Colombia Must Protect the Women Risking Their Lives to Defend Black Communities

Nov 23, 2019 | Duncan Tucker
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Danelly Estupiñán will never forget the first threats she received back in 2015. First came the text message declaring “Danelly, your end has come.” And then a distorted voice over the phone, repeating: “we know where you are”.

Since then, Estupiñán has been constantly followed, photographed and had her home broken into, in apparent retaliation for her human rights work defending black communities in Buenaventura, Colombia’s biggest Pacific port. “I don’t go out anymore… because wherever I go, they’re there,” she told Amnesty International in June, shortly before fleeing the country upon learning of a plot to kill her. “I have no social life, I have nothing.”