Ana Lucía Bisbicús, was a community leader and indigenous rights defender on the reservation of the Awá Pipalta Palví Yaguapí people in Barbacoas, Nariño where she was involved in numerous projects to promote the welfare of the community.
On 3 October, 2020, Ana Lucía was attending a wake in the house of a neighbour when members of an armed criminal group arrived and forced her to leave the ceremony, dragging her out by her hair. They took her behind the church, forced her to kneel down and shot her dead.
Ana Lucía’s family had received, and reported, multiple threats during the previous 8 months and her son, Deiro Alexander Pérez Bisbicús, had been killed on 6 May, 2020.
In a statement a spokesperson for the Awá people said “The armed conflict is exterminating us physically, culturally, organisationally and spiritually. The humanitarian crisis of which we are victims is increasing with the passing of days. The murders are becoming a constant without the regional and national rulers taking concrete actions to safeguard our existence, neglecting their constitutional responsibility to guarantee the life and survival of the Awá people, which has made the illegal armed groups the arbiters of who lives and who dies in our ancestral territory”.
