Workers World to FARC-EP:
Uribe, Bush are the real criminals
Published Mar 5, 2008 9:55 PM
The massacre committed by the Colombian military forces on March 1st in Ecuador
where Raúl Reyes, the member of the secretariat of the FARC-EP in charge
of international relations and a key figure in the negotiations for the
prisoners exchange, was killed, has prompted the rupture of relations of both Ecuador and Venezuela with neighboring Colombia.
The massacre, which was carried out with a high-tech intelligence operation
aided by the United States, is a grave violation of international law and a
serious blow to the humanitarian exchange that is seen as the road to peace in
Colombia. As a consequence, Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa recalled the
Ecuadorian ambassador in Colombia, ordered the expulsion of the Colombian
ambassador in Ecuador, and sent 3,200 troops to the border with Colombia. He
has also been calling the presidents of several Latin American countries to
plan a strategy in order to avoid the internationalization of the Colombian
conflict and the impunity of this massacre.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez in turn, stating that the Colombian
government has turned into the biggest threat against the peoples of Latin
America, cautioned Colombian President Álvaro Uribe not to invade
Venezuelan space. He also broke relations with Colombia, closing down the
Venezuelan Embassy in Bogotá and sending 10 battalions with a total of
8,000 troops to the border.
The massacre is an intensification of the U.S. plans of war and
destabilization, particularly against Venezuela, Ecuador and Bolivia. President
Chávez and others have described the role of Colombia as “the Israel
of Latin America.” The increasing threat against Venezuela is highlighted
by the declarations of the Venezuelan former vice president, José Vicente
Rangel. He said that “in the last few weeks there have been important
deployments of Colombian military units on the border with Venezuela.”
(See related article by Miguel Urbano Rodrigues on page 11.)
Workers World sent the following message to the Revolutionary Forces of
Colombia—Peoples’ Army on March 4:
To the Secretariat and members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of
Colombia—Peoples’ Army (FARC-EP):
Please accept our most sincere and heartfelt condolences upon the death of the
heroic Raúl Reyes, the revolutionary musician Julián Conrado and
other revolutionaries vilely murdered by the Colombian government which,
placing its thirst for blood and paramilitary violence above the cry for peace
and the search for a humanitarian agreement among the Colombian people, invaded
the neighboring country of Ecuador, raining bombs and cowardly executing, with
the aid of the U.S. government, this group of insurgent forces.
This has been an immense blow against the peace process in the suffering
country named Colombia, a process materializing through the humanitarian
exchange the FARC-EP was advancing with so much openness and generosity with
the diligent assistance of Colombian Senator Piedad Córdoba and Venezuelan
President Hugo Chávez, both of whom have been working for true peace and
justice in the region.
From inside the monster, the United States, we send the message that we will
continue to advance the proposition that the name of the FARC-EP should be
eliminated from the terrorist list and that the FARC-EP’s character as a
belligerent force fighting for peace and social justice be recognized. In
Colombia it has been proven—by the extermination of the Patriotic Union
(UP) and as the government and the Colombian army and its paramilitary
collaborators continue their selective murders and arrests of union leaders,
farmers, students and human-rights activists and the forced displacements of
Indigenous and Afro-Colombian communities—that the peaceful social
struggle in Colombia has been condemned to death by paramilitary state
terrorism.
We will also attempt to expose to public opinion the real international
terrorists: the paramilitary administration of Álvaro Uribe Vélez,
for its multiple crimes against Colombian civil society, and the administration
of George W. Bush, for the criminal wars waged, like those carried out against
the peoples of Afghanistan and Iraq, and its warlike intervention all over the
world at the price of thousands of innocent lives and global destabilization.
And in Colombia in particular, where the U.S. applies its Plan Colombia, the
armed wing of the “Free” Trade Agreements, designed not to combat
drug trafficking but to repress and massacre the Colombian people for the
benefit of criminal transnational corporations like Occidental Petroleum, Coca
Cola, Drummond and Chiquita, that attack their workers, stealing the wealth of
the Colombian people.
For a new world with social justice!
Raúl Reyes, Julián Conrado and all guerrilla fighters
murdered on March 1, ¡Presentes!
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