Headlines, Human Rights, Latin America & the Caribbean

COLOMBIA: FARC Makes Its Presence Felt Ahead of Elections

Constanza Vieira

BUCARAMANGA, Colombia, Mar 3 2006 (IPS) - While the National Liberation Army (ELN) declared a truce for the Mar. 12 legislative elections in Colombia, the much larger Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) has brought activity in at least 10 of the country’s provinces to a total or partial halt, while carrying out bloody attacks on civilians.

On Monday, members of the FARC opened fire on a city council meeting, killing nine city councilors, in the town of Rivera in the southern department (province) of Huila. The killings came just after Saturday’s attack on a crowded bus in the southern department of Caquetá.

The bus was driving through the Caguán war zone, where the FARC had declared a ban on the movement of all vehicles. The Defence Ministry had promised military protection for the passengers. Nine civilians were killed – including two children – and 11 injured when the rebels fired on the vehicle.

The two incidents were condemned as war crimes by the United Nations and by leading human rights groups like Amnesty International and the Paris-based International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH).

“From no point of view can these killings of civilians by the FARC be justifiedàThe obligation of all combatants is to protect civilians,” Jorge Castellanos told IPS.

For Castellanos, the director of the Corporation for Development of the East, which monitors human rights in the departments of Arauca, Norte de Santander, Cesar and Santander, of which Bucaramanga is the capital, the FARC could have taken political advantage of “the armed forces’ irresponsibility towards the civilian population.”

The human rights defender was referring to the fact that the military abandoned the bus in the middle of the conflict zone when it got a flat tire.

The FARC could instead have “retained the passengers in a show of strength, to demonstrate that the government has no control over that area,” and later turn them over to a humanitarian commission, while respecting the integrity of the civilian passengers, he said.

Castellanos noted that the passengers on buses like the one that the FARC attacked are usually local small farmers or small traders just trying to make a living.

“In taking their lives because the government failed to protect them, the FARC has lost all sense of proportion and forgotten humanitarian principles,” he remarked.

The activist said the FARC had committed a war crime, which has no statute of limitations, and which will undoubtedly go to an international court of justice, because such an atrocity cannot be subject to any amnesty, and “all it does is further complicate the possibilities for peace and negotiations in Colombia.”

Information on the military situation in civil war-torn Colombia is piecemeal at best. But apparently the FARC, Colombia’s biggest insurgent group, has sabotaged gas distribution all along the country’s Caribbean coast, as well as energy supplies in at least 11 municipalities in the northwestern department of Antioquia.

The “armed strike” declared by the FARC has cut off supplies to the departments of Nariño and Putumayo, along the southwestern border with Ecuador, the neighbouring departments of Huila, Caquetá and Guaviare, the Amazon jungle departments of Vaupés and Guanía in the east, the oil-producing departments of Arauca and Casanare in the northeast, and the department of Chocó on the Pacific Ocean, in the west.

The FARC, which has as many as 46,000 members, according to some observers, also has control over roads in the extreme northern department of La Guajira, which borders Venezuela.

As of Thursday, the armed strike had caused 2.2 million dollars in losses to the trucking industry.

The local press has interpreted FARC’s recent actions as a boycott of the upcoming elections. But statements issued by the insurgent group could indicate other motives.

“What is at stake in these elections is the future of Colombia, reconciliation and the reconstruction of the country in peace, the possibility of structural changes that have been repressed for so many years, social justice, sovereignty and real democracy,” the FARC said on Feb. 14.

“Colombians should keep all of these things in mind with respect to the coming elections,” the group added.

By contrast, a communiqué issued by the ELN leadership states that the insurgent group – the second-largest in Colombia – “will not carry out any military actions that could affect the Mar. 12 elections.”

The ELN, which has 4,500 members according to military sources, urged voters to “look towards those candidates who are committed to peace and are willing to support the transformations that the country needs.”

In December, the ELN and the government of right-wing Colombian President Álvaro Uribe began to meet in the Cuban capital to hold preliminary talks exploring the possibility of formal peace negotiations.

Both the FARC and the ELN have been at war with the government since 1964, demanding in-depth social changes in this country of 43 million, which is marked by severe social inequalities.

Also involved in the armed conflict is the extreme-right paramilitary umbrella group, the United Self-Defence Forces of Colombia (AUC), which has close ties to the drug trade.

After controversial closed-door negotiations with the Uribe administration, AUC has partially demobilised, apparently in exchange for guarantees that the group’s leaders will not be extradited for trial abroad.

Uribe, who formally launched his campaign for reelection in the May presidential elections on Wednesday, won his first term in 2002 promising to expand military control over the enormous swaths of territory in the hands of the guerrillas.

Internationally, his administration enjoys an image that his security policy has been successful.

Despite his harsh criticism of the recent actions by the FARC, Castellanos says the group is “developing a political strategy, but as an armed organisation that vindicates politics and sees its cause as the building of a society that respects people.”

Through opposition presidential candidate Álvaro Leyva, who recently interviewed FARC commander “Manuel Marulanda”, also known as “Tirofijo” (Sureshot), “we have found out that the FARC wants to talk to the country about a political blueprint, a political solution to the war in Colombia,” said Castellanos. “And it is necessary to know how to interpret what FARC is doing,” he recommended.

With its latest military offensive, the FARC “is demanding recognition that it is a political, not a terrorist, force,” and is calling for “a change in Colombian politics, and dialogue with society,” he added.

He also predicted that “new military events lie ahead, which will have political connotations,” and will open up new spaces for negotiations.

While Uribe has tried to show in the campaign that the guerrillas are backed into a corner, the FARC has demonstrated that it has not been defeated militarily, despite the fact that nearly seven percent of gross domestic product goes towards defence and security, and in spite of the heavy military aid from the United States and Britain, said the activist.

“It’s a message for the world, because at this moment, no armed conflict takes place in isolation,” said Castellanos, who is convinced that in Colombia today, “the weapons-based approach is in crisis, both that of Uribe as well as that of FARC.”