An Indigenous woman cries during a protest against violence, Colombia, Oct. 19, 2020. Most of those killed have been Indigenous or Afro-Colombian people … Ruiz’s chiva was part of a caravan that activists said numbered 10,000 people. Yann Le Boulaire, MSF’s coordinator in the western Buenaventura region, told TNH that in addition to an acute shortage of medical services, there is particular concern over mental health needs – long neglected in a region where stigma about admitting such issues is strong. According to the 2018 national census, 4.4 percent of Colombians – more than two million people – identify as Indigenous, while an additional 9.3 percent, almost five million more, consider themselves Afro-Colombian. Read more → Is a new Plan Colombia putting a fragile peace at risk? People stand under a huge cloth with a portrait of the late student Dilan Cruz, during a march against the government of Colombian President Ivan Duque within a national strike in Bogota on November 27, 2019 [File: Juan Barreto/AFP]The protest movement lost momentum earlier this year amid the country’s coronavirus outbreak, with Duque in March introducing wide-ranging restrictions in an attempt to minimise the virus’s spread. “The government promised us autonomy and our lands back as part of the 2016 peace accord,” said 20-year-old Ruiz. His mother and sister arranged a circle of flowers on the street where the 18-year-old was shot by police a year earlier during an anti-government protest, with his clothes and a framed portrait placed in the centre. A recent joint report by Colombian and German research groups stated that these actors vying for the mining wealth of the department are “an explicit cause of death, displacement and threats to social leaders”. By The Associated Press. Anti-government protesters rally at the Bolivar square in Bogota, Colombia, Friday, Nov. 22, 2019. Become a member of The New Humanitarian to support our journalism and become more involved in our community. [The government] only cares about our land when it has mineral wealth or something they desire,” he said, “Not only are the tactics identical, [but] in some cases it is descendants from the very same families who enslaved my ancestors that benefit from these policies.”,