On March 8, students at the National University of Bogota held a protest against the Colombian government's Feb. 27 signing of the Andean Free Trade Treaty with the US, Peru and Ecuador. Agents from the Mobile Anti-Riot Squad (ESMAD), a unit of the National Police, attacked the students at close range with tear gas grenades and rubber bullets. Oscar Leonardo Salas, a 20-year-old linguistics student from the Francisco Jose de Caldas District University in Bogota, was hit in the face by either a tear gas grenade or a rubber bullet which apparently passed through his eye and lodged in his brain. Salas was taken to a local clinic, but doctors were unable to save him; he was pronounced brain dead and disconnected from artificial life support early the next morning. Hundreds of students marched on March 9 in Bogota to protest Salas' death and to demand the immediate dismantling of the ESMAD. (El Turbion, March 9; Asociacion Colombiana de Estudiantes Universitarios [ACEU], March 9)
Salas is the third student protester to be killed by ESMAD in less than a year: last Sept. 22 in Cali, ESMAD agents killed chemistry student Jhony Silva Aranjuren of Del Valle University by shooting him in the neck at a protest; and ESMAD agents beat 15-year-old high school student Nicolas Neira Alvarez to death during an International Workers Day march in Bogota on May 1, 2005
From Weekly News Update on the Americas [1], March 12
