Colombian Foreign Minister points to social networks as trigger for protests

Brussels, Sep 9 (EFE).- The Vice President and Foreign Minister of Colombia, Marta Lucía Ramírez, said Thursday that a campaign on social networks are triggers for the protests that began in April in the country, adding that there were also vandals and violent people in those mobilizations. (Camera: LEOPOLDO RODRÍGUEZ).

SHOT LIST: AN EFE INTERVIEW WITH THE COLOMBIAN VICE PRESIDENT AND FOREIGN MINISTER, MARTA LUCÍA RAMÍREZ.

SOUND BITES: COLOMBIAN VICE PRESIDENT AND FOREIGN MINISTER, MARTA LUCÍA RAMÍREZ (IN SPANIH).

TRANSLATIONS:

- These protests began in April, when we had started vaccinating in March. What happened? That through social networks they made a very effective, highly organized campaign, saying that the Government had not begun to vaccinate yet, that the vaccination was a lie.

- When people were unemployed, they have become impoverished because of the Covid and, in addition, they are told that there are no vaccines. That generates all these tensions. Many people went out to protest, many young people went out to protest spontaneously, peacefully.



- But there were people who infiltrated the protests to cause vandalism, to cause violence. The Colombian police, during two and a half months of protests, were able to take 100,000 weapons from the people who were protesting, people who came out with revolvers, including pole weapons, also knives, with daggers.



- The most criminal part of all is when they blocked the oxygen factories and did not let the oxygen go to the hospitals, knowing that the hospitals were in need of the oxygen because we were at the highest peak of the pandemic. In those protests, obviously, the police intervened to restore order, to capture those responsible.