Colombians Reject Approval of 'Citizen Security Law'

On Tuesday, the Colombian Senate approved President Ivan Duque's Citizen Security Law, which criminalizes social protest and toughens penalties against citizens who are accused of repeating crimes in public spaces.

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The Colombian Presidency seeks to give "greater tools to judges to punish violent citizens who disturb tranquility," Interior Minister Daniel Palacios said, adding that the law aggravates punishable behaviors so that "the offender always goes to jail and not go free to the street."

In seeking to justify the features of the Security Law, this official provided examples of change in judicial procedures in the case of crimes committed inside homes. Among other things, judges would be required to pass prison sentences for those who have committed a crime with a firearm, a knife, or a weapon of "reduced lethality." The argumentation centered on the domestic sphere, however, is fallacious.

Ivan Cepeda, senator of the Alternative Democratic Pole (PDA), explained that the Citizen Security Law is "a compendium of provisions that legalize official, paramilitary, and private criminal practices. It is a license to kill. It is the Duque administration's new fascist aberration."

For this reason, Cepeda and 18 lawmakers sent a letter to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) asking it to "verify that the Colombian government does not comply with its recommendations related to respect for social protest." Patriotic Union (UP) senator Aida Avella also explained that the Duque law is unconstitutional because it does not respect the principle that Colombia is a state of law.

"It redefines the concept of proportionality in order to give a license to kill, thereby placing private property above human life," Avella said, harshly criticizing a bill law passed by a far-right-controlled senate.

She also pointed out that the Citizen Security Law also modifies other norms so that the principles of "presumption of innocence" and "legitimate defense" can be appealed in advance by the police and military involved in any act of violence.