Anti-communist assassinations in Columbia

The Columbian Communist Party is being persecuted through assassinations despite the ceasefire signed between the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia (FARC) and the US-backed governme

A series of political assassinations has opened the question as to whether the Columbian government (and its supporter, the USA) was serious in its intent to sign the ceasefire agreement with FARC in September.

The chronology of the assassinations is as follows: on October 2nd, the Vice president of the national council of the Patriotic Union, Octavio Sarmiento, was killed by unknown gunmen. On October 8th, Jairo Antonio Fajardo, the secretary of the organising committee of the Columbian Communist Party, disappeared on the Montanitas highway in Paujil. Two days later, Elias Marin, the community prefect of Cartagena del Chiara, together with four people accompanying him, was assassinated on the same highway-

The next day, October 11th, the Communist activist Jesus Arias was assassinated on the Dolores-Prado highway. On the same day, the Communist leader of Tolima was wounded in a gun attack on the same highway, while Camilo Zuluaga, a leader of the Communist Youth in Tolima was murdered in another attack in the same place.

On October 16th, the communist activist in Barrancabermeja, Julian Rodriguez, was killed in an attack by paramilitaries. On October 18th, Diana Garcia, a political activist who denounced the attempted genocide by the Columbian government against the Union Popular and the Columbian Communist Party, was attacked and threatened in the centre of Bogota.

In recent weeks, hundreds of communist party members have been threatened with death and have sought exile abroad. Many Trades Union leaders have been killed and at least 200 peasants have been murdered by the paramilitaries in various regions of the country.

The paramilitaries are a fascist organisation, backed by the Columbian government which in its turn received the support of the USA, in monetary and human terms. American mercenaries are recruited in the US and train the Columbian Armed Forces under the pretence that cocaine from Columbia floods the streets of the US, even though the operators and chief beneficiaries of this operation live in the USA.

FARC and the Communist Party have been linked with this drugs trafficking but it is not the case. FARC is an armed political organism which is fighting for social justice in Columbia, another South American country where the wealth and power remains restricted to the hands of a corrupt oligarchy, supported by the fascist administration in the United States of America.

The government of President Andres Pestrana, in committing these crimes, proves itself to be totally unworthy of government and yet it is supported by the moralising and moralistic United States of America, which by its support of Pestrana, continues to condone international terrorism.

Through its support of the Columbian Armed Forces and fascist paramilitary groups, the United States of America is actively supporting and exporting international terrorist acts, as it commits international terrorism in Afghanistan and yet complains when the WTC crumbles in a heap of rubble.

Andres Pestrana is a war criminal and a murderer, supported by his friends in Washington.

Juan BLANCO