Articles

Former Colombia leader pans peace talks with rebels
April 14 2013
AFP
SANTIAGO — Colombia’s former leader Alvaro Uribe had harsh criticism Saturday for current President Juan Manuel Santos’s peace overtures to leftist rebels, whom he likened to infamous drug kingpins.
In an interview published Saturday in Chile’s El Mercurio daily, Uribe compared the crimes of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) with the worst acts committed by notorious drug lord Pablo Escobar.
Uribe urged his successor to deal more severely with leftist fighters rather than treating them “with impunity.”
(read more)

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Colombian authorities row over Farc jail terms.
BBC
April 12 2013
Colombia’s attorney-general has said members of the rebel group Farc could escape jail terms should a peace deal be struck. Eduardo Montealegre was reacting to earlier suggestions that Colombia could become a “rogue state” if an agreement allowed rebels to walk free. Mr Montealegre said no Farc activists had yet been found guilty of crimes against humanity.
This week, thousands of people marched in support of the peace talks in Cuba. The demonstrations, on Wednesday, came as Mr Montealegre announced that arrest orders against six Farc members had been suspended as part of the negotiations.
The activists are said to be part of Farc’s negotiating team taking part in the talks aimed at ending five decades of violence. (read more)

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After It Makes Peace, Colombia Must Govern.
By Adam Isacson
12 April 2013
Colombians under 65 cannot remember living in a country at peace. Internal armed conflict has raged almost continuously in the South American nation since 1948. With talks ongoing between the government and the larger of the country’s two leftist guerrilla groups, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), Colombians may soon discover what peace is like. But they may find it only a bit more peaceful or secure than what came before.
The talks taking place in Havana, Cuba, which are the fourth peace process attempted with the FARC since 1982, have a better-than-even chance of resulting in an accord.
(article)
© Copyright World Politics Review 2013

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Colombian government, FARC rebels conclude another peace talks round; no deal on land issues.
Andrea Rodriguez
March 22 2013
Colombia’s government and largest guerrilla army closed another round of peace talks Thursday without reaching a much-anticipated deal on agrarian reform, the first of six agenda points for negotiations taking place in Havana. Lead government negotiator Humberto de la Calle said his team and its counterparts from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, will recess as planned and resume negotiations April 2. He expressed optimism that the two sides will be able to wrap up land discussions swiftly and move on to the second item on the agenda.
“The conversations are advancing about as could be expected,” de la Calle said. Expectations had been high that an initial agreement was imminent on land issues, which were the root cause of Colombia’s five-decade armed conflict. (read more)

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Colombia rebels say peace requires social ‘justice’
Agence France-Presse
March 20, 2013
Colombia’s leftist FARC rebels said Wednesday that an end to Latin America’s longest-running armed conflict would only come about as a result of policies providing for social “justice.”
The Colombian government has been holding talks with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) in Cuba since November in a bid to end a conflict that began as a peasant revolt against inequality in the 1960s.
“The government should not forget that peace cannot be reduced to an end to the military confrontation or the demobilization of the insurgency. Peace is the fruit of justice,” said Jesus Santrich, a rebel delegate to the talks. (read more)

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Las FARC piden desmilitarozar estado, sociedad y el campo.
AFP
March 19, 2013
El gobierno debe avanzar en la “desmilitarización de las zonas rurales, de la sociedad y del Estado, que implique el abandono de la doctrina de la ‘seguridad nacional’ impuesta por el Pentágono”, dijo Iván Márquez, jefe de la delegación guerrillera en el diálogo de paz en La Habana.
Márquez formuló esta propuesta a su llegada al Palacio de las Convenciones de La Habana, sede del diálogo de paz entre la guerrilla y la delegación del gobierno de Juan Manuel Santos, encabezada por el ex vicepresidente Humberto de la Calle, que se abstuvo de hacer declaraciones a la prensa.
Esta demanda de las Farc está contenida en un pliego de “nueve propuestas mínimas de Justicia social territorial y política macroeconómica para la paz”, presentado en esta jornada.
Ambas delegaciones, que iniciaron las conversaciones el 19 de noviembre, discuten el problema agrario de Colombia, el primer punto de una agenda de cinco que incluye la participación política, drogas ilícitas, abandono de las armas y reparación a las víctimas.
El lunes, Santos expresó en Bogotá su confianza en alcanzar un acuerdo con las Farc antes de fin de año y firmar la paz con la principal y más antigua fuerza guerrillera del país.
“Es un proceso de paz que tiene al mundo entero pendiente”, dijo Santos, y agregó que “por eso somos optimistas de que si seguimos como vamos, vamos a lograr, ojalá, la paz en este país, Dios quiera, antes de finalizar el año, si las cosas se dan como queremos que se den”.
(artículo)
© Copyright AFP 2013

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Colombie : explosion mortelle attribuée aux FARC avant la reprise des pourparlers de paix.
 Le Monde.fr avec AFP
11.03.2013
Deux soldats ont été tués et deux enfants grièvement blessés dimanche 10 mars dans l’explosion d’un engin piégé dans le nord-ouest de la Colombie, un attentat attribué à la guérilla des FARC, avant la reprise des pourparlers de paix avec le gouvernement, ont annoncé lundi les autorités locales.
L’explosion s’est produite dans un secteur rural de San Andrés de Cuerquia, une localité d’environ 7 000 habitants située à 560 kilomètres de Bogota, dans la province d’Antioquia. “Les soldats ont perdu la vie après l’activation d’un explosif déclenché à distance par un téléphone portable”, a indiqué son maire, Oscar Sepúlveda. Deux enfants, des cousins de 4 et 11 ans, ont également été blessés à la tête, aux jambes et au thorax. Ils ont été transportés dans “un état grave” à l’hôpital de Medellin, la capitale de la province, a-t-il précisé.
L’attentat a été attribué, selon l’élu, à la guérilla d’extrême gauche des Forces armées révolutionnaires de Colombie (FARC), la principale rébellion du pays qui mène actuellement des négociations de paix avec le gouvernement, mais sans cessez-le-feu. “Les autorités ont lancé les poursuites contre ces guérilleros”, a affirmé M. Sepulveda.
Cette explosion survient à la veille de la reprise des pourparlers qui se déroulent depuis novembre à La Havane, dans l’espoir de sceller la paix avec la rébellion la plus ancienne d’Amérique latine, dont les effectifs sont estimés à 8 000 combattants. Né il y a près d’un demi-siècle, le conflit colombien, mêlant plusieurs guérillas communistes, des groupes paramilitaires d’extrême droite et des bandes de narcotrafiquants, a fait quelque 600 000 morts, 15 000 disparus et près de 4 millions de déplacés.
(article)
 © Copyright Le monde 2013
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Colombia: Ex-lawmaker guilty in massacre
March. 7, 2013
BOGOTA, March 7 (UPI) — Colombia’s Judicial Court has convicted a former congressman for his involvement in a paramilitary massacre of 43 civilians in 1988, officials said.
Colombia Reports said Cesar Perez was found guilty Wednesday and is awaiting sentencing. He is expected to receive 25 to 30 years in prison.
An ex-paramilitary leader, Negro Vladimir, accused the former congressman of financing the massacre in Segovia to gain political control of the area, Colombia Reports said.
The massacre came after the leftist Union Patriotica party won elections in Segovia in 1988.
“He [Perez] asked Henry de Jesus Perez and Fidel Castano to remove the leftists from Segovia, a municipality where the majority supported the Union Patriotica, so he could have absolute political control over the region,” Vladimir said.
The massacre was not investigated until 2010, Colombia Reports said, and officials captured Perez in July of the same year.
(article)
© 2013 United Press International, Inc

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We are not drug traffickers: FARC
Olle Ohlsen Pettersson
25 FEBRUARY 2013
One of the leaders of Colombia’s largest guerrilla group, the FARC, on Sunday said that they are not a drug trafficking organization and though they have entered into peace negotiations with the government, they have not relinquished their desire to “take power” and change Colombian politics.
Rodrigo Granda, considered the FARC’s foreign minister, told newspaper El Colombiano that the accusations that the FARC is nothing but a drug trafficking organization “is a shame.”
“We are not drug traffickers, we are an organization with clear political policy ideas and for this reason the government is obliged to sit down and talk with us. Colombia would not sit down with a group of drug traffickers, Cuba would not sit as a guarantor with a group of drug traffickers, Venezuela and Chile would not sit down with with a group of drug dealers, I don’t think Norway has recieved a group of drug traffickers,” said Granda, referring to the four countries who have observed the peace process thus far. (read more)

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Human rights advocate killed every 5 days in Colombia: NGO
21 February 2013
Narayan Buckley
In 2012, a human rights advocate in Colombia was reportedly assaulted every 20 hours and assassinated every five days.
The NGO “Somos Defendores” (We are Defenders) released its annual report on human rights advocacy in Colombia last week, and the news was not good.
There was a 49% increase in individual assaults on human rights advocates (HRAs) in 2012 compared to 2011, and of the total number of attacks, 19% resulted in a homicide and 14% in physical assault. While the majority of attacks came in the form of threats, 69 HRAs were murdered and 50 were beaten.
The director of Somos Defensores, Diana Sanchez, said that this was partly due to a flawed government protection strategy.
“The [government] policy focuses on physical protection [for HRAs], but protection goes far beyond the physical, and there also needs to be a focus on prevention and policy measures…[like] the research and monitoring of those actors which are targeting different sectors of society,” Sanchez told Colombia Reports.
Sanchez pointed out that many of the HRAs most at risk are in remote and troubled areas, particularly the Colombian department of Nariño, Valle del Cauca, Choco, Cauca and Antioquia.
While Sanchez did state that the government has engaged — and continues to engage — in disucssions over how best to tackle the precarious position of HRAs in Colombia, she said that so far it has “failed to provide a political climate which prevents agression towards [human rights] leaders.”
(article)
Copyright Colombia Reports 2013

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For earlier articles, please see the “Archived Updates” section on Colombia’s page.

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