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As we have explicitly detailed in the Trends Journal, anti-establishment protests were sparking up across the globe in 2019, and we had forecast they would intensify in 2020. (See our “TOP TREND FOR 2020: NEW WORLD DISORDER.”)
While we can forecast trends, we continually note that no one can predict the future because there are too many wild cards… be they manmade or made by nature. The 2020 wild card was the COVID War.
Nations that were experiencing ongoing protests were locked down their tracks by politicians, and the people were forbidden to take to the streets. Now, with the COVID War winding down, the protestors are back on the streets, and those in power are doing all they can to lock them up… or shoot them down.
As we reported in our 11 May article, “COLOMBIA: PROTESTS ESCALATE, GOV’T CRACKS DOWN,” thousands have taken to the streets to voice their outrage over worsening conditions faced by Colombian citizens and an ill-advised proposal to issue a new tax aimed at the middle class to make up for the shortfall after the virus outbreak.
The proposal was retracted, but tensions remain. CNN, citing the country’s Ombudsman Office, reported that at least 42 people have died, but the actual number is expected to be higher. The report pointed to scenes of police brutality, including one viral video that purported to show a police officer on a motorcycle fatally shooting a fleeing protester who kicked him.
“My kid died there as a result of a shot that a police officer gave him,” Armando Agredo Bustamante, the boy’s father, said in an interview in the country. His brother said police had already been firing on protesters even before the kick. The Attorney General’s office said the shooting is under investigation, and the police officer was charged with aggravated homicide, according to The Washington Post.
Other videos emerged on social media that showed the country’s police force in armored vehicles confronting protesters who were throwing rocks. The protesters say police fired tear gas directly at demonstrators, in one case killing a 24-year-old man who reportedly told his mother he was headed to the protests to “fight for his rights and raise his voice.”
Al Jazeera reported the protests are entering their fourth week, and they include many young in the country who feel disenfranchised with Bogotá. The uptick in violence in the country is seen by many observers as a preview of things to come in other countries in the region dealing with the same frustrations that have been all the more apparent due to the pandemic.
“We’re accompanying our young people, our children, our grandchildren, who still lack opportunities despite our fighting for so long,” Roberto Hermida, 68, a lawyer, told Reuters.
Elizabeth Dickinson, a senior Colombia analyst at the International Crisis Group, told Al Jazeera that the protests represent the “deep social and economic inequality, frustration with police brutality, widespread distrust of government.”
She said the protests are “everywhere.”
“The demonstrations reflect a deep national crisis that transcends geography. Although grievances vary by region, the sense of exasperation and frustration is shared.”
President Iván Duque told CNN the country is investigating allegations of police brutality. He claimed that leftist militants and other armed groups are behind some of the violence during the protests. The report pointed out that protesters have been blamed for looting stores and setting fire to buses and police precincts. These protesters have also tried to block roads and commerce.
Interior Minister Daniel Palacios said the country’s constitution “does not establish the right to block, for violence, or vandalism. The blockades generate poverty, don’t build a country and end the economy.”
The violence in Colombia has sparked international condemnation. Dozens of U.S. lawmakers sent a letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken that called on a suspension of aid to the country’s military. They said the “aggressive, indiscriminate use of lethal and non-lethal weapons against citizens” violates international human rights standards, according to the Wall Street Journal.
TOP TREND FOR 2021: “YOUTH REVOLUTION”: As we forecast in December 2020, in 2021, the uprisings and revolutions that were sweeping the world before the COVID War would accelerate dramatically, as billions of people sink deeper into economic despair.
In response, governments will again attempt to use the COVID War as a “legal” justification to prohibit protests. But, as Gerald Celente says, “When people lose everything and have nothing left to lose, they lose it.” And lose it, they will. Thus, we maintain our forecast that as the “Greatest Depression” worsens, protests will escalate into civil wars, and civil wars will spread to regional wars.
And, as the wars intensify, there will mass migration of people escaping poverty, corruption, crime, and violence to safe-haven nations. This will, in turn, ratchet up populist/anti-establishment/anti-immigration political movements in those countries where refugees flee to safety.