
On Sunday 11 November 2018, soldiers belonging to Colombia’s 56th Infantry Batallion killed trade unionist and political activist Alvaro Paul Gómez Garzón in the village of San Alfonso, department of Cauca. He was shot dead as he sat in a friend’s car.
Alvaro sat on the Community Action Board in San Alfonso, and was a member of the FENSUAGRO agricultural trade union, the ANZORC peasant farmer association and the Patriotic March political organisation. All of these groups have suffered high levels of political violence since the peace agreement was signed in November 2016.
In a joint-press release, the same organisations called on the Colombian government to guarantee security for their members and to establish the circumstances around the killing.
According to latest figures, 425 social activists and human rights defenders have now been murdered in Colombia since 2016.