Columbia: FARC accused of massacre

In an incident which took place last week, there were 266 victims as a missile was fired at a crowded church in northern Columbia...but was it FARC, or a set-up by Fascist paramilitary group AUC?

110 dead, 108 wounded and 48 missing is the balance of victims after a gas cylinder packed with explosives was launched into a church crowded with civilians who were trying to escape furious fire-fights between FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia), the Marxist guerrilla force whose political agenda has been systematically ignored by the establishment, and the Fascist Paramilitary terrorist group, AUC (Auto-Defesas Unidas de Colombia, United Self-Defence Forces of Columbia), armed, trained and supported by the USA, in whose ranks US mercenaries and military advisors” fight.

The ex-Mayor of Bojaya, Joaquin Palacio, blames FARC for this tragedy, which occurred in Quibdo, North-East Colombia, last week. “There were many children, many women, people who had taken refuge in the church to pray”, he declared.

In Columbia, whenever there is an atrocity, FARC is blamed, although in some cases, its guerrillas are many kilometres away from where an incident took place. The truth is shrouded in claims and counter-claims, hyped up against FARC by the government, representing the establishment, and the AUC, its unofficial allies.

Eye witnesses claim that the AUC paramilitaries told the civilians to take refuge inside the church, where they would be protected against the fighting. As 400 people crowded together inside the church, the explosion tore the building apart.

President Andres Pastrana, who disrespected the peace process which FARC had signed, visited the site and predictably, was quick to blame FARC for the atrocity: “Let us be clear: there was not any confrontation between the paramilitaries and FARC. What there was, was a massacre, genocide by FARC, which attacked the civilian population who had taken refuge inside a church”.

Hardly, because they were taking refuge in the church precisely because there was a battle raging around them. President Pastrana was never noted for his intelligence.

It is AUC that holds this swathe of territory in northern Columbia, linking the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans and which has numerous coca plantations and cocaine factories. FARC launched a military campaign to control this strategic area north of Bogota, which is far outside FARC’s sphere of influence in the south of Columbia, on 2nd May.

Given that AUC controls the area, and given that it was the AUC paramilitaries who told the civilians to go inside the church, it would not be beyond the realms of the imagination to postulate the question whether it was not AUC who perpetrated this outrage, to lay the blame on FARC...as usual.

JUAN BLANCO