Displacement of persons is ‘explicit policy’ of FARC: Report

http://colombiareports.co/displacement-persons-explicit-policy-farc-report/




Colombia’s largest and oldest rebel group FARC systematically engages in displacing people from their land, according to a study made by the Prosecutor General’s Office.

The study focused specifically on the FARC’s powerful Eastern Bloc, who between 1997 and 2011 allegedly displaced 324,596 people from 82,707 homes in what the study describes as “an explicit policy.”


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The Prosecutor General’s study says that 91% of those displaced by the FARC left their homes citing “terror” and “insecurity,” with others leaving because of direct threats from the guerrillas.

The FARC would typically dress up as Colombian soldiers and threaten to murder the occupants of a house unless they left, or, to a lesser extent, attempt to recruit a family member. Often the process is systematic and long-term, with threats followed by robbery and damage to property and livestock, and then murder.

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The vast majority of those displaced by the FARC ended up in Bogota, with 272,084 people swelling the slums in the capital’s southern end. In a 2011 study on IDPs living in the city’s southern suburbs of Soacha – the most populous in Bogota – and Ciudad Bolivar, those affected were encouraged to write phrases about what life is like for a displaced person.