MORE INFORMATION SPECIAL peace Process in Colombia And negotiated the peace with the FARC in Colombia
The Diaz family Tapasco was about to go to sleep. Were the ten of the night in the town of the indigenous reservation of San Lorenzo, in the coffee axis of colombia. Four hooded men broke into the home and descerrajaron at close range, the community leader, his wife and his son, coordinator of the school. The daughter managed to escape. The killing occurred a few hours ago, this Friday, in a rural area of the municipality of Riosucio, in the center of the country, and is the nth episode of a terrible routine. When they meet two years of the signing of the peace accords with the FARC, the violence continues beating Colombia,
on 24 November 2016, the president Juan Manuel Santos and the leader of the insurgent group, Rodrigo Londoño,Tymoshenko, put officially an end to more than half a century of armed conflict. Ended up indeed a war, about 13,000 combatants demobilized, surrendered their arms and were integrated into a political party. But the ultimate meaning of the agreements was to develop a profound transition and a new stage of coexistence that, at least in the colombian countryside, is still pending. Each agency handles its figures, but the vast majority agrees that since that day have been perpetrated more than 200 murders of social leaders and human rights defenders. That is, almost one every three days. According to the calculation of the Ombudsman’s office, between January 1, 2016, in the throes of negotiation, and on the 22nd of August, the fatalities amounted to 343.
Saints: “The colombians have to make an effort to continue building the peace”
The former colombian president, Juan Manuel Santos, highlighted in a video broadcast Saturday that in the first 100 days of his Government, “were presented 154 violent acts on the part of the FARC” and “in the first 100 days of the Government of the Duke has not been presented, nor a single violent act by the FARC”. “Both the secretary-general of the United Nations and the European Union said this week that the peace of Colombia continues to be the best news for the world,” he added. What is the peace of the Saints?, some people are questioning themselves. The answer is no. It is the peace of all colombians, and all colombians have to make an effort to continue building it, because this is how we are going to leave our children a better country.”.
the United Nations and the European Union, that have accompanied the process of implementation of what was agreed with the FARC, we have reported this Saturday that, despite the undoubted progress, the peace, real and tangible, yet it is far away. The two instances regret in a joint statement, “the situation of violence that continue living in regions such as Catatumbo, Nariño or Cauca, where […] the communities still lack fundamental guarantees”. These lands, located at the border with Venezuela and Trbet on the Pacific coast, are the main stage of the dispute between mafias, paramilitary groups, guerrillas, dissidents, and the National Liberation Army (ELN), the main organization of insurgent still active in Colombia. All seek to gain control of the illegal economies, starting with the drug trade, in a country where last year the coca crops over 200,000 acres, that is to say, more than three times the size of a city like Madrid.
The human rights defenders and community leaders are the weakest link in the rural ecosystem and confirm the special representative of the UN secretary-general, Jean Arnault, and the envoy of the EU for peace, Eamon Gilmore. “One of the terms most negative of this violence is the persistence of the assassination of social leaders”, they say. The challenge, in his opinion, is to deploy the State where you have not done so: “to Increase the presence of state institutions in order to reach the territories of the dividends of peace to which communities aspire to: security, education, health, land, infrastructure, and development opportunities alternatives to illegal economies”. “The task,” they continue, “is immense, the articulation of all the institutions essential to, the contribution of regional actors to their own development decisive”.
At that horizon of uncertainty is compounded by the difficulties and delays that have marked the implementation of the agreements. The Force is a Revolutionary Alternative to the Common, the party heir of the guerrillas, went into the Congress, but it is deeply divided. Two of its main leaders, the former number two of the organization, Iván Márquez and Hernán Darío Velásquez, The Paisas, are in unknown whereabouts, in protest at the arrest of Jesus Santrich, another excomandante who is awaiting extradition to the united States for an offence of drug trafficking. And, though Tymoshenko is seen to be faithful to the commitment assumed by personally with Juan Manuel Santos, in a letter sent yesterday to Arnault highlights that “there have been very limited progress achieved in the implementation of the peace agreement, in particular with regard to the issue of access to land”.
The Government of the new president, Ivan Duke, who won the election with the promise to modify the agreements of Havana, has avoided commemorate the second anniversary of the signing. The representative, however, referred to the killing of Riosucio, and the murder of a 13 year old child in the Comuna 13 of Medellín, former territory of the cartel of Pablo Escobar. “It hurts us, touches us to the soul and I have asked the minister of Defence that we have to seek the capture of those behind this terrible, horrible crime, which clouds the territory of peace and ancestral community”, he emphasized. “Those facts are that we don’t want to continue repeating in the country and that’s why we have to work articulately the State and the citizenry to denounce and punish.”
