Lessons from Colombia’s past: Is the FARC’s demobilization mass suicide?
Lessons from Colombia’s past: Is the FARC’s demobilization mass suicide?
written by Stephen Gill April 28, 2016
In the years after Colombia’s largest paramilitary organization AUC demobilized, thousands of its demobilized members were assassinated. FARC rebels, currently negotiating peace with the government, could await the same fate. According to the administration of Juan Manuel Santos, it guarantees the security of demobilizing fighters.
“The National Protection Unit is fully prepared to take on this challenge if it is considered at the table and it is precisely one of the things that we have come to raise here, we have all the logistical and human ability to assume that responsibility,” said UNP director Diego Mora to BluRadio.
However, the Colombian government has an infamous track record of failing to provide security, breaking promises made during negotiations, and state officials have even been actively involved in the killing of demobilized guerrilla or paramilitary fighters.
The FARC has expressed major concerns that if they down their weapons, they could be slaughtered by right-wing neo-paramilitaries and their allies within the state apparatus. And for good reason.
Previous extermination campaigns
After the guerrillas took part in the formation of the Patriotic Union party as part of peace talks with former President Belisario Betancur in 1985, more than 3,000 UP members, including two presidential candidates, were assassinated by paramilitary groups and state officials aligned with the extreme-right paramilitary groups that formed around the time of the UP’s foundation.
More:
http://colombiareports.com/disarming-farc-mass-suicide/
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http://www.democraticunderground.com/1016154180
