I came across another Reuters article that needs some facts to add missing context. This one is about about Colombia’s President Juan Manuel Santos’ willingness to hold a public referendum on any peace deal his administration makes with the rebel FARC guerrillas. The article states
The drug funded group [FARC]…has fought successive governments since 1964 and killed tens of thousands.”
It is important to note that Colombian paramilitaries also played a major role in the conflict, committing gross acts of inhumanity with the backing of the state and also made a significant amount of money through drug money. Despite their demobilization deal with the state in 2003, Human Rights Watch reports that there have been successor groups that “engage in drug trafficking” and “commit widespread abuses against civilians, including massacres, killings, rapes and other forms of sexual violence, threats, and forced displacement.” HRW reports concerns of “ongoing infiltration of the political system by paramilitaries and their successor groups.” Perhaps the situation has improved in the past decade since in 2001 HRW put out a report stating paramilitary “groups are responsible for most human rights violations, including massacres and forced displacement…Colombian army brigades and police work with and even profit from paramilitaries, treating them as a force allied with their own.” The FARC are not nice guys, but it is not as if the state is on the side of the angels.
Reuters leaves out something absolutely critical when they state,
Santos has ruled out discussing major changes to Colombia’s economic or political model, saying that if the guerrillas want to modify the system, they should run for election. More than 20 years ago, Colombia held a nationwide assembly to rewrite the 1886 constitution. Demobilized rebels from smaller groups participated, but not the FARC or the National Liberation Army, another left-wing group.”
This makes it seem as if the FARC has been hesitant to pursue a political path and leaves out why they may want constitutional guarantees. The FARC faced a major assassination campaign when they did pursue this path in the 1980′s and 1990′s.
FACT: A 1987 article by the Christian Science Monitor reported,
The country’s oldest and largest guerrilla group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), created the Patriotic Union to run candidates in last year’s congressional and presidential elections. Since then, four of 14 UP congressmen have been killed. Authorities have jailed no suspects in any of the killings. But a report last month by Amnesty International accused security forces and their civilian accomplices of murdering more than 1,000 people.”
FACT: A 2007 Amnesty International report stated that “Since the UP [Patriotic Union] was founded in 1985, more than 3,000 UP members have been killed or been victims of enforced disappearances, the vast majority carried out by the security forces and paramilitaries.”
I think this context is important, especially since Reuters notes that the FARC did not participate in the rewriting of the constitution. Any guesses as to why?
Your crucial context is crucially flawed. It’s as if you believe that murderers, drug runners, assassins, hostage takers, terrorists, and soldiers are intimidated by the possibility of violence. Lastly you ask the reader to guess why FARC didn’t participate in the writing of the 1991 constitution. To be factual, you don’t know why and your readers probably don’t either.
Previous to that you quote a report from 1987 that includes out of date information. While many responsible for the crimes you mention have not been punished and impunity is a problem in Colombia, the legal process has resulted in prosecutions, convictions and serious sentences.
Before that bit of incorrect information you make the case that a democratic process should not be used to make change in Colombia. Although the history of Colombia includes tragic episodes, including the campaign of assassination against the UP, that does not mean a democratic process should be abandoned instead of fixed. Colombia has the longest history of democracy in Latin America. What you are suggesting the president of Colombia do is like asking the president of the US to declare Islam the national religion of America to make peace with Al-Qaeda.
You start out your article with a quote about peace negotiations, then follow up with a couple of ‘facts’ that could easily lead someone to conclude that a public referendum shouldn’t be used to approve peace between the government and the FARC because of things that happened over 20 years ago when the average Colombian today was probably still a toddler.
Colombia has a long and complex history that cannot be well explained in the space that you or any of your sources have provided. If someone wants a more complete context to evaluate current events in Colombia, I suggest the turn to Wikipedia instead.
Let me take your assertions one at a time:
” It’s as if you believe that murderers, drug runners, assassins, hostage takers, terrorists, and soldiers are intimidated by the possibility of violence.”
I’m not quite sure what you mean here, but the best I can make of it is that you think the FARC was not deterred from pursuing a political path because so many UP candidates were assassinated. If that’s what you mean I find it. hard to believe.
“Lastly you ask the reader to guess why FARC didn’t participate in the writing of the 1991 constitution.”
Asking them to guess at the end is just being satirical since I already stated my conclusion earlier in the article where I stated “This makes it seem as if the FARC has been hesitant to pursue a political path and leaves out why they may want constitutional guarantees. The FARC faced a major assassination campaign when they did pursue this path in the 1980′s and 1990′s.” I am rather directly stating that the assassination campaign makes it logical why the FARC should want constitutional guarantees and why they may be hesitant to take part in peace talks.
“Previous to that you quote a report from 1987 that includes out of date information. While many responsible for the crimes you mention have not been punished and impunity is a problem in Colombia, the legal process has resulted in prosecutions, convictions and serious sentences.”
If you look at the rest of the article you’ll see I cite a Human Rights Watch report from 2012 that reports that successor groups to paramilitaries in Colombia are still very active which directly connects to the 1987 report. If it’s such ancient history, why did the Amnesty International report from 2007 mention it?
“Before that bit of incorrect information you make the case that a democratic process should not be used to make change in Colombia. Although the history of Colombia includes tragic episodes, including the campaign of assassination against the UP, that does not mean a democratic process should be abandoned instead of fixed. Colombia has the longest history of democracy in Latin America. What you are suggesting the president of Colombia do is like asking the president of the US to declare Islam the national religion of America to make peace with Al-Qaeda.”
I think you misunderstand the point of my article (as well as add a bizarre analogy that has no basis in what I said) as I do not advocate any such position. You cannot point to any statement in my article that says there should be no democratic process. The point of my article was not that peace negotiations shouldn’t happen but that Reuters made it appear that the FARC were so committed to violence that they would not take part in peace talks while the Colombian government is made out to be quite reasonable. I am not praising the FARC, as I made clear in the article, but simply stating that it is not hard to understand why they would be hesitant to take part in the political process. Do you dispute HRW’s claim in their 2012 report about concerns of “ongoing infiltration of the political system by paramilitaries and their successor groups”? Of course the FARC is horrendous, but violence done by the state and paramilitary successor is no more justifiable.
The impression your article is leaves is that the FARC should be granted constitutional guarantees not dependent on elections or public referendum. Your response to my previous comments is mainly that a report produced in 2007 found that paramilitary groups and their left overs were infiltrating the government.
As you should know, the president and his administration from that time are no longer running the country and there are prosecutions ongoing against top level civilian and military officials because of their ties to remaining paramilitary groups. The government should be held to the highest possible standard of judgement just as it should hold entire country to that standard, and that effort is being made.
Perhaps that isn’t enough of a comfort to those who’d like to return to a political process because of events from the late 80s and early 90s. It would be good for them to keep in mind that many of the assassination carried out against the UP, the FARC founded party, were carried out by criminal groups including major cocaine cartels. Those large cartels, which were trying to destabilize the government as much as the FARC was, are gone. Also, candidates from other rebel groups that did de-mobilize at the time of the writing of the 1991 constitution are now elected officials. That even includes the mayor of the capital of the country.
De-mobilized paramilitary groups, prosecution of government officials that had ties to those groups, elected officials from other former rebel groups, and a generally safer and less lawless environments are all good reasons for the FARC to be willing to participate in the democratic process.
Your addition of context is quite helpful, although I would disagree with the idea of the government having made a clear split with paramilitaries, but again the purpose of the article was not to give any recommendations but simply to critique what I saw as unfairly biased media reporting. There are plenty of posts on here where I do advocate particular policies, but I state those directly in such posts.
Pete,
If not assassinations experienced in the 80′s and 90′s, what is the reason for the FARC’s current unwillingness to engage politically?
Asking for anything in a negotiation can be as much a bargaining chip as it is an unconditional demand. I don’t know how willing or unwilling they are to do anything.