FARC Calls on Colombia to Honor Peace Accords, Stop Violence

By teleSUR

04 October 17

Five former combatants, nine militiamen and 11 relatives of members of the FARC have been murdered since the peace agreement.

embers of the National Political Council of the Revolutionary Alternative Forces of the Commons, FARC, rejects the threats and violence which have claimed the lives of 25 people since signing peace accords with the government last November, the group said in a statement.

“Since the signing of the peace agreement, five former combatants, nine militiamen and 11 relatives of members of the FARC have been murdered,” the group said.

The FARC went on to say that the victims of these crimes have not received justice from the Prosecutor’s Office. Allowing these crimes to go unpunished, it said, violates multiple sections of the peace agreement.

The agreement ensured the safety and protection of "communities and community leaders, human rights defenders, parties and political and social movements, and especially the new movement or political party that emerges from the transit of the FARC to legal political activity.”

“We demand that the National Government fully guarantee that within the framework of the signed peace agreements, these threats will not remain in impunity, given their seriousness," the FARC said.

"This has consequences for our society."

The political group announced plans to call an immediate meeting with the National Commission on Security Guarantees to investigate the seriousness of the situation which, they claim, are harming the reintegration process of combatants, families, communities and territories where the “Territorial Areas of Reintegration and Training are located, as well as those where the FARC has historically been present.”

The organization is also requesting intervention from the U.N. Special Political Verification Mission as well as former Uruguayan President Pepe Mujica and former Spanish President Felipe Gonzalez to verify the observance of the peace agreement.

“We call on all sectors of society, who long for peaceful coexistence for our country, to speak out and mobilize in defense of life, as a fundamental premise for stable and lasting peace,” the FARC wrote. “May peace not cost us one more death.”

Following the death of a former Colombian guerilla in September, Caqueta's Federation of Social, Environmental and Rural Organizations, Coordosac, warned that the killing “represented an imminent risk for those who those who believe in the peace process.”

Since the signing of the peace agreement in 2016, violence by paramilitary groups against the former rebels has grown as paramilitaries have filled the void left by the FARC in the country's remote rural regions.

FARC members are presently transitioning back into society and have created a political party, maintaining the same initials from their prior name.