Martha Elena Díaz Ospina
More than 50 Patriotic March activists have been killed in the past two years - so the reality on the ground hasn’t changed much.
Martha Díaz is the director and legal representative of the Asociación de Familiares Unidas por un Solo Dolor (Association of Relatives United by a Single Sorrow – AFUSODO), an organisation for family members of victims of extrajudicial killings, particularly false positives. 'False positive' is used to describe extrajudicial killings of civilians carried out by the army and then falsely presented as members of armed insurgent groups. The vast majority of these cases remained unpunished. Martha Díaz is also the technical secretary of the Atlantic chapter of Movimiento Nacional de Víctimas de Estado – MOVICE (National Movement of Victims of the State).
Despite recent peace talks, Colombia remains one of the countries with the highest rates of killing of HRDs in the world. The UN reported that 69 HRDS were killed between January and August 2015 - the number was 35 for the same period in 2014. HRDs are subjected to threats, intimidation, arbitrary detention, enforced disappearances, physical assaults, torture, killings, illegal searches of their homes and offices and stigmatisation as a result of their activities in defence of human rights. The perpetrators of these abuses are frequently paramilitary groups, many of whom have links to the government or security services, or armed opposition groups.
