FARC Guerillas Announce Cease-Fire With Colombian Government After 50-Year Civil War

[eridani]

Didn' a bunch of candidates who gave up their arms awhile back get assassinated?


http://readersupportednews.org/news-section2/318-66/27572-farc-guerillas-announce-cease-fire-with-colombian-government-after-50-year-civil-war

hat diplomatic relations are set to resume between the United States and the Castro government wasn't the only big story to come out of Cuba on Wednesday. Starting midnight December 20, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the hemisphere's longest-standing leftist insurgency, will enter an indefinite, unilateral—albeit conditional—ceasefire, rebel commanders announced in Havana.

The FARC leadership has been gathered in Cuba for over two years now, negotiating a peace accord with the Colombian government that would bring an end to 50 years of open rebellion. Up until this point, however, both parties had continued hostilities, even in the midst of talks.

"We think we've started on a definitive path toward peace," reads a statement released by the guerrillas, who asked that various international and independent bodies monitor the ceasefire. "It's now or never."

Though the rebels were expected to announce a temporary suspension of military operations for the duration of the Christmas holiday season as they have in the past, the "indefinite" part of the ceasefire came as a surprise. Just last month, negotiations seemed to be on the verge of potential collapse. Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos, who championed the peace process in his recent successful re-election campaign, withdrew government delegates following the rebel " kidnapping" of Brigadier General Ruben Dario Alzate in the northwest of the country, a decision that marked the first unscheduled break since the start of talks in November 2012. (The general was traveling in a rebel-controlled zone without protection.)

[COLGATE4]

1. Time will tell if this offer is legitimate. nt

[Judi Lynn]

2. K & R. n/t

[eridani]

3. Colombian Government Rejects Rebels' Ceasefire Proposal

Well, crap

http://readersupportednews.org/news-section2/318-66/27587-colombian-government-rejects-rebels-ceasefire-proposal

Despite the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia’s (FARC) unilateral decision to initiate an indefinite cease-fire during the country’s peace talks in Havana, Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos said Thursday that the government would not participate.

“In any case – and this needs to be clear – the government will continue complying with its constitutional duty of guaranteeing and protecting the rights of Colombians,” said Santos.

“The demand of observation of the unilateral cease-fire is a condition that the government rejects,” he added.

The FARC declared Wednesday that the unilateral cessation of hostilities, which was scheduled to begin Dec. 20, should turn into an armistice of the decades long conflict.

"This unilateral cease-fire, which we want to last, will be terminated only if it appears that our guerrilla structures have been targeted by the security forces," said FARC representatives.

[Marksman_91]

4. Do these guerrilla idiots expect a free ticket out of Justice?

They've committed crimes against the Colombian people for decades. The government is not simply going to let them sweep all that away and cast aside their guilt so easily.

[eridani]

5. The crimes have been committed by the government against the population n/t

[Marksman_91]

6. Care to show any proof that the FARC didn't commit terrorist acts and kidnap innocents?

Oh, why do I bother? You probably think they're dignified freedom fighters. If that's the case, there's really no point to continue this discussion. Just say that to any Colombian you meet and see how they feel about it. Hopefully that's enough to change you're ignorant mindset.

[eridani]

7. It takes quite a bit of courage to give up warfare and run for office if the result is that--

--you are assassinated. How many opposition candidates did FARC assassinate? Exterminating candidates works. Ae you proud of that?


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patriotic_Union_%28Colombia%29

In 1988, the UP announced that more than 500 of its members, including Jaime Pardo and 4 congressmen, had been assassinated to date. Unidentified gunmen later attacked more than 100 of the UP's local candidates in the six months preceding the March 1988 elections. An April 1988 report by Amnesty International charged that members of the Colombian military and government would be involved in what was called a "deliberate policy of political murder" of UP militants and others. The Liberal government of Virgilio Barco strongly denied this charge.[8]

During this period, the mid-1980s to the early-1990s, deadly violence was also directed against mainstream politicians, such as the official Liberal presidential candidate Luis Carlos Galán on August 18, 1989, M-19 presidential candidate Carlos Pizarro on April 26, 1990, Justice Minister Rodrigo Lara on April 30, 1984, and others. Liberal Ernesto Samper was wounded while he was saying hello to Jose Antequera, Union Patriotica leader who was murdered on March 3, 1989, Ernesto Samper survived the attack, Jose Antequera died. Numerous car bombs and explosives were also regularly activated in several important Colombian cities, including the capital Bogotá, leaving hundreds dead and wounded.[9]

While some investigations were opened and some of the gunmen and military men involved were captured and convicted, most of the murders committed during these years were never resolved and most of those intellectually responsible were never punished, indicating a high degree of judicial impunity that continues to plague modern Colombia.

[Judi Lynn]

8. You work from the informed position, clearly, which should be the way it's done.

Your information is clearly correct, as this has been the pattern in place for all these long years. Hideous.

Here's an article from May, this year:

48 members of leftist movement murdered in 2 years: Report
May 15, 2014 posted by Alexandra Jolly

A religious social organization has condemned the multiple killings of members of a leftist political movement, local media reported on Thursday.

The Center for Research and Popular Education (CINEP), a religious organisation focused on social change, has spoken out about the “genocide” of members of the Patriotic March (Marcha Patriotica), with 48 people killed in the past two years.
The Patriotic March is a leftist political movement created in 2012 which claims to be searching for the “second and definitive independence.”

~ snip ~

Problems caused by apparent FARC affiliation mirrors events that occurred during the late 1980s and early 1990s, the last time the FARC attempted to incorporate itself into civilian politics. The FARC created the Patriotic Union (Union Patriotica – UP), but drug traffickers and right-wing paramilitaries, often working with government authorities, engaged in the systematic assassination of up to 4,000 members of the leftist Patriotic Union. Some survivors are now members of the Marcha Patriotica.

According to CINEP member, priest Javier Giraldo, “Many people are saying that such links of the Patriotic March are repetition of the political violence against the Patriotic Union, especially at a time when there are peace talks and that the March has been outlined as one of possible political moves that could come after a peace agreement.”

The priest argued that such attacks just because of “belonging to a political movement can be described as genocidal as it shows that we want to exterminate a specific group.”

More:
http://colombiareports.co/48-members-political-party-murdered-2-years/

[center]~ ~ ~[/center]
Threats to a leftist Colombia mayor:

Paramilitaries threaten to play football with Gustavo Petro´s head, assassinate Colombia´s top left-wing politicians
February 4, 2014

Colombian drug traffickers have threatened to decapitate Bogotá Mayor Gustavo Petro and play football with his head if he doesn´t abandon his battle to stay on as mayor.

“Petro´s head will roll and we will play football with it,” the gangsters charged in a crude letter that threatened the elite of Colombia´s left-wing politicians, many of whom currently are candidates in congressional and presidential elections.

Bogotá Mayor Gustavo Petro – a former M-19 guerrilla leader turned politician – is threatened with assassination if he “continues attacking” Ordóñez. Petro is fighting for his political life as he attempts to overturn the order by Ordóñez that he be fired as mayor and banned from office for 15 years.
Petro has succeeded in obtaining court orders to delay his firing while he appeals to the Comisión Interamericana de Derechos Humanos (Interamerican Commission of Human Rights) to block his firing.

Colombia’s elections are threatening to turn into a blood bath after the second gang of former paramilitary, drug traffickers vowed in a week to assassinate left-wing candidates who don’t withdraw from the election and leave the country.
The threats by Las Águilas Negras include many of Colombia´s top-level progressive candidates, including congressional representative Iván Cepeda, Unión Patriótica presidential candidate Aída Abella and Petro.

More:
http://davidhogben.com/2014/02/04/drug-traffickers-threaten-to-play-football-with-gustavo-petros-head-assassinate-colombias-top-left-wing-politicians/

(Senator Ivan Cepeda, father of Rep. Ivan Cepeda, was himself assassinated by the paramilitaries.)

[center]~ ~ ~[/center]

February 27, 2014
The Assassination Plot in Colombia

Who Tried to Kill Aida Abella?

by STEPHEN MATHER

On Sunday in Colombia gunmen attempted to murder the presidential candidate for the Patriotic Union (UP) party. Aida Abella’s car was sprayed with bullets while she was out campaigning for the June presidential elections. The UP is promoting the peace talks in Cuba between the Revolutionary Armed Forces in Colombia (Farc) and the government.

The attempted political assassination happened in the oil-rich region of Arauca but the shots would have been echoing loudly in the Cuban capital Havana. Guerilla negotiators agreed terms to guarantee the safety of political parties of the left – and specifically for Farc ex-combatants – in November last year.

But the bullets are also like ghosts from recent history as Abella and the UP are highly symbolic. The UP was first set up by the Farc and sanctioned by the then government in 1985 as on outcome of an earlier peace process (La Uribe Accords of 1984).

The party soon developed into a broad organisation that contained many shades of red and was autonomous from the Farc even though it contained former combatants from the organisation.

Between 3-4,000 UP members were murdered between its creation in 1985 and the mid 1990s. Hundreds of local political representatives were assassinated, eight national congressmen and two presidential candidates. Most of those were not ex-guerrillas.

More:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/02/27/who-tried-to-kill-aida-abella/

[center]~ ~ ~[/center]

It’s Colombian Politics as Usual


By Garry Leech · October 8, 2000 · Save & Share
On October 29 Colombians throughout the country will head to the polls to vote in provincial and municipal elections where they will choose from those candidates that make it to election day alive. Over the past 20 years, a political campaign’s measure of success hasn’t been whether a candidate won or lost, but whether they avoided assassination or not.

During the 1980′s more than 2,000 members of the leftist Patriotic Union (UP) were murdered by right-wing death squads. Members of other leftist parties were also killed, as was a reform-minded, Liberal Party presidential candidate. As the first elections of the new millennium approach, little has changed in Colombian electoral politics. So far during this election season, 20 mayoral candidates have been assassinated and more than a hundred kidnapped.

This is the “democracy” that President Clinton so desperately wants to help preserve with $1.3 billion in U.S. aid. However, the aid is being used to fight the rebel Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), not the right-wing death squads primarily responsible for destabilizing Colombian democracy. Paramilitary organizations and drug traffickers have killed thousands of leftist and reform-minded candidates who dared to challenge the political hegemony of the ruling Conservative and Liberal parties.

In the 1980′s the FARC entered into a cease-fire and negotiations with the government of President Belisario Betancur. The FARC then formed a political party, the Patriotic Union (UP), in order to participate in elections. But the promise of greater democracy and an end to the civil conflict posed a threat to the elite’s political and economic power (see, Fifty Years of Violence).

~snip~

This is the “democracy” that President Clinton so desperately wants to help preserve with $1.3 billion in U.S. aid. However, the aid is being used to fight the rebel Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), not the right-wing death squads primarily responsible for destabilizing Colombian democracy. Paramilitary organizations and drug traffickers have killed thousands of leftist and reform-minded candidates who dared to challenge the political hegemony of the ruling Conservative and Liberal parties.

In the 1980′s the FARC entered into a cease-fire and negotiations with the government of President Belisario Betancur. The FARC then formed a political party, the Patriotic Union (UP), in order to participate in elections. But the promise of greater democracy and an end to the civil conflict posed a threat to the elite’s political and economic power (see, Fifty Years of Violence).

~snip~
The death squads not only targeted leftist candidates and former guerrillas, they also assassinated reform-minded members of the two major parties, such as Liberal candidate Luis Carlos Galán, who was expected to win the 1990 presidential election.

In this climate of electoral violence the cease-fire agreement disintegrated. The civil conflict escalated throughout the 1990′s as both the FARC and the paramilitaries gained strength due to increased profits from the drug trade. However, there was little change when it came to electoral politics. Although there were few leftist candidates brave enough to run for national office, on the local level the assassinations continued.

More:
http://colombiajournal.org/colombia34.htm

[eridani]

9. From Alliance for Global Justice--left candidates STILL being assassinated

Just last month we brought representatives of the Marcha Patriótica for their first US tour ever. The Marcha Patriótica is the most Left mass organization advocating for a just peace. It is made up of more than 2,500 grassroots and labor organizations. While the peace process continues, the Marcha Patriótica has been targeted for political arrests and threats, with more than 60 of its leaders assassinated in little over two years. Until this tour, AfGJ was the only US organization with a relationship with the Marcha Patriótica. We believe that if this group cannot survive safely, there can be no real peace in Colombia.

Further evidence of AfGJ's commitment to peace is our upcoming delegation to Cuba this April to observe Colombia's negotiations between the government and the FARC. We have received a special invitation in recognition of our role building US solidarity with the process.

AfGJ's Colombia solidarity work has always been groundbreaking. In August, 2008, we were introduced to the Fensuagro agricultural workers union. With thousands of its members displaced, disappeared or outright murdered, we realized that this was perhaps the world's most persecuted union. Its members have been targeted by US funded Colombian Armed Forces and paramilitaries because they made the “mistake” of living in lands with resources coveted by the agents of global Capitalism. We also saw that no US labor body or solidarity organization had an ongoing relationship with Fensuagro. Today, in no small part due to our efforts, the United Steelworkers has a solidarity relationship with Fensuagro, and a number of labor groups have passed declarations of concern over the union's ongoing persecution.

AfGJ became aware of Colombia's 9,500 political prisoners, locked away in US funded and advised jails. With our partners in Colombia and other international friends, we raised the call for “a humanitarian exchange of political prisoners as a first step toward dialogue and peace.” Some thought our goal was too lofty and idealistic. We can see today how such calls played a pivotal role in bringing warring parties to the table.

A related victory has been the recent order by the Colombian Constitutional Court to close of La Tramacúa, the first US funded and advised penitentiary in Colombia . The prison is notorious for its filthy conditions, overcrowding and torture. AfGJ has published many alerts exposing conditions and one of our representatives was part of a Colombian congressional delegation to visit the prison. We have collected thousands of signatures calling for La Tramacúa's closure. We are simply overjoyed by this long awaited victory. This is one gift of peace we'll all be celebrating this holiday season!