Colombia

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Re: Colombia

Post by blindpig » Fri Dec 29, 2017 5:49 pm

“Social leaders are murdered because of fights over women”, said Colombia’s Defense Minister

Social leaders of the Bajo Atrato Choacano and Urabá of Antioquia denounced the persecutions, threats and selective murders they are exposed to in a press conference in Bogotá last December 14.

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“Social leaders are murdered because of fights over women”, said Colombia’s Defense Minister
Posted Dec 27, 2017 by The Dawn

Originally published: The Dawn News by Jorge Zalapata (December 19, 2017)

Just a week ago, Colombian social leaders—denouncing the murder of another comrade—showed up to a press conference with masks covering their faces. They did so in order to avoid risking their own lives: such is the danger of defending human rights in Colombia. But a few days ago, the country’s Minister of Defense, Luis Carlos Villegas, decided to publicly deny the fact that hundreds are losing their lives—and chose to do so in the most insulting terms.

In an interview with Colombian news outlet Noticias Uno, Villegas said that the vast majority of violent deaths of social leaders registered in Colombia was explained by personal conflicts like “fights [between neighbors] over fence placing, over women, over pride, or over illicit business”. Besides, he affirmed that “half of the murders have judicial explanation, and there’s no organization behind them”—diminishing the importance of organized persecution against social and political leaders.

There is more than enough evidence to prove that most murders are linked to the usurpation of peasant lands by big businesses, to the harassment of paramilitary groups to communities, and the attempts to stop the implementation of the peace agreements. The UN has established that the assassination of social leaders is systematic in Colombia, although it only recognized 64 murder reports made by the Ombudsman’s Office and the standardized denouncements made in the Prosecutor’s Office, while Colombian human rights organizations denounce a total of 117 political murders for the same period. Even President Juan Manuel Santos, who had always denied the issue, publicly acknowledged it last November. The pattern of these assassinations is consistent with political murders due to the roles the victims had as social leaders and their vicinity with areas where there is social conflict. But to the Minister of Defense, this is merely a coincidence.

Repercussions
After Villegas’ declarations, the organization Victims of Bajo Atrato demanded the renunciation of the Minister or his expulsion by the President.

The organization defends victims of political crimes in Bajo Atrato, Chocó, where in less than 10 days, two social leaders were murdered: Mario Castaño and Hernán Bedoya.

A member of Victims of Bajo Atrato, whose identity is reserved, said the Minister’s declarations “mocked the deceased” and “are a revictimization of people who have lost their lives for a cause”.

About The Dawn
The Dawn, International Newsletter of Popular Struggles, is edited by Resumen Latinoamericano and Secretariat of the Continental Coalition of ALBA's Social Movement.

https://mronline.org/2017/12/27/social- ... -minister/

Flat out treachery, what's FARC gonna do?
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Re: Colombia

Post by blindpig » Thu Jan 04, 2018 9:46 pm

Colombia's President Santos Meets With FARC To Assess Agreement
Published 4 January 2018 (4 hours 27 minutes ago)

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A fighter from FARC seats during the opening of ceremony congress at the camp where they prepare for ratifying a peace deal with the government, near El Diamante in Yari Plains, Colombia. Sept. 16, 2016. | Photo: Reuters

The Colombian president is meeting with to review the peace agreement advancements and challenges.
Colombian president Manuel Santos will meet with members of the Revolutionary Alternative Forces of the Commons, FARC, today to review the peace agreement advancements and challenges one year after it was signed.

Playing the role of international observers at today’s meeting in the city of Turbaco, just southeast of Cartagena, are former presidents, Felipe Gonzalez (Spain) and Jose 'Pepe' Mujica (Uruguay).

The disarmed FARC will be represented by former guerrillas Ivan Marquez, and Jesus Santrich, who are both now members of the FARC’s newly formed political party.

The meeting comes as the Colombian government is being accused of not completing its end of the peace accords signed in the Cuban capital Havana. Since the final declaration went into effect in Nov. 2016 at least 105 human rights defenders who have died over, 59 percent of them were killed by gunmen. In December, U.N. Mission leader in Colombia, Jean Arnault, gave the Santos government low marks in its peace accord implementation.

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President Juan Manuel Santos and FARC leader Rodrigo Londoño, known as Timochenko in November 2017.

Small-scale farmers participating in Colombia’s peace agreement continue to be gunned down or harassed in their rural communities, particularly those located in the Cordoba and Antioquia departments, by suspected paramilitary members.

“The implementation (of the accord) is far from over. … Unfortunately, in various areas (of the country) the winds of peace are still not felt”, says Bayuelo Castellar, rural communications activist in Antioquia and national peace prize winner, who helped draft the peace accords.

“The money used for the (former) war should be used today for health, highways, water systems, schools, and to reestablish social and cultural rights in the region,” the longtime activist told El Tiempo.

As the FARC has largely disarmed, in accordance to last year’s agreement, other paramilitary groups, such as the Gaitanist Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, or AGC, have filled the vacuum, and are suspected of inciting violence and killings.

Last week the AGC, which is also the armed branch of the country’s most notorious organized crime ring, “Gulf Clan”, through a grenade into an Antioquia dance club, injuring 30 people, 11 gravely.

Colombian vice president, Oscar Naranjo, the interior minister, Guillermo Rivera, and the high commission of peace, Rodrigo Rivera will also take part in the talks.

https://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/ ... -0015.html

when ya show up at a gunfight with a knife.....
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Re: Colombia

Post by blindpig » Fri Jan 05, 2018 3:31 pm

Interview with Victoria Sandino

It was in the context of political violence against the Patriotic Union (5,000 assassinated in the 80s and 90s of the 20th century) that Victoria Sandino Simanca (Tierralta, Córdoba, 1965) joined the struggle of the FARC-EP. It was December of 1992.



Much earlier, in 1964, some 50 peasants from the Marquetalia region founded the guerrilla movement led by Manuel Marulanda and Jacobo Arenas. Victoria Sandino had fought in the Communist Party of Colombia and the Patriotic Union.
In the FARC-EP, the oldest guerrilla in Latin America, she worked on multiple activities: political work of relationship with communities, territories social and women organizations; education, literacy and communication with comrades, among others.

At a later stage - the peace negotiations with the Santos government - the former guerrilla commander coordinated the Gender Subcommittee on behalf of the FARC-EP and was plenipotentiary at the Havana Negotiations Table.
Victoria Sandino is currently part of the National Political Council of the People’s Alternative Revolutionary Force Party (the former Marxist-Leninist FARC guerrillas), for which she is a candidate for the Senate in the presidential elections on May 27.

This interview took place on December 5, the day after the presentation in Valencia of the documentary “It will be dawn and we will see. Women protagonists of peace in Colombia", by journalist Sergi Tarín and produced by the NGO Atelier.


At the end of November, 142 organizations of victims and human rights denounced before the International Criminal Court that the Colombian State had modified, in the last year, the Havana Peace Agreement in accordance with the interests of “high rank” political, economic and military sectors . The document criticizes the "mantle of impunity" for those most responsible for crimes against humanity, among other reasons for the modifications in the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP). Agreed by the Government and the FARC in September 2015, this mechanism includes a Court for Peace, Chambers of Justice and establishes as a principle "a peace without impunity".
What was sought with the JEP was Justice, Truth, Reparation and not Repetition for the victims. To the JEP had to appear in principle all the people who, in one way or another, had caused serious damage in the context of the armed conflict. We are talking about the insurgency, the military, the State as a whole and individuals or "third parties".
Establishing this Jurisdiction was mandatory, because Justice in Colombia does not work: it is very corrupt and very politicized. For this reason, a special mechanism was sought to elect the judges of the Court for Peace and the Chambers. But the Law of Regulation of the JEP approved by Congress on November 28 is created only for the military and, in particular, the insurgency. Outside the Jurisdiction are the State as a whole and the "third parties" -like paramilitaries or landowning groups that have financed the paramilitaries-, who will only appear voluntarily.


At the beginning of November, Jaime Alberto de Jesús Angulo Osorio in Santa Rosa de Osos (northern Antioquia) was arrested by order of the General Prosecutor's Office of the Nation. The reason, his alleged participation in the Aro massacre, perpetrated in the Antioquia municipality of Ituango by ACCU paramilitaries that occurred in October 1997: 17 peasants were killed and 1,200 people were displaced. Is it an example of paramilitary impunity?

The great massacres that occurred in the 80s and 90s of the last century, for example against rural communities, with 20, 30 and more than 50 deaths in a single action have not been prosecuted. Work of paramilitary forces, the massacres were ordered, financed and promoted principally by landowners. They are not in jail nor has justice been done, which is precisely what was sought with the Special Jurisdiction for Peace.


The Semana magazine echoes a global list on the concentration of wealth in relation to GDP, published by the German newspaper Die Welt with data from Bloomberg. In Colombia the fortune of the five richest people is equivalent to 12.5% ​​of the GDP, which places this country in the fifth largest in the world regarding the hoarding of wealth. In addition, according to the World Bank, Colombia is the second most unequal country in Latin America and the seventh in the world. Is it an unfavorable context for justice to be delivered?


There is also another reality in Colombia: congressmen are the same landowners and bosses of the territories, who have benefited from forcibly taking all lands from the peasant communities. Some have gone to jail now for "parapolitics", but because their participation is obvious, the way to kill the people and the leaders in particular. They are legislating for their own benefit.

Is President Santos a member of the ruling classes or, on the contrary, do you consider that there are powers that transcend him?
Santos is part of the national oligarchy. And those "other" powers to which I refer are regional and of the departments. In the Parliament many representatives come from the territories, where they have been elected, and of course they will not legislate against what has been their practice. For this reason they have decided that declaration to the JEP is voluntary, given that, should it be otherwise, many of those sitting in Congress would have to appear. I do not say all, but many of them. In addition, the Political Reform, which was fundamental for the participation of democratic sectors, did not succeed.

The Colombian Ombudsman's Office has reported that between January 2016 and March 2017 there were 156 homicides, five forced disappearances and 33 cases of attacks against social leaders and human rights defenders. It attributes part of the phenomenon to the presence of armed groups that try to establish themselves in areas abandoned by the FARC. The United Nations has also reported in 2017 a total of 105 homicides of defenders and leaders of social movements in Colombia, in 59% of the cases carried out by mercenaries.
What happens is that policy has not changed. The State and the Government, starting with President Santos, have to draw up specific plans - based on the Havana agreements for countering and dismantling paramilitarism, and this has not been done. For example, since the beginning of 2016 the director of the Special Investigation Unit constituted in the Office of the Prosecutor had been appointed to dismantle the organizations responsible for massacres and paramilitarism; and it was at the end of November when the Attorney General appointed the new director of the Unit for the Dismantling of Criminal Organizations, Martha Jeaneth Mancera. In addition, the Office of the Prosecutor has documentation on 15,000 cases related to the action of civilians during the armed conflict, but no progress has been made judicially. What happens? The Attorney General of the Nation, Néstor Humberto Martínez, has been a lawyer for multinationals and has been linked to companies that financed the paramilitaries: it would be like attacking your friends.

In your Twitter account, you define yourself as Fariana, feminist and fighter for peace with social justice for Colombia. What is the weight of feminism in the People’s Alternative Revolutionary Party?
There are 111 people participating in the national leadership of the party - the National Council of the People, 26 of these are women. Among the 15 members of the Executive Committee of the FARC, there are four women. This is not really very serious, since we are part of a political party in transition from guerrilla life to civilian life.
The presence of women in the People’s Alternative Revolutionary Party is greater than in traditional parties. On the other hand we come from a political-military hierarchical structure - which in practice was very military -, and we have been doing a very hard job since the beginning of the peace negotiations, in September 2012, to open spaces for the participation of women and for the recognition of our role in the conflict. Obviously we continue fighting for greater representation, and that also means political education as well as gaining confidence in public life. However we don’t have public and political exercise established as a practice yet. But we are getting there.

On May 27 presidential elections will be held in Colombia, in which you participate as a candidate for the Senate for the FARC along with Iván Márquez, Pablo Catatumbo or Griselda Lobo. How will you contest them?
With the hope of participation and with great concern. We hoped that not only us, but also other parties and social movements with aspirations to participate in political life would be enabled to do so. But it will not be possible, because the Political Reform was not approved. We also have to compete the vote with very complicated practices, suffrage in Colombia is not mandatory and people are offered anything: a lunch, building materials, zinc, cement, a wire roll for their land plot. Many people give their vote in exchange for this, it is not a conscious choice.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights in Colombia recalls that senior state officials have declared, before the media, that murders of leaders Community and human rights defenders "are due to skirmish, fights among neighbors and illicit rents." According to the United Nations, "this is very dangerous since it seems to want to justify the murders". On the other hand, women of the FARC denounced in a press release that they will not allow anyone to “play” with their honour, using the issue of sexual violence to run a smear campaign against their male comrades.
This and other things are being used. For example sexual crimes committed during the conflict have been left out of the JEP. We had asked that those crimes shouldn’t be benefiting from neither amnesty nor pardon, and this would have apply to everyone.
We wanted those crimes to be judged by the JEP since they had never been judged by ordinary justice. Indeed in Colombia women are raped every day, and every three days a woman is killed in the countries, while there are 55 sexual abuses daily. Now that the Congress has approved to take out sexual crimes from the JEP and get them judged by ordinary justice, there is a campaign in the media saying that some of our people have committed sexual crimes.

The National Centre for Historic Memory stated that 15,076 people, women, and children in over 90% of the cases, have suffered from sexual violence during the 60 years of armed conflict. Has the body of women being used as a war weapon?
I think so, especially by the paramilitaries and the public security force. In the territories where paramilitaries were present, massacres and rapes were committed, and this is what we want to come out in the Truth Commission, because it was never investigated. It was said that massacres had occurred but it was never investigated what happened before and during those massacres. The Democratic Centre and the extreme right are currently busy trying to show that our men were involved in sexual crimes or drug dealing.

What makes a Fariana, a woman of the FARC?
The women of the FARC are a collective that has gained important quotes of equality inside the organization. Our struggle practice has not been just for the right of women but for the rights of the people of Colombia. This in a country so reactionary as ours. where women have been confined to the exclusively private world. In a collective way, the women of the FARC have built their proposals and guidelines - I don’t say theory, I am not that pretentious - around a feminism we call “insurgent feminism”, in which we affirm the emancipation of women and of the whole of society.
To elaborate this thought we have drawn on our insurgent practice, when we were equal men and women as in the revolutionary practice we have broken the established roles.

How would you define the project of the FARC Party?
I believe that as far as theory is concerned we have learned many lesson from the international context. The point is not whether our ideological and political line follows the marxist-leninist socialism, or is social-democratic or trotskyist or maoist. First of all we defend the self-determination of the peoples. The Colombian people as a whole needs to agree which kind of country they want. We then promote some principles like that of “well living” and social guarantees for the population. In other words, a more just society, call it socialism or whatever you want. We work for a more just society, “a la colombiana”.

What would you say has been the biggest achievement of the FARC since its foundation?
The Peace Agreement, because it put the basis for a different society and the elements of “well living”. In the Agreements we addressed the issues of victims, land, democracy and participation. Colombia is a country where people get murdered to think differently.

Which memories have affected you most during the war?
There have been very hard experiences, the hardest the loss of human lives. Comrades we have lost in the war, like Alfonso Cano. I was in his unit and he was my commander for many years and we had a very close and human relation. His loss affected me a lot. Like the loss of comrades who had stayed under my command. I remember Laura Gonzalez. But we also experienced many nice things, the collective life we lived and how we relate to each other. We had almost nothing, but the little we owned was shared. Now we are more dispersed, we have our single place in the territories or communities. There is more privacy.

Source: www.prensarural.org

http://farc-epeace.org/peace-process/ne ... ndino.html

Bolding added. I guess the second bolded paragraph explains a lot, the leadership has become liberals.
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Re: Colombia

Post by blindpig » Fri Jan 12, 2018 1:34 pm

Is Colombia the most dangerous country for trade unionists and social activists?

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Members of right-wing paramilitary terrorist group in Colombia.

Source: TeleSur.

"It is better not to say anything, it is better not to talk, not to speak, it is better to be silent to stay alive," a local priest said.

The murder of a social activist has become an almost weekly news event in Colombia as more than 100 community leaders have been killed over the past year by right-wing paramilitaries, Empire Files Abby Martin reports.

Just a year after the signing of what was thought to be the monumental movement towards peace with the country’s largest guerrilla group and Colombian government calling a truce, the violence targeting union and social leaders has rocketed.

In the last year, 170 leaders and social activists known for their various missions in defense of indigenous rights, coca rights substitution, Afro-Colombian rights, labor rights, and LGBTQ. The statistics show a sharp contrast from prior years where 2016 saw 117 and 63 in 2015.

The majority of violence has erupted in sectors left vacant by the guerrilla groups which have since been invaded by paramilitary groups. Of all of these, trade unions have risen to the top in the number of the nation's homicides and victims of violence and death threats, making Colombia the most dangerous nation for union members in the world.

Over the last 20 years, about 3,000 unionists have been murdered with an outrageous rate of impunity for the homicides measuring at 87 percent with thousands of death threats never being investigated.

“It is difficult to unionize in Colombia. Here, whoever complains is killed... And unfortunately, if we look at the statistics today, here in the municipality of Tumaco, we have roughly almost 60 unionists threatened or killed. We have 17 unionists dead, who are no longer with us just because they claimed the right to a dignified life, to land rights,” Carlos Diaz, Afro-Colombian leader and president of the teachers union, Seupac, told TeleSur.

Diaz related the case of a colleague who was an active representative of the Black communities and a member of the teacher’s union who was arrested and violently beaten within an inch of his life by police authorities after threatening to sue in the defense of educator labor rights.

“Today he is a quadriplegic who cannot speak, he stutters, he loses consciousness, his head was struck, he has multiple injuries all over his body and today, he’s running away...This partner, just because he made a complaint, they tried to silence him. They labeled him an enemy, as a government enemy,” he said, adding that simply sharing his perspective with TeleSur put him in the line of danger.

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“In our community the effect is that you cannot talk about anything, you cannot share anything. It is better not to say anything, it is better not to talk, not to speak, it is better to be silent to stay alive,” said a local pastor and spiritual leader of Luz Yeni Montano, a 48-year-old Tumacan activist who was gunned down in her home in November.

Diaz explained that extreme delays in the Colombian judicial process from one department to the next only aided the high rate of impunity to continue. Those who are subject to death threats are left to face their aggressors alone. Police will not react until the body of a unionist turns up on the side of the road, Diaz said. He added investigations will go on for years without ever reaching a conviction.

In an effort to maintain the situation, government officials have increased police forces by 9,000 units, however, many community members are wary of the teams of law enforcement infiltrating the country’s rural agricultural sectors.

“We do not trust them, because of so many things that have happened over the years. We have nothing against the police or against the army. We simply say that this is not the way. It increases the levels of violence instead of lowering them,” the Tumacan priest said.


According to a recent report published by the Institute of Studies for Peace Development, Indepaz, a Colombian non-governmental organization, the murders are highly localized to four regional departments: Nariño (28), Antioquia (23), Valle (14) and Choco (12). There were 32 assassinations alone in the community of San Jose de Apartado Cauca located in Antioquia.

* * *



PARAMILITARIES FLOOD ZONES VACATED BY THE FARC-EP.

25 July 2017.

Right-wing paramilitary forces continue to operate throughout the country inflicting terror on social and political movements, as well as on the civilian population.

While the peace process in Colombia has been welcomed by broad sections of Colombian society, the demobilization of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia has brought with it the swarming of paramilitary groups to rural regions the rebels left behind.

According to Leon Valencia, director of the Foundation for Peace and Reconciliation, there are whole families who are currently at risk due to the expansion of right-wing military groups who had once been deterred by the presence of the left-wing guerrilla group.

A month ago, the FARC handed in the last of its weapons to United Nations officials effectively ending 53 years of military war with the state. Many expected the demobilization of the country’s largest and most influential rebel group to mark the end of the devastating violence that has ravaged the country for decades.

However, the reality is that right-wing criminal bands continue to operate throughout the country inflicting terror on social and political movements, as well as on the civilian population in general.

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According to Periodistas en Español, for example, paramilitary groups have only recently re-entered San Jose de Apartado, a village that 10 years ago was the victim of one of Colombia’s worst modern day massacres at the hands of armed right-wing groups. Their presence in the area has been attributed to the FARC’s demobilization.

What’s even more concerning is that local military forces have been seen acting in cooperation with the paramilitaries with local residents reporting “commonplace meetings” between the two forces.

At a press conference Monday, FARC leader Ivan Marquez warned that the government’s lack of commitment to security protocols established in the peace accord was giving way to a resurgence of a “dirty war” by the ultra-right.

Since the demobilization process began, six demobilized rebels have been assassinated by paramilitary forces raising the concern of a repetition of the violence inflicted on the Patriotic Union party in the 1980s and 90s.

Juan Manuel Santos' government, which has previously denied the existence of paramilitary groups in the country, could eventually seriously dent or even lose the hard won peace agreement due to its failure to act to stop these increasingly destructive terrorist elements.

https://communismgr.blogspot.com/2018/0 ... or_11.html
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Re: Colombia

Post by blindpig » Mon Jan 15, 2018 4:17 pm

Ex-FARC Members and Social Leaders Ask UN to Mediate with Govt
Published 14 January 2018 (17 hours 33 minutes ago)

The meeting took place in the town of Mesetas, in the Meta department, to tour a center where FARC ex-guerrilla fighters prepare for their reintegration into society.
Ex-members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, now converted into a legal political party, need more guarantees for the reinsertion into civilian life, said Sunday the National Council of Reincorporation in a meeting with UN General Secretary Antonio Guterres.

The delegation of former FARC guerrillas and community leaders insisted on the general feeling of uncertainty that affected the former rebel group, as over 2,500 ex-fighters had still not received the credentials required so they could access various social and economic benefits included in the peace accord signed with the government.

The delegates also told the Portuguese diplomat that more than one year after the deal was signed in Havana, Cuba, 636 ex-fighters remained in Colombian prisons, even if they would be entitled to fundamental rights as agreed in the peace accord, because the Colombian government had still not updated its database.

Moreover, the council —created on a presidential decree to monitor the peace accords— expressed great concern over the more than 140 social leaders and 47 ex-guerrilla assassinated so far up to the date, urging the UN to accompany the peace process more closely.


“As guarantors and promoters of human rights, we respectfully ask them to mediate so the Colombian state fulfills its duties,” said the council.

As for the socio-economic security of the thousands of ex-FARC members, often campesinos before they became rebels, the representatives also condemned as “completely incoherent” the lack of political will to ease the access to lands for productive projects and housing.”

They reported that 42 cooperatives had been created so far in the 26 transitional peace zones.

Guterres arrived Saturday in Colombia for a two-day visit in support of the ongoing peace process which ended a 52-year-long struggle between the government and former guerrilla fighters.

Guterres' visit was announced just after the Colombian government suspended talks in Ecuador with the National Liberation Army (ELN), blaming them for three attacks on oil pipelines as the agreed ceasefire expired on January 9.

https://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/ ... -0016.html

this is sad. Ya just want to scream "Get out! Get out!" And the first time there is retaliation for these crimes the hammer will really come down with full state power.
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Re: Colombia

Post by blindpig » Tue Jan 16, 2018 2:42 pm

2018 will be the year of change and transformation, Timochenko
Written by Timoleón Jiménez

The Nobel Prize candidate in Economics, Albert Berry, says in his recent book "Advance and Failure in the Colombian Agriculture, XX and XXI Centuries" that by the year 1936 "the big landowners mounted a sophisticated campaign against the government that showed the hostility of the elite towards any intervention by the State in matters related to the land, stating that the Government was trying to destroy private property and warned about the threat of a revolution."

The problem was resolved in favor of the landowners and Colombia lost the opportunity to go on the path of inclusion, peace and progress.


On the contrary, the conditions for armed confrontation were generated. The Colombian countryside was covered in blood and death. The great popular leader Jorge Eliécer Gaitán was assassinated, like more than 300 thousand people. Almost 20% of the peasant population was displaced, losing their plots, farms and other possessions. Again defeated and banished, the peasants disperse through the national territory colonizing new lands and widening the agricultural border.

In Marquetalia, Riochiquito, El Pato, Guayabero and many other regions these peasants settled to produce the land: as their only help they have the experience, the permanent sacrifice, the solidarity between them and the deep conviction that from the State they can only expect repression and injustice.
They could not collect many harvests as they thought, because the incendiaries (literally) speeches in the Congress of the Republic of the conservative leader Álvaro Gómez Hurtado, together with the new American policy of the "internal enemy", ignited the next war against the peasants. The young Alvaro spoke of "independent republics", of liberated zones, of the loss of sovereignty of the State, all these fallacies against a handful of displaced peasants cornered in the fold of a mountain.

The heroic resistance of 48 peasants produced the formidable guerrilla force of the FARC-EP that was deployed throughout the country for more than 50 years, putting the reactionary powers in Colombia in check.

Half a century after the bloody confrontation, the Government of Juan Manuel Santos and the guerrilla of the FARC-EP, together with the international community as guarantor, signed a Peace Agreement, which was received and welcomed with joy by the vast majority of the Colombian people.

At gunpoint, in Colombia we had learned the value of democracy, of social justice and the cost of economic backwardness. We learned and changed. Álvaro Gómez Hurtado himself died being another: critical of the institutionality, promoter of political pacts and convinced that "things can be otherwise" (1).

Unfortunately there are those who try to corrupt the thread of history and repeat obsolete positions that cost the country so much. The young Rodrigo Lara is today the Álvaro Gómez of the last century, the latter at least defended the political class to which he belonged, Lara is defending the intellectual responsible for the murder of his father.

Rodrigo Lara Bonilla, the father, is a hero. Perhaps the last minister of justice who honored his position, for that reason they killed him, he did not let himself to be bought, he denounced Álvaro Uribe Vélez, owner of one of the aircraft found in Tranquilandia, the largest cocaine laboratory in history.
As an altruistic man, when he was very young he shouted at the same Congress where his son today opposes the peace seats for the victims: “Democracy is not defended by running over Human Rights". We do not fear the son, because we have in the father the inspiration to fight tirelessly for the better country he dreamed of.

Convinced that the Agreement opens the difficult road of building a better nation, where we all fit, where thinking differently or fighting against the underworld is not a reason to die.
We will dismantle, one by one, the obstacles to the implementation of peace reforms. With the strength of the conscience of millions of young people always ready to fight for their future, with the experience of millions of other workers who know how to achieve it, with the heroism of millions of peasants who resisted the war, with academics and intellectuals, poets, actresses, with the best of the Armed Forces and Police in the service of the Homeland and not of mafioso and corrupt landlords.

We know that no country in the world has been transformed from one day to the next. Even the creation of the world took God seven days and to be exact "seven periods."
In no way can these be solar days be because those were created by God, says the legend, only until the fourth day. So we do not know for sure how long the Genesis had taken, nor whether there was against this forms of uribism, ordoñismo, paramilitarism that is the same but different, 526 years of submission to foreign interests and forces, although it is said that at the time of the creation "there was darkness".

We all have to do it again because as it is, it does not work. And that takes time, you have to awaken creativity and organization of society at all levels.
You have to take advantage of the fact that today in Colombia the issues are debated everywhere, there is no corner of the country where the most serious problems of society are not debated: health, work, housing, corruption, education, culture.

Most Colombians reject the Congress, the old political parties, the media, justice, the businessmen.
In other words, Colombians do not believe in the State or its institutions.
That is the real crisis and at the same time the great opportunity for change.

The new People’s Party, as a revolutionary party must see clearly the historical moment of transformation in Colombia and in the world.

Our political project is the one of the political, economic and social demands of the new Colombian nation, of social justice, of equity, of opportunities for all, it is full freedom for blacks, whites, pink and with little lines.

Never the future of the People’s Party had been so certain, because we have never existed by the handouts of anyone, because we have built the reason for our being shoulder to shoulder with millions of Colombians: that is our history and our certainty.

We will win!

Rodrigo Londoño Echeverry / Timo
President of the People's Alternative Revolutionary Party

http://farc-epeace.org/blogs/timoleon-j ... henko.html

Timo is entirely given over to idealism and leads his people to slaughter. Why does he think it will be different this time?
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Colombia

Post by blindpig » Tue Jan 16, 2018 4:41 pm

FARC Women Press Release

The Farian women denounced the massive dismissal of more than 748 women from the company Aguas de Bogotá.

A significant number of women and families of the capital, enters the ranks of the unemployed in the country.

We are accompanying the women of Aguas de Bogotá in their just struggle, we reject the labor massacre that is taking place and we demand from the State the protection of labor rights and guarantees of access to decent work for Colombian women.

The situation of workers in Colombia is not encouraging, the precariousness of hiring, informality, outsourcing, unemployment and the loss of important guarantees conquered by workers are a plague that affects the vast majority of the population, especially women.

In Colombia, national unemployment hits more women and it’s higher than that of men, about half of the women who work do so in the informal sector.

In the case of the capital city, the Observatory of Women and Gender Equality in Bogotá notes that the unemployment rate for women stands at 10.2%, while their income is constantly decreasing.

The growth of informality and the growth of poverty among women increase social inequality and affect the quality of life of women workers and their families.

http://farc-epeace.org/background/item/ ... lease.html

As with the Soviet Union and the American middle class so with FARC and these workers. The threat FARC posed compelled the capitalists to draw back their fangs a little, no need for that now.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Colombia

Post by blindpig » Fri Jan 19, 2018 2:13 pm

UN Condemns Killings of Two FARC Politicians and Ex-Combatants
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on JANUARY 18, 2018
“Avoid a new political genocide” a FARC statement demanded, calling for the dismantling of paramilitary structures.

FARC Statement

Image
U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres visits reinsertion centres of former FARC rebels on Jan. 14.

The U.N. Verification Mission in Colombia condemned “the murders of Wilman Asprilla and Ansel Montoya, FARC members who were participating in electoral activities in the municipality of Peque, in the department of Antioquia” in a statement released late Wednesday.

The two FARC ex-combatants were gunned down at a parking lot after meeting with local community members at a political event to organize the campaign efforts for candidate Wilman de Jesús Cartagena, who would have been killed had he attended the meeting.

Cartagena is running for Congress as a representative of Colombia’s Revolutionary Alternative Forces of the Commons, the party that emerged from the former FARC guerrilla group after a peace treaty was signed with the Colombian government last year.

FARC called the attack “a grave infringement of peace” and denounced the “systematic murders of our leaders”, which resulted in the killing of at least 30 ex-combatants, while urging the government to “act in order to avoid a new political genocide.”

Today’s targeting of left-wing political figures by paramilitary forces in Colombia is reminiscent of the physical extermination of over 3,500 members of the left-wing Union Patriotica party during the 80s and 90s.

In 2014, the Office of the Attorney General of Colombia declared the actions as crimes against humanity and determined they had been perpetrated by members of traditional political parties in collaboration with state forces, drug dealers and paramilitary groups.

Union Patriotica was formed by factions of subversive movements, including FARC and the National Liberation Army, which had decided to work for peace, joining Colombia’s political-electoral system. This historical event and the current targeting of ex-combatants and social and political leader constitute the most important obstacles for peace.

The United Nations Mission in Colombia, which is charged with verifying the reintegration of ex-combatants and the fulfillment of the peace treaty called on Colombian authorities to “guarantee the free exercise of political rights during the electoral process.”

FARC members have also received death threats by right-wing paramilitary forces that oppose the peace treaty signed by Colombia’s President Juan Manuel Santos. Earlier this week in Cali a paramilitary group distributed pamphlets that read: “We will assassinate every single one of you.”

Santos’ government has denied the existence of paramilitary groups in the country, despite repeated warnings by the United Nations.



https://libya360.wordpress.com/2018/01/ ... ombatants/

Other videos & link at link

I trust Empire Files as far as I can throw Abby Martin....often OK, but wait for the foul zinger.
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Re: Colombia

Post by blindpig » Thu Jan 25, 2018 3:48 pm

The country of skeptics that must be left behind
Written by Gabriel Ángel

It starts in earnest this 2018, in the midst of the difficulties of the tropical country that we had to live in.

That a bridge built by a company of the many that make up the tangle of the largest capitals in the country collapses, and that it costs the lives of a large number of its workers, is just typical of our Macondian reality.

Judicious investigations are announced that we know from the beginning will lead to nothing. It is clear that the law here is for those of ruana. That is why it does not matter much whether two former FARC guerrillas are murdered by unknown assailants in a lost town of Bajo Cauca. After all, what were they doing holding political meetings there without the due protection?

Who does not know that in Colombia there are territories dominated by narco-paramilitary mafias, where control over mining and the movements of its inhabitants are subject to careful scrutiny. So it's not strange for reincorporated FARC members to be killed in one of those corners. After all, the war must have left many resentments.

Similarly, a military helicopter crashing into the ground in the mining area of ​​Antioquia, with the tragic balance of ten Colombians killed, is just one more anecdote in our nation. It is normal that the suspicion indicates that it has been hit from the ground by ELN guerrillas or criminal gangs that are strong in the area.

As it is normal that the military high command immediately speaks to disprove the imagery of this society eaten away by distrust, with the unambiguous argument that the statements of a number of witnesses completely rule out that possibility. It was simply a strange accident to investigate.

In the same way, no one is surprised when six police officers are victims of an ambush set up by one of those dissident groups of the FARC that abandoned the peace process. We live in a country where, when the guerrilla violence of the largest and most powerful insurgent organization ends thanks to a Peace Agreement, thousands of other violence take the stage.

That's why the up and down with the ELN is not disconcerting. It would have been strange shouldn’t happen that way. For two consecutive months, a bilateral ceasefire was in place, which was supposed to be extended when the talks in Quito were resumed. For whatever it was, things did not happen as expected, so the blasting, the attacks and the official operations return.

In spite of the fact that the whole country is calling for an agile return to both the peace talks and the shattered ceasefire. The pope, the secretary general of the UN, the communities trapped by the confrontation, the FARC party, the whole of the nation ask for it. But when, in Colombia, has sanity been the dominant rule?

As was evident at the Cartagena summit, with the presence of international observers assessing the compliance with the Havana Agreements, the national government, or better, the Colombian State, has been too negligent, not to say indisposed to comply with the given word. Has the establishment ever complied with someone?

So nothing prevents starting the year with a hectic election campaign. First for the legislative power of the country, and then for the Presidency of the Republic. And what do the most serious aspirants to the top positions of national leadership offer to Colombia? Except for some honorable exceptions that really look to the future, what is clear is that it is the same as always.

Worse still with the most renowned and wealthy among them, who rather than looking to the future aspire to return to a past even more infamous than the present we live. It is sad to see the very low average participation of Colombians in the polls, which barely exceeded by half a point 43% of the potential of the voters in the elections to Congress in 2014.

And that barely reached 40% of the electoral census in the elections that took Juan Manuel Santos for the second time to the Presidency of the Republic, not to mention that, within the total of the vote, were counted almost eight hundred thousand blank votes, a nothing negligible 6%.

From all of which it follows that we are a country of skeptics, that does not believe in anything or anyone.

And that is why it carries the cross that crushes it behind his back.

But there is an alternative, a new way of doing politics, of taking to power the power of the absent people forever in making decisions that affect it. And that on the 27th of this month will be publicly launched on stage in a public event in Ciudad Bolívar.

The country will soon hear it.

Last modified on Wednesday, 24 January 2018 08:25

http://farc-epeace.org/blogs/gabriel-an ... ehind.html

Let us hope it can be heard over the rattle of fascist machine guns but I doubt it.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Colombia

Post by blindpig » Thu Jan 25, 2018 9:02 pm

FARC Political Campaign Office attacked in Chocó

The People’s Alternative Revolutionary Force Party - FARC denounces and rejects the takeover of our political campaign headquarters located in the Cerrara 9 # 24A-80, Barrio Chamblum, Quibdó.

The comrades of the Party, including a pregnant one, were first subdued, outraged, forces into the back of our headquarters and then intimidated by the criminals, to deliver their belongings, which were stolen.

Curiously until now no office of any other traditional political parties in Quibdó had suffered any harassment like the one we suffered.

The national campaign of intimidation carried out by Clan del Golfo against our FARC party under the open threat, made public from Cali, of "destroying the headquarters of the FARC party" seems to have begun to be operative in Quibdó.

We declare to the State security agencies, to the Government of President Juan Manuel Santos, to the United Nations Organization, the guarantor of the reincorporation into political life of former guerrillas of the extinct FARC-EP and today militants of the New Political Party, People’s Alternative Revolutionary Force-FARC; that the safeguard of the lives of our militants, both in Quibdó and in the entire Department of Chocó, is in their hands.

Since we are operating in legal political life, 36 former guerrillas have been killed: will they continue to allow these systematic murders by the enemies of the peace process and their implementation to continue happening?

In the same way we emphasize: they have the authority and duty to provide all the security guarantees for the development of the political action of the New Political Party FARC within the framework of the current parliamentary electoral campaign.

We make manifest our unwavering commitment to continue working for the pacification of the Department of Chocó in the framework of peace building processes, and we advocate that all the armed actors of the conflict in force today; ELN and Clan del Golfo, are able to achieve the understanding required to make the dream of a complete peace a reality.

We call on the UN to declare and demand from the Colombian State the fulfillment of what was agreed in the Peace Agreement signed by JM Santos and the FARC-EP, which made it possible to stop a 53-year war and begin building a stable and lasting peace.

Likewise, we demand that security and appropriate protection measures be provided to our premises and our workers; so to have guaranteed the real participation in the development of political activities without any kind of fears.

DEPARTMENTAL COUNCIL OF THE PEOPLES OF THE FARC PARTY - CHOCÓ.

LOCAL COUNCIL OF THE PEOPLES OF THE QUIBDÓ FARC PARTY.

Quibdó, 24 January 2018

http://farc-epeace.org/peace-process/ne ... C3%B3.html

The 'hits' just keep coming............
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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