Columbian President Gustavo Petro. File
| Photo Credit: AP

The Colombian government manipulated a video to alter the applause received by President Gustavo Petro during his speech at the United Nations General Assembly in New York.

The Associated Press reviewed the video and was able to verify that it was altered. The recording released by the Presidential office incorporated applause for the U.S. President Joe Biden, who spoke moments before Mr. Petro, making it appear the applause was directed at the Colombian leader. The manipulation was first reported by the Colombian website La Silla Vacía.

The Presidential office was asked for comment by the AP but had not responded by late Friday afternoon. Although Mr. Petro did receive applause, the final clip of the video posted on Thursday on the government’s YouTube channel does not correspond to what was broadcast in the UN video.

It incorporates a different shot to the original broadcast and to what was broadcast in the media, making it seem that many more attendees applauded Mr. Petro at the end of his speech.

The recording raised doubts among social media users and the media, given that there were several empty seats in the General Assembly during Mr. Petro’s speech.

At 1.52.39 of the official UN broadcast, the same applause that the Colombian government video shows going to Mr. Petro is heard but it is at the end of Mr. Biden’s address.

The UN video also shows that three men in the seventh row stand up at the same time and that a woman walks towards the podium between the seats, the same scene that appears in the video released by Colombia’s Presidential office.

AP photographer Richard Drew captured the moment of Mr. Petro’s speech in a photo and shows that in the seventh row there were only people sitting in three of the 12 seats. In the edited video released by the Colombian government, all those seats look to be occupied.

This year’s annual meeting of the UN General Assembly brought together heads of state and government from at least 145 countries, including Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva,Biden and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

A guerrilla fighter from the FARC dissidence Jaime Martinez stands guard near the town of Suarez, department of Cauca. File
| Photo Credit: AFP

Four Colombian Army soldiers were killed in fights with FARC dissidents a day before a meeting between the rebel group and the government to consolidate peace talks, Bogota’s Defense Ministry said Saturday.

The soldiers were killed “in fighting against a residual armed group”, the ministry said in a statement, referring to the name used by authorities for armed groups that did not accept a 2016 peace agreement.

The Estado Mayor Central (EMC), a dissident group of Colombia’s disbanded FARC guerrillas, rejected the 2016 deal, but said in April it was ready to begin negotiations with the government.

The EMC is due to begin a three-day meeting on Monday with the government to decide on a date for future peace talks, and to formalize a bilateral ceasefire, Bogota said Saturday morning, hours before the four soldiers were killed.

The attack took place in the southwestern rural region of Narino, on the border with Ecuador, which is home to a large portion of the coca crops in Colombia, the world’s biggest cocaine producer, according to the United Nations.

Coca cultivation is illegal, but a mainstay for many in the South American country of 50 million people.

Much of the sector is controlled by armed groups, including leftist guerrillas, rightwing paramilitaries or drug cartels.

Gustavo Petro, the first leftist president in Colombia’s history, has sought to defuse the country’s more than six-decade conflict through agreements with the various armed groups.

At midnight on December 31, Mr. Petro announced a bilateral truce with the five main guerrilla groups, but suspended the deal with the EMC in May, after the rebels murdered four young Indigenous men who resisted recruitment.

The European Union, Norway, Switzerland, and Ireland, as well as the Catholic Church, support Petro’s peace process.

Experts have questioned the unity of command in the EMC, which is led by ex-FARC veterans but with new recruits among its ranks.