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Bacchus4.0

(6,837 posts)
Mon Jun 9, 2014, 08:55 AM Jun 2014

FARC formally admits responsibility for victims of Colombia conflict

http://colombiareports.co/farc-formally-admits-responsibility-colombia-conflict/

In an historic announcement, Colombia rebel group FARC and the country’s government on Saturday recognized being victimizers in the armed conflict and announced to be inviting victims to take part in ongoing peace talks.
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The FARC’s admitting of responsibility in human rights violations and violations of fundamental rights of Colombians is historic; Never before have the guerrillas explicitly admitted responsibility.

FARC negotiator “Simon Trinidad” last month caused indignation among FARC victims after declaring to the BBC that the organization itself is a victim of the conflict.

On other occasions, FARC negotiators have expressed sympathy for victims and hypothetically agreed to eventually accepting responsibility without explicitly recognizing the rebels’ responsibility.

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Judi Lynn

(160,219 posts)
3. It has been known everywhere for ages the military and paramilitaries did the vast murdering.
Mon Jun 9, 2014, 05:28 PM
Jun 2014

Everyone knows it. Everyone also knows if they can get the FARC to jump through these hoops it's because the FARC really, really wants peace more than anything, even at the expense of lying to get it, if, indeed, the government does go ahead and honors the peace agreement.

Looking for a quick reference from material already posted here, found one very quickly which would supply already known and discussed information years ago:

From a post by tremendous DU poster, Say_What, on a thread by Arcos:


<clips>

The War on Human Rights in Colombia
Three Variations on a Theme from Uribe

By PHIILIP CRYAN

Bogota.

...His choice of the term "private justice groups" plays into an unfolding story, the historical dimensions of which make his attacks on NGOs look inconsequential. The Uribe administration proposed in August a peace deal with the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), the country's largest federation of right-wing paramilitaries. If the proposal passes Colombia's Congress, AUC troops would give up their weapons and offer symbolic reparations (primarily in the form of cash payments and social work); in exchange, they would receive amnesties from the President and not be required to serve jail time. After ten years, their criminal records would be clean and they would be eligible to hold public office. Impunity would extend even to those leaders already convicted on multiple counts of crimes against humanity.

The proposal has been pilloried by the United Nations, Human Rights Watch, European governments, dozens of NGOs, members of the U.S. Congress and numerous newspapers. Reuters, for example, posed the question of whether the government's "conditional freedom" offer for the paramilitaries amounts to "allowing some of Colombia's most feared criminals to literally get away with murder." The Chicago Tribune titled their house editorial on the matter "Colombia's pact with the devils." Human Rights Watch calls Uribe's proposal "the impunity law."

Colombian Senator Rafael Pardo, one of Uribe's most devoted allies until the law was proposed, commented to El Tiempo (Colombia's largest newspaper): "You turn in a farm and that compensates for a massacre?"

...Traveling in southern Colombia's conflict regions, I have heard countless stories of AUC massacres carried out with chainsaws and machetes--slow, public decapitations designed for their spectacular effects: as lessons to those watching. On two occasions I've been told of paramilitaries playing soccer with decapitated heads. In some urban areas they institute a "social control" system: miniskirts for women and long hair for men are prohibited; adulterers are made to wear Scarlet Letter-like marks of shame and homosexuals are run out of town or executed. Anyone suspected of collaborating with guerrillas--anyone in a trade union, doing human rights work, or trying to be a serious journalist or priest or mayor would fall in this category--is murdered, often after prolonged torture. The paramilitaries tell civilians not to move or bury the cadavers of their victims: "leave the bodies to rot in public, so the dogs can get at them," they instruct. On a trip to the southern province of Putumayo--the region where U.S. military aid has been most focused over the first three years of Plan Colombia--last December, I happened to arrive in the city of Mocoa the same day that the bodies of Giovanni and John, two brothers killed by the AUC, were discovered by their mother, who was just returning from a vacation. There were no bullet-wounds. The skin of their faces had been disintegrated by some kind of acid, likely applied while they were still alive.

...Yet "there is 98% impunity" for paramilitary actions, according to a government human rights official from another Putumayo city. "The police refuse to collaborate ." "The military and paramilitaries play volleyball and soccer together," says another civilian government official. Within a day of arriving in a Putumayo city, one can find out--even as an outsider--where the paramilitaries live, their names and ranks, even their military specialties. Whenever asked about collusion, however, military and police officers provide an unvarying response: "Prove it." "We can't act without evidence, without an official complaint being filed," a military commander recently told me. The military insists that civilians' claims of regular paramilitary killings are greatly exaggerated and deny outright the presence of paramilitaries in many cities they in fact control. This just to take one region of Colombia as an example.

The history of military-paramilitary collusion in Colombia is a long one--and it is within this history, finally, that Uribe's amnesty proposal (and other recent offensives against human rights and international humanitarian law) must be understood. This history, in turn, cannot be understood without analysis of the U.S. government's role in Colombia.

http://www.counterpunch.org/cryan10112003.html

http://election.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x2692204

For years and years, the human rights organizations have all claimed it has been the combination of military and paramilitaries which has provided "the lion's share" of the murders, deaths, atrocities in Colombia. It had never been a secret among the sane people of the world. It has been named as more than 90% of the deaths. Everyone knows that. Nothing any right-wing liars can say will convince anyone otherwise who already knows the truth. Nothing! They only need to do the research needed to learn for themselves.

Much more worth taking a long, hard squint on the thread, and there is a ton of material already discussed right here at D.U., a place for progressives.

Right-wingers should already know this is NOT the place for them. No room for right-wing yammering here.

Try Discussionist.

Bacchus4.0

(6,837 posts)
4. The FARC are an armed insurgency whose goal has been to overthrow the Colombian government
Tue Jun 10, 2014, 12:24 AM
Jun 2014

This is no imaginary conspiracy like those made up by the chavista leaders in Venezuela. This is real. This is an actual armed conflict waged by those who have no conscience, who murder, maim, kidnap, rape, and enslave. Those are the people you support. They want to overthrow the democratically elected government. It doesn't matter who the president is. They are not asking the leader to resign. They want to impose a Marxist sate.

90%+ of Colombians want the FARC extinguished and like most people, Colombians know a lot better than some pretentious keyboard comemierda.

What else would one expect from a clueless chavista though? How's that revolucion going these days?


 

Marksman_91

(2,035 posts)
5. *sigh* Do you regularly interact with actual Colombians and ask about their opinion on the FARC?
Tue Jun 10, 2014, 09:15 AM
Jun 2014

I sure do, and none of them think they're a group that can be negotiated with, and would rather see them disbanded than have any voice in politics. They're a narco-terrorist band of delinquents who initially sought to overthrow a government and install a Marxist regime, and since they were obviously gonna lose, they had to resort to more criminal tactics to gain finance and resources, such as civilian kidnapping a and drug trade. Please tell me how they're suddenly some type of benevolent army that wants "peace." Oh, but I forget that anybody who considers themselves "leftist," no matter how blatantly evil they act, is some kind of peaceful benevolent freedom fighter in your eyes.

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