Bogotá, September 22 (teleSUR-RHC)-- For the second time this month, over 300 Colombians, displaced during the armed conflict between the government and rebels, took to the streets, demanding government aid for housing, as they occupied an abandoned building in the capital's center.  

“The state does not fulfill (its promises), and ridicules us because it knows that we have no power to reach international bodies for human rights and have our demands addressed,” said one of the protester to El Espectador newspaper.   

According to the journal, the group of protesters occupied an abandoned office, affirming they will not go away until their demands are heard.  

Previously, on September 10th, over 600 protesters blocked the capital's national airport Puente Aereo for over 20 hours, demanding priority access to housing, funding of sustainable productive project, among other measures aimed at improving their living conditions.   
  
The Office of Attendance and Reparation of Victims responded by promising to review each case one by one and help displaced people. An estimated 7 million people have been displaced across the country, mostly from rural areas, which have become battlefields for over half of a century of fighting between guerrilla rebels, state armed forces and their unofficial allies, the paramilitaries.  

Bogota has been their main city of destination, while others prefer to migrate to neighboring Venezuela, Ecuador or Brazil.     

Moreover, governmental policies under President Juan Manuel Santos have deprived farmers of 10 million hectares of land, President of the Federation of Agrarian Unions (Fensuagro) Eberto Diaz said in an interview with teleSUR earlier this month.

Santos' policies have favored agribusiness, Diaz added, forcing farmers to abandon their lands and only sell “their labor force.”

He criticized Santos for not setting up new criteria before the so-called free trade deals with Europe and North America. Such trade agreements have resulted in selling cheaper foreign products in Colombia, as they are often state-subsidized, generating unequal competition for Colombian products.       

Over 80 percent of the rural population has no access to electricity and almost 60 percent no access to drinking water, said the social leader.