A top United Nations official says human rights defenders are still the subject of widespread abuses in Colombia. UN special rapporteur Margaret Sekaggya said human rights defenders are arbitrarily arrested and detained, sometimes on a massive scale, while high-level government officials often stigmatize them, saying they are colluding with “terrorists” or “guerrillas.”

Margaret Sekaggya: “Journalists, trade unions, magistrates, lawyers, students and youth activists, women defenders, indigenous and Afro-Colombian leaders, the LGBT activists have been killed, tortured, ill-treated, disappeared, threatened, arbitrarily arrested and detained.”