Among the young protestors was Juan Pablo Fonseca, a sous chef, then 25 years old. Fonseca marched with many others across Colombia in 2021 following the announcement of new taxes that would hit the poor hardest and further widen the social inequalities. As he told me on a recent visit to Colombia, he went there to stand up for human rights and dignity, but he left with a wound that will never heal.
In the square, the police fired rubber bullets straight into the crowd in Bogotá, targeting some of the protestors’ eyes. Fonseca was hit in his right eye, permanently losing half his sight, and disfiguring his face. “I lost more than just an eye,” he said. “I lost part of my life. Life is to live, not survive.”
During the 2021 protests that shook Colombia under former President Iván Duque Márquez, more than 100 young people shared Fonseca’s fate – their eyes mutilated by a special unit of the security forces as part of a deliberate strategy. The Mobile Anti-Disturbance Squadron (Escuadrón Móvil Antidisturbios, or ESMAD) was created a quarter century ago as part of “Plan Colombia,” the country’s U.S.-backed controversial campaign against drug gangs and armed guerillas. Amid the militarization of the state, the military and the police were fused, and ESMAD was empowered to unleash fear and violence during protests and amid forced evictions, including through killings and rape.
Much of this violence is directed at some of Colombia’s poorest communities, including the country’s Indigenous and Afro-descendant communities. To counter this impunity, civil society and survivors of police brutality have actively demanded the dismantling of the anti-riots squad at least since 2005, when an agent of the ESMAD struck 15-year-old Nicolas Neira in the head with a tear gas projectile during a protest. He died five days later.
The Movement in Resistance to Eye Aggressions, better known by its Spanish acronym “MOCAO,” rose out of the April 2021 protests. Its members are survivors of police assaults, thrust into activism by the brutality inflicted on them – their pain transmuted into purpose. MOCAO has become an effective campaigning force, led by the survivors of police brutality. They pull together artists, academics, and activists. They raise awareness of police brutality through arts, through research, through advocacy, and through litigation.
Giovanny García, known as “Gioh,” joined the group after also losing his eye at the hands of the police: “They took away my sight, but not my courage. I gained a new life focused on justice.” It’s a message that runs through a powerful music video where Gioh appears alongside survivors and musicians, memorializing ESMAD’s violence in the anthem “”¡Pum! Cayó,” with its sorrowful yet defiant refrain: Boom, it fell / The party doesn’t stop / Take a shot for your body and face / Boom, no / The boom doesn’t repair / I won’t forget this thing tomorrow. Behind the singers, on a traffic island dividing a road, is a towering monument with paintings vividly depicting the violence and the faces of the deceased victims. It takes the shape of a raised arm, the hand clasping a sign that says “Resiste” while a Colombian flag flutters in the background. Despite calls to remove the structure for being illegally constructed on public land, MOCAO and other groups are seeking to preserve it as a cultural monument to memorialize the courage of these young, unarmed protesters who have been killed and maimed for peacefully protesting.
Under current President Gustavo Petro, there is now, for the first time, a commitment to restrain and reform the security forces in Colombia. Defense Minister Iván Velásquez Gómez has engaged in a dialogue with MACAO and other protest leaders. From August 2023 to February 2024, the group led the “Mesa por la Reforma Policial” (Roundtable for Police Reform), where survivors, human rights organizations, and state officials debated the future of law enforcement. Fonseca and Gioh have also worked with academics to document and analyze the use of excessive force. They are examining the government’s procurement policies and which private companies these “non-lethal” plastic and rubber bullets are being purchased from. The protesters obtained a court judgement awarding them restitution damages.
With the leadership of the Defense Minister, and support from the United Nations office in Colombia, these discussions culminated in the promulgation recently of Decree 1231- the country’s first comprehensive framework regulating the proportional use of force. Drawing on jurisprudence from the Colombian Supreme Court and recommendations made by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, it makes dialogue the principal tool for policing operations and reserves force as a last resort, mandating accountability for officers in command. In September 2024, the Attorney General also issued a directive that reaffirms the right to peaceful assembly and rejects the criminalization of dissent. ESMAD has been renamed the Unit for Dialogue and Maintenance of Order (UNDMO). The government is appointing “Peace Secretaries” to create spaces of trust where communities can dialogue with police. While there is more to do, the anti-riot squad is showing first signs of reform.
Around the world, anti-riot squads regularly use lethal force to terrorize and quell public dissent, often directed at poor and powerless communities who dare to protest injustices. Many anti-riot squads owe their origins to colonial rule when they were introduced as an instrument of repression to put down any protest, peaceful or violent, acting on the presumption that any public protest represents a threat to the authorities.
Today, anti-riot units have accumulated arsenals of so-called non-lethal weapons, from tear gas to marbles to rubber and plastic bullets and other harmful objects. In Chile, 285 people reportedly suffered “eye trauma,” mostly by rubber bullets and tear gas canisters fired directly at them by security forces during the 2019 nationwide protests against the previous right-wing government of Sebastián Piñera. In Iran, the blinding of protestors in 2022 following the death in custody of Mahsa Amini was one of the many violent tactics used to suppress the “Women, Life, Freedom” movement. The photographer Wil Sands was in Chile during the 2019 protests, capturing images of how bandaged eyes had become a symbol of defiance. The following year, during the protests that erupted following the death of George Floyd, he was shot in the face with a gas canister, suffering an irreversible injury to his eye.
Everyone has a right to peaceful assembly, protected by national constitutions, regional human rights instruments, and international human rights law. Moreover, under international human rights law and standards, force should be used by the government only as a last resort, when protests turn violent and threaten national security, public order, or people’s lives and physical integrity. The Basic Principles on the Use of Force and Firearms by Law Enforcement Officials say that less lethal weapons are preferred over lethal one, but nevertheless their use should be “carefully controlled,” as part of an effort to restrain the use of force. They should always be used according to the principles of necessity and proportionality – and only in self-defense or in the defense of others who face the risk of “imminent threat of death or serious injury.”
In its advocacy, MOCAO casts light on the often neglected and long-term effects of eye mutilation – or “ocular aggression,” as it’s sometimes called. The survivors do not just lose their eyes and their sight. They also carry forever with them the scars on their faces and the trauma of the attacks. The effects, as Fonseca and other researchers noted, manifest themselves as “cognitive, psychological, physiological, and social” forms. They need reconstructive surgery and regular medical attention, which is often out of reach. With damaged health and disfigured faces, they struggle to resume their lives. They are stigmatized, not just for their injuries but also for having taken part in the protests. One young woman, who was shot when she was fifteen years old, tearfully described the particular stigma of her disfigured face because society often judges women on their appearance.
The Petro government in Colombia deserves credit for the transformative steps it is taking. Their new regulation has been hailed as a model for other countries, and there are further discussions taking place. A resolution on less-lethal weapons is expected in the coming months. From its roots in the April 2021 protests, MOCAO members are creating an International Center for research on Eye Mutilation and building a far-reaching network that will connect survivors across countries and support their own efforts to regulate the use of force and offer remedies for their victims and survivors. According to MOCAO, their research has uncovered cases of such eye trauma in Argentina, Bangladesh, Chile, Egypt, India, Kenya, Mexico, Nigeria, and the U.S.
From a country where too many were blinded by police violence, MOCAO and its allies are advancing a vision of a world where citizens can protest peacefully without fear of being terrorized, maimed, or killed by anti-riot police.