[Peace-discuss] A Communique from the FARC: Colombian Rebels Respond (fwd)

[Carl Estabrook]

---------- Forwarded message ----------

http://www.narconews.com/farc0202.html

A Communique from the FARC: Colombian Rebels Respond to Declaration of War

Narco News Commentary: 

	Authentic Journalism requires that all voices be heard. The
overwhelming collective and undisclosed bias of the commercial
English-language news agencies in their coverage of the Colombian conflict
can be readily observed by which parties are heard in their own words, and
which are not allowed to be heard.
	Much has been said in recent days about the FARC-EP (Revolutionary
Armed Forces of Colombia - Popular Army), but very little has been heard
from the rebel group. Yet on February 21, the FARC-EP issued a communique,
posted on the Internet in Spanish by the New Colombia News Agency,
offering its reaction to the U.S. and Colombian government-ordered
declaration of war.
	Narco News has published the FARC's own words before, including
those of writer Gabriel Angel, one of the dozen FARC leaders for whom the
Colombian State last week issued an arrest warrant. Angel wrote to Narco
News last June with a submission for publication that remains archived on
our Internet site.
	Our first mission at Narco News is that Latin American voices be
heard, in English, in their own words. Our editorial position today and
forever is that we refuse to censor those voices. Condoleeza Rice and the
State Department may have had success making deals with corrupted major
media organizations to censor the voices of parties in conflict, as
occured last autumn in the Afghanistan war. But they will have no such
success with us. For we are Authentic Journalists who understand that
peace and true democracy are impossible unless all voices are heard;
unless journalists break the information blockade.

from somewhere in a country called America,

Al Giordano, Publisher , The Narco News Bulletin
http://www.narconews.com/
narconews at hotmail.com

The FARC Speaks

Translated by The Narco News Bulletin

February 21, 2002

Spokesmen of the FARC-EP national dialogue and negotiating committee
inform:

1. President Andres Pastrana Arango, in his speech of February 20, 2002,
made a unilateral decision to end the peace talks with the FARC-EP in
moments when we were ready to continue the talks for a ceasefire and end
to hostilities.

2. Utilizing the pretext of noncompliance by the FARC-EP with inexistent
deals, he accuses us of connections with narco-trafficking when the
country and the international community know, from events like the public
and international meetings about illicit crops and the environment, and
from discussions in the same peace talks, that those crops belong to poor
peasant farmers who have been historically forgotten by the State. They
have had to recur to this activity as a means of subsistence. The proposal
by the FARC-EP for substitution of illicit crops, presented to the
international public, was deliberately ignored.

3. "Good conduct" and "gestures for peace" were demanded of the FARC while
the State escalated the confrontation by strengthening the military and
police forces, augmenting the terrorism of the paramilitary gangs with the
open participation of some military chiefs and the development of Plan
Colombia as demanded by the United States.

4. To accuse the FARC-EP of violating agreements by having constructed
bridges and roads to serve the community, obviously, only seeks to hide
the true reasons for his decision. In the three years of the demilitarized
zone in five municipalities, the FARC-EP constructed bridges and roads,
with its own resources, that the State did not want to build for 36 years.
More than a thousand kilometers of road with respective bridges and
drainage systems were constructed in the routes from La Sombra to
Macarena; from Macarena to Vistahermosa; from La Julia to La Uribe; from
Llanos de Yari to Cartagena del Chaira; from Las Delicias Guayabero and
the paving of the majority of the streets of the urban center of San
Vicente del Caguan with the support of the community. These are not
terrorist actions as the President, echoing the military chiefs, claimed
on television.

5. The repair of airfields that already existed and that were licensed by
the Aeronautic authorities, and the construction of communal buildings
neither can be used as an argument to end the desire of the Colombian
people for peace.

6. President Pastrana justified his decision utilizing old images like the
destroyed building of the DAS, whose true destroyer was known by the
entire country. The rupture had been demanded by the Armed Forces, the
business organizations, the large media companies, some of the
presidential candidates from the two major parties and the U.S. Embassy in
its penchant of never enacting change at the moment that it is demanded.

7. Once more, the Colombian Oligarchy impedes the path of dialogue from
constructing the structural, economic, political, social and military
changes that Colombia requires to exit the profound crisis in which
governments of the Liberal and Conservative parties have historically
caused.

8. For three years we sought solutions through the path of dialogue and
negotiation for the grave problems that 30 million Colombians have
protested, while the government did not respond to the needs of the
people. It always fell on deaf ears. The presence of more than 30,000
compatriots who participated in the public aspects of the peace talks, the
roundtables, and with proposals sent to the table for changes to
democratize the economic and political life of the country, as well as the
participation of the Secretary General of the United Nations and the
President of the Colombian Council of Bishops, corroborate the need for
these transformations to achieve peace with social justice in our country.

9. It is clear that the true objective of the Government in making the
decision to rupture the peace process is to disappear from public view the
discussion of the fundamental themes contained in the talks' agenda to
build the path, through the talks, toward a new Colombia.

10. As proof of our commitment to peace, which remains in the hands of the
people and the advocates of a political solution, the common agenda for
change toward a new Colombia, and the platform of national reconstruction
and reconciliation, are proposals that we are disposed to exchange with a
future government that shows interest in retaking the path to a political
solution of a social and armed conflict.

11. We exhort the international community, and in particular the group of
countries that calls itself "friends of Colombia," to continue supporting
the search for a political solution to the social and armed conflict on
our country, and distance ourselves from the warmaking chorus that in
these moments wants to impose war on Colombia with the pretext of
combatting terrorism.

12. To the Colombian people, we bring our voice of support so that the
struggle continues and the organized mobilization for solution to the
problems of unemployment, lack of education, health, housing and land for
the peasant farmers. For political liberties, democracy and national
sovereignty, for a new government that reconstructs and reconciles the
Nation.

13. The FARC-EP will continue holding high the political and ideological
flags that have characterized this struggle for more than 37 years on
behalf of the interests of the people, and let our class enemies call us
whatever they want.

Raul Reyes, Joaquin Gomez, Carlos Antonio Losada, Simon Trinidad, Andres
Paris

Mountains of Colombia February 21, 2002