Members of the National Political Council of the Revolutionary Alternative Forces of the Commons (FARC) rejected the threats and violence that have claimed the lives of 25 people since signing peace accords with the government last November.
“Since the signing of the peace agreement, five former combatants, nine militiamen and 11 relatives of members of the FARC have been murdered,” the group said in a statement on October 2.
The FARC went on to say that the victims of these crimes have not received justice from the Prosecutor’s Office. Allowing these crimes to go unpunished, it said, violates multiple sections of the peace agreement.
The agreement ensured the safety and protection of "communities and community leaders, human rights defenders, parties and political and social movements, and especially the new movement or political party that emerges from the transition of the FARC to legal political activity.”
“We call on all sectors of society, who long for peaceful coexistence for our country, to speak out and mobilise in defence of life, as a fundamental premise for stable and lasting peace,” the FARC wrote. “May peace not cost us one more death.”
Since the signing of the peace agreement in 2016, violence by paramilitary groups against the former rebels has grown as paramilitaries have filled the void left by the FARC in the country's remote rural regions.
FARC members are presently transitioning back into society and have created a political party, maintaining the same initials as their prior name.
[Abridged from TeleSUR English.]
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