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News > Latin America

FARC Warns of Paramilitary Threats in Disarmament Zones

  • Colombia's FARC rebel leader Rodrigo Londono, known as Timochenko, speaks during a news conference alongside FARC Commander Pastor Alape in Bogota, Colombia Nov. 25, 2016.

    Colombia's FARC rebel leader Rodrigo Londono, known as Timochenko, speaks during a news conference alongside FARC Commander Pastor Alape in Bogota, Colombia Nov. 25, 2016. | Photo: Reuters

Published 21 May 2017
Opinion

The FARC is complying with its part of the peace deal, while the government delays implementation of the peace accord.

In an open letter to Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos, Rodrigo "Timochenko" Londoño, leader of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, FARC, deplored the Supreme Court's decision to end the fast tracking of peace talks in the Congress.

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While the FARC units have handed over part of their armaments to the United Nations, as agreed to in the peace accords, the Colombian government is taking too long to fulfill its promises, Timochenko said, adding that the state's leaders were acting “in a suspicious way.”

He also criticized the UN directly for letting a paramilitary group, under the name of the Nuevas Guerrillas Unidas del Pacifico, take over rivers in the border region of Ecuador, in an area where the FARC units are disarming. He said that the members of the guerrilla group were about 20 years old on average and that they could not have grown without the support of the military.

In a surprise decision, that could be a major impediment to the ongoing process to end the 52-year-long Colombian conflict, the country's Constitutional Court struck down the plan to "fast track" the approval of the deal in the Congress, declaring parts of the measure unconstitutional.

From now on, the laws and reforms that are related to the peace accords and protections for demobilized FARC members will have to be voted on article by article, rather than in blocks, which will slow down the approval process significantly by potentially creating more opportunities for interference and change in the agreements.

In response, various FARC leaders have said that their units were in a state of alert.

The fast track process, had been approved by the court last December to allow the Congress to carry out a special legislative procedure that would accelerate the implementation of the historic peace deal between the government and the FARC guerilla army. It sped up the approval process for key bills needed to implement the peace agreement, most notably an amnesty bill that gave guarantees of safety to FARC members after they demobilized.

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With FARC demobilization still underway, with UN supervision, the court decision casts doubt over the future of the process.

The Colombian conflict erupted in 1964 when the FARC and National Liberation Army, known as the ELN, took up arms for rural land rights. The conflict drew in various rebel and paramilitary forces, narcotic gangs and state forces, leaving at least 260,000 people dead and displacing more than 7 million others, according to authorities.

Ending the 52-year long conflict between the government and FARC has been a long and difficult process. In recent months, many regions formerly controlled by FARC have demobilized, and power vacuums have opened up giving space to right-wing paramilitaries to gain footholds in areas with lucrative illegal economies. In some areas, violence has actually increased as a result of the FARC demobilization.

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