ANKARA

A Colombian columnist on Sunday questioned the actions of the country's police and the Attorney General's Office about dozens of missing persons in a national strike in the Latin American state, according to Cuban news agency Prensa Latina.

Speaking to the Sunday program Los Danieles, Daniel Coronell accused the Attorney General's Office of "going through the darkest period of its history," adding that "covering up the crimes of the powerful" has now become its "main mission."

People have been demonstrating in different cities for a month against the government's tax reform plan said to harm the working and middle classes.

The tax plan was withdrawn but the protests grew against other government policies, including the handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.

"Just as they have wanted to replace the expression massacre with 'collective homicide,' they want to change disappearance with the term 'people whose whereabouts is unknown'," Coronell said in his column entitled Disappeared Twice.

He went on to say that the case is "especially sensitive" because many relatives of those who disappeared recently prefer not to report about the missing people as they are afraid of suffering the same fate.

Coronell also stressed that the silence of the families contributes to impunity because the lack of formal public denunciations serves to erase the traces of the disappearances.