Source Telesur TV

On Sunday, November 4, 2018, Edilberto Niño Cristancho, a 49-year-old social leader in charge of organising trade union participation, was murdered after being stabbed 18 times.

The event occurred in the city of Villavicencio, in the department of Meta, in the afternoon, as reported by the National Union of Workers of the Fat and Food Products Industry (Sintraimagra).

Niño, who had been a palm worker for 28 years, was found wounded by peasants who immediately notified the authorities.

About 30 minutes after being found he was transferred to the Departmental Hospital where he died.

The victim managed to give statements to the authorities in which he indicated that “on Sunday morning he took a taxi in the city of Villavicencio, which then was boarded by two subjects, who attacked him with a knife”.

Sintraimagra stated that Niño was leading a process that “had been developing with the Central Unitaria de Trabajadores (CUT) to force palm companies in the region to comply fully with workers’ constitutional and legal rights, as well as the international conventions of the ILO.”

More than a hundred social leaders have been assassinated so far in 2018 in Colombia, systematic crimes that have been denounced by human rights defenders.