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At 7 am on October 10, Martha Sepúlveda, a 51-year-old resident of Medellin, Colombia, was scheduled to die of euthanasia-she couldn’t be more happy.
“Since they authorized me to perform the operation, I have calmed down a lot,” Sepulveda told the Colombian television network Noticias Caracol. “I laugh more and I sleep better.” Sepulveda was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) in 2019, a degenerative disease that has prevented her from walking independently , She will become the first person in Colombia who has not been euthanized. The prognosis is less than six months of life.
Although Colombia legalized euthanasia in terminally ill cases in 1997, the first such procedure was only approved in 2015. To date, a total of 157 patients have been allowed to end their lives in this way.
In July of this year, a ruling by the country’s Constitutional Court expanded the right to death—just as it did—applying to people who are not immediately terminally ill, provided that they suffer “caused by bodily injury or a serious and incurable disease”. Of severe physical and mental pain”.
However, for Sepulveda, after Noticias Caracol aired the scene of her drinking beer and laughing affectionately with her son, the local health authority revoked the authorization of euthanasia at the last minute, and the dream of death was shattered.
Instituto Colombiano del Dolor-Colombian Institute of Pain, or Incodol-will no longer agree to perform the procedure as planned.
Sepulveda seemed too happy to die-and therefore should be condemned as a painful future.
Camila Jaramillo, an attorney in Sepulveda, expressed great hope that Colombia can become “a leading country in making progress in dignified death.”
However, Colombia has long been a leader in other types of death. The country’s 57-year-old armed conflict—the 2016 “Peace Agreement” was almost unresolved—has killed more than 260,000 people (mostly civilians) and displaced millions.
In addition, an estimated 120,000 Colombians are missing.
Most civilian killings are carried out by right-wing paramilitary organizations, whose violence has traditionally served the national interest.
According to nationally recognized statements, of course, the “bad guys” are not paramilitary personnel, but the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), a left-wing guerrilla movement that emerged in the 1960s, logically opposed to large-scale inequality and elite tyranny.
As far as the United States is concerned, it has always encouraged right-wing oppression in Colombia (and everywhere else)-the so-called “war on terrorism” launched by the United States in 2001 has injected new vitality into Colombian national terrorist activities disguised as counter-terrorism.
In one of the most well-known examples-the “false positive” scandal during the presidency of American friend Álvaro Uribe (2002-2010)-members of the Colombian army executed more than 10,000 civilians, often Disguised the body as a guerrilla of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia.
In return, individual soldiers received economic allowances and extra holidays, and at the macro level, the Colombian government was able to use its ostensible anti-terrorism success to appeal for more US military assistance.
Reflecting on the nature of this “horror”, Medellin scholar Forrest Hylton (author of “Columbia’s Evil Moments”) wrote on the London Book Review blog: “Finance and real estate are relatively Enlightened urban modernizers and… the reactionary drug paramilitary landlord part of the Colombian ruling class.”
This is equivalent to “elite consensus-with the support of the United States- [that] Make Colombia one of the most violent and authoritarian societies in the hemisphere”.
In short, huge profits can be made from Colombia’s undeserved death. Alberto Lleras Camargo, who was President of Colombia from 1958 to 1962, aptly pointed out that “blood and capital accumulation complement each other.”
And the situation has not improved.
The current right-wing Colombian President Iván Duque (Iván Duque) took office in 2018 in the first two years of power, and massacres have increased by at least 30%.
Many occur in areas that happen to be rich in resources.
After all, as I saw with my own eyes when I was traveling in Colombia, it is difficult to live a dignified life when people think that the land under their feet is more valuable than life.
In February of this year, Human Rights Watch reported that, according to calculations by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), since 2016, more than 400 human rights defenders have been killed in Colombia, the highest number of deaths of all Latinos. USA.
The report emphasized that indigenous leaders “have an excessively high proportion of the victims.”
In April, protests against the punitive tax reform bill broke out across Colombia, triggering more national violence-but it quickly spread to the public’s response to widespread poverty, permanent inequality, and other issues that triggered the 57-year conflict in Colombia. Dissatisfaction. First place.
Amnesty International cited reports of 47 deaths as of May 9. The advocacy director of Amnesty International condemned the role of the United States in “facilitating the continuous cycle of violence against the Colombian people” as “killings, disappearances, sexual violence and other Torture and the terrible suppression of dozens of mostly peaceful demonstrations.”
In a subsequent report on the protests in Colombia, the organization recorded incidents of “urban paramilitarism armed with civilians, who accompanied national police officials and attacked demonstrators and human rights defenders with their acquiescence and tolerance.”
As they say, old habits are hard to change.
But back to Martha Sepulveda, despite the panoramic view of Colombia’s death, she was not allowed to die.
Obviously, in Colombia, there is no problem with being killed by the state-but if you want to have a say in this matter, it is not acceptable.
Despite claiming to be a devout Catholic, Sepulveda also encountered considerable resistance from the church in her end-of-life efforts.
Following the Constitutional Court’s decision in July to extend the right of euthanasia to people who “suffer severe physical or mental suffering,” the Colombian Conference of Bishops-representing the Catholic Church-declared euthanasia a “serious violation of human dignity” and led to ” Corrosion to human dignity”. The basic value of social order”.
By the way, in maintaining “social order”, the Catholic Church and the neoliberal state have overlapping interests-because the power of these two institutions is based on large-scale secular suffering.
In other words, if people who are physically or mentally suffering can opt out more easily, it may be more difficult to maintain one of the “most violent and authoritarian societies in the hemisphere”—Halton’s words.
Sepulveda vowed to fight the new sentence and may set a precedent in the realm of dignified death. At the same time, the killings in Colombia will continue.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
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