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<div class="header reader-header reader-show-element"> <font
size="-2"><a class="domain reader-domain"
href="https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/6-Days-6-Deaths-More-Murder-of-Social-Leaders-in-Colombia-20190107-0008.html">https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/6-Days-6-Deaths-More-Murder-of-Social-Leaders-in-Colombia-20190107-0008.html</a></font>
<h1 class="reader-title">6 Days, 6 Deaths: More Murder of Social
Leaders in Colombia</h1>
Published 7 January 2019 </div>
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<p>Another Colombian rights activist was gunned down in
her home for helping Afro-Colombian victims in the
country’s long civil conflict.</p>
<p>Mother of four Maritza Quiroz Leiva was gunned down by
armed hitmen in her rural home in San Isidro in
Colombia’s Caribbean region.</p>
<p>Quiroz was an Afro-Colombian representative on the
Santa Marta Victim's Roundtable working on reparations
for the torture, kidnapping, displacement, and sexual
violence that vulnerable victims in the region
experienced during the country’s 50 year conflict.</p>
<p>In late December, Quiroz had taken part in a government
land redistribution ceremony in the Santa Marta region,
part of the 2016 peace accords between the government
and the former Revolutionary Armed Forces (FARC).
Colombia has one of Latin America’s biggest land access
disparities where “0.1 percent of farms are ... over
2,000 hectares in size and control 60 percent of land,
while 81 percent of farms cover an area of only two
hectares and occupy less than 5 percent of (arable)
land” in Colombia, according to a 2014 Oxfam report.</p>
<p>Her death was lamented by those who worked with her to
achieve land justice:</p>
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<blockquote data-lang="es">
<p dir="ltr" lang="es">En horas de la madrugada de hoy
fue asesinada en su parcela la lideresa reclamante
de tierras de Santa Marta, Maritza Quiroz Leiva.
Seguimos contando los muertos mientras el Estado y
sus instituciones ignoran de la manera más fría la
masacre de la que es víctima el pueblo. <a
href="https://t.co/a2iKi1j6p3">pic.twitter.com/a2iKi1j6p3</a></p>
— Victoria Sandino (@SandinoVictoria) <a
href="https://twitter.com/SandinoVictoria/status/1081936508280553473?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">6
de enero de 2019</a> </blockquote>
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<p><strong>In the early morning today land rights
leader of Santa Marta, Maritza Quiroz
Leiva was murdered. We continue to count the deaths
while the state and institutions ignore in the
most cold way the massacre that the entire
country is victim.</strong></p>
<p>Quiroz and some 7.7 million people in Colombia have
been internally displaced because of the armed conflict
that supposedly ended with the peace agreement. However,
over 400 land and human rights activists in rural and
Caribbean regions have been gunned down by<a
href="https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Colombian-Indigenous-Senator-Denounces-Attack-on-His-Brother-20181221-0007.html"
target="_blank"> paramilitary groups hired mainly by
drug traffickers</a> since the accord went into effect
in November 2016.</p>
<p>The hitmen broke into her rural home and shot her
as her 22-year-old son hid. He later found his mom badly
injured just outside their farm as Quiroz had tried to
flee danger. She later died from the bullet wounds in a
Santa Marta hospital, according to local media.</p>
<p>"We regret and strongly reject the murder of Maritza
Quiroz Leiva, leader of victims in Santa Marta. No
reason justifies the actions of this violence.
(Colombia) is veering from peace," said the mayor of
Santa Marta, Rafael Alejandro Martinez, through his
social networks.</p>
<p>Quiroz’s life had been threatened several times and her
husband had been assassinated under the same
circumstances which led her to flee to San Isidro.</p>
<p>She was the mother of four children and the sixth
social leader to be killed so far in 2019, after
34-year-old Wilson Perez Ascanio was gunned down in the
early morning of Jan. 5. He was a member of a Popular
Constituent Assembly (MCP).</p>
<p>So far, <a
href="https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Colombia-Four-Social-Leaders-Killed-in-First-Four-Days-of-2019-20190105-0010.html"
target="_blank">90 Campesino social leaders have been
killed</a> since President Ivan Duque took office in
August 2018. The right-wing head of state has been
criticized by locals for his indifference to the slew of
murders and for not structurally addressing
the situation that has only worsened since his
inauguration.</p>
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