community and human rights activists, more than 160 of whom have been killed this year.

Protest leaders said that if Mr Duque does not meet them in public, they will place an empty chair in the square for him to underline his absence.

“We are here to defend our rights to life and territory,” said John Tote, a protester who wore a black face mask and a bandana with the green and red colours of the Cauca Indigenous Council.

The president, who has two years left in office, faced large protests over his social and economic policies at the end of last year, but those tapered off this year amid the coronavirus pandemic.

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