There is concern for the safety of thousands of street children in Bogota following the appearance on 11 August 1993 of posters in the city centre inviting them to attend their own funerals. These posters, which announce the extermination of “delinquent street children” are signed in the name of industrialists, shopkeepers and civic groups. There have been an increasing number of reports of killings of so-called “social undesirables” (desechables sociales) in what are routinely called “social clean-up operations”, generally attributed to shadowy “death-squads”. This campaign appears to be a reaction to a reported wave of petty crime in the city centre which the authorities attribute to vagrants, including street children.
