A/HRC/43/3/Add.3 involving the beating, resulting in severe head injuries, of a young woman by five police officers as she was filming a documentary of the protests. When a formal complaint was filed with the Office of the Attorney General, the treatment of the victim was defined as abuse of authority. 89. OHCHR is concerned that most of the detentions during the protests resulted from the frequent use of an administrative provision called “transfer for protective purposes”.73 This provision gives extensive discretionary powers to the police to limit the right to liberty. This was observed by OHCHR during a peaceful and silent demonstration on 7 December at Bogotá’s airport. According to the police, 1,662 persons were detained in application of this provision nationwide between 21 November and 12 December. 90. The protests also featured several attacks on journalists and representatives of alternative media outlets. Between 21 and 23 November, Colombia’s Foundation for Press Freedom reported at least 32 cases of alleged physical attacks or obstruction of journalists nationwide. Twenty-three of these cases were reportedly attributed to the police, and nine to protesters. OHCHR documented three cases of alleged excessive use of force and four cases of arbitrary detention affecting journalists. 91. Forty-eight hours prior to the first protests, 74 the judicial police conducted at least 36 searches against alternative media outlets, artists’ associations, non-governmental organizations and students’ houses in Bogotá, Cali and Medellín. These searches were conducted on the instructions of the Office of the Attorney General. Charges were pressed in only two cases and both of the accused were released from custody after their court hearings, because the evidence produced could not be further probed. At the time of finalization of the present report, the judiciary has declared 10 of the searches illegal. Several organizations affected informed OHCHR that they believed the operations were intended to intimidate protesters and hinder the enjoyment of the right to peaceful assembly. IX. Recommendations 92. The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights reiterates the recommendations made in previous reports. The High Commissioner furthermore: (a) Calls upon the State to continue making progress in the implementation of all chapters of the peace agreement in comprehensive and sustained manner, with an emphasis on the provisions concerning gender and ethnicity and on the participation of victims, especially to fulfil their rights to truth, justice, reparation and guarantees of non-recurrence. (b) Encourages the State to accelerate the implementation of the Comprehensive Rural Reform contained in the peace agreement in coordination with other planning processes and instruments, such as the Collective Reparation Plan and the Comprehensive National Programme for the Substitution of Illicit Crops. (c) Calls upon the State to increase its efforts to establish a stronger presence of State civilian authorities in rural areas. (d) Encourages the Office of the Attorney General to broaden its investigations into attacks against human rights defenders, especially with respect to identifying and prosecuting the intellectual authors of such attacks. (e) Recommends the increased use of collective protection measures. On the part of the National Protection Unit, this requires allocating sufficient resources and establishing criteria for co-responsibility between national, departmental and municipal authorities to address structural causes of violence. Achieving this increase may require support, including through resources, from the international community. The new regional authorities should prioritize collective protection measures in their planning processes, such as the development plans and the Comprehensive Plans for 73 74 16 Art. 155 of Law 1801 of 2016. See https://www.hchr.org.co/index.php/informacion-publica/comunicados-de-prensa/440-ano2019/9121-pronunciamiento-sobre-el-paro-nacional-del-21-de-noviembre.