Students on strike for over a month in Colombia demanding free and public education for all have been joined in their protest by thousands of workers, peasants and common people on Wednesday.

A long march or ‘walking students’ reached the capital Bogota from the Western region of Cauca but was attacked by ESMAD, the antiriot police.

Despite the repression thousands of students kept steady and firm and repeated their demands to the new government of President Ivan Duque. The government in fact has drastically reduced the budget allocated to the education condemning thousands of students to renounce to university education as they have no money to afford private colleges.

Thousands of students have been demonstrating and staging actions since 10 October to demand public universities and the right of education for all. On 17 October thousands marched in Bogota. This time it was not only students who took to the square but minority sections of society as well, so the march was attended by peasants, afro-discendents, left groups and other sections alienated by successive neoliberal and right wing Colombian governments.

On Wednesday the protest involved the whole country with a ‘national strike’ declared.