Raul Reyes Assassinated

Information has reached PRAVDA.Ru based on official sources in Colombia describing a battle in which 17 FARC guerrillas were killed, among whom was Raul Reyes, (name of birth Luis Edgar Devia), spokesman for external relations of the Colombian progressive movement. The information quotes the Minister of Defense of Colombia, Juan Manuel Santos, who said they were downed at the Ecuadorian side of the border.

The Minister added that the bodies were removed from the location. The Minister also declared that there was an air bombardment against a field of guerrillas (Front 48 of FARC) in the territory of Ecuador, 1.800 meters from the border.

Rafael Correa, President of Ecuador, confirmed that he had been informed of the intentions of the Colombian military forces. However he was fed lies by Colombian President Alvaro Uribe, who wrongly stated that the FARC group was chased across the border. What happened was a full scale invasion of Ecuador by Columbia, which has set the continent on fire.

Raul Reyes was a great figure in FARC, who led the peace negotiations with President Andrés Pestrana between 1998 and 2002. It was always to search for a political and negotiated solution, as it is possible to confirm from the interview that we include below.

Raul Reyes was one of the first international figures to embrace the project of PRAVDA.Ru in Portuguese, exactly when we were still little known, in the launching of the project in 2002. He died knowing that he was right, because he fought for a social and political cause, that sought peace and a negotiated solution to the conflict but knowing also that he would not discard the efforts made throughout long decades, to build a progressive society in Colombia.

Raul Reyes and his companions died like a hero. The struggle continues, the cause continues, his dreams and projects continue and his loss will only be physical and never in vain.

Timothy BANCROFT-HINCHEY
PRAVDA.Ru

Exclusive interview with Raul Reyes (April of 2005)

01. Senhor Comandante, we present you with the greeting of the Pravda Portal in Portuguese.

R / On behalf of the Commanders and Combatants of our revolutionary organization, I appreciate the greeting that they send to us. In the same way, we greet the Director of the Pravda Portal in Portuguese, its collaborators and readers. With certainty the peoples of the Portuguese language are to be congratulated. Friends of this Portal receive, therefore, our congratulations for such important journalistic work.

02. To many people in the world, the media has been forming a negative opinion of FARC-EP through constant dissemination of half truths, lies and slander. It is important that you explain this situation and expose some truths.

R / The media campaign, whose origin is in the successive governments of the United States of North America, is not only against us, and yes against all and all those that promote, by any way or by means of any form of fight, the awareness of our people that they need to know its true History, the current situation and also what we are called to be in the future.

The conscience and the political commitment to transform Latin American reality are decisive for the liberation process that is taking new air in our Great Native American land. Therefore to work for the knowledge of our continental reality, for integration and

Latin American unity, for our identity of people formed by an exceptional interbreeding, possessing mestization of customs, cultures, habits, creeds, etc. that they have common roots, is a basic task in the fight for Second and Definitive Independence. And since it is a question of fighting against the Empire that has been dominating us in a brutish and violent way, it is almost obvious what there is not only the constant dissemination of half truths, lies and slander, but also a politics of extermination against those that fight for deep changes in Latin America, including, clearly, the revolutionaries.

Fortunately the people do not swallow this completely, and are learning to discern and to identify in a precise way their principal enemy and to stand up, first, in struggle to build a destiny that could guarantee them the biggest degree of possible happiness, as in how Bolívar taught us and, second, in defense of its leaders, as in the Venezuelan case. He already said some truths, comrade journalist.

03. In military terms what is the current situation, when they have spent several years of applying the Colombia Plan and now the Patriot Plan, that, from what I understand, they obey that chain of war plans against the Colombian people, mounted by the government of the United States of North America since the middle of the last century.

R/ The imperialist politics for Latin America and the Caribbean since the middle part of the past century possesses the characteristics of intervention by armed force, either/or, the diplomacy of force, of the imposition, of blackmail, of the pursuit, of State terrorism and of assassination. Everything they conceive is inside of concrete military plans. The reason is very simple, the Empire does not have friends, it