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href="http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/12/14/colombia-peace-in-the-shadow-of-genocide/">http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/12/14/colombia-peace-in-the-shadow-of-genocide/</a></font>
<h1 id="reader-title">Colombia: Peace in the Shadow of Genocide</h1>
<div id="reader-credits" class="credits">by <span
class="post_author" itemprop="author"><a
href="http://www.counterpunch.org/author/dan-kovalik/"
rel="nofollow">Dan Kovalik</a> - December 14, 2016<br>
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<p>After the first Colombian peace agreement was narrowly
voted down in a nation-wide referendum in October, the
Colombian Congress approved a revised peace agreement
between the Colombian government and FARC rebels. While
the extreme right-wing in Colombia has tried to stir up
fear about the peace process, arguing that it gives too
much amnesty to the left-wing FARC combatants, <a
href="https://www.thenation.com/article/did-human-rights-watch-sabotage-colombias-peace-agreement/">and
while Human Rights Watch has amplified these concerns</a>,
it is indeed the left which is being threatened and
attacked in Colombia. Specifically, the left is being
attacked by the right-wing paramilitaries who see the
peace between the government and the FARC as both a
threat to their alleged <em>raison d-etrê </em>of
allegedly fighting the guerillas<em>, </em>as well as
an opportunity – to wit, the opportunity to wipe out the
left as the FARC disarms.</p>
<p>Anyone who knows about Colombia is painfully aware of
the historical precedent for such attacks upon the left
during the cessation of hostilities between the
government and the FARC. As <a
href="http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/colombia/article116433793.html#storylink=cpy"><em>The</em>
<em>Miami Herald</em> explains</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>For many in Colombian politics, the recent spate of
killings seem depressingly familiar. In the 1980s and
1990s, anywhere from 1,000 to 3,500 members of the
Unión Patriótica party were assassinated.</p>
<p>That political group drew followers from across the
left, but its primary purpose was to give the FARC,
which had signed a ceasefire at the time, a vehicle to
participate in politics. In the succeeding years,
however, UP members were indiscriminately murdered,
including presidential candidate Jaime Pardo in 1987.
The ceasefire collapsed, the FARC resumed fighting,
and most of those murders were eventually pinned on
right-wing paramilitary groups.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Others put the death toll of the assault against the UP
(Patriotic Union in English) at well above that
estimated by <em>The Miami Herald</em>. Thus, as <a
href="http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Leftist-leader-Says-Political-Genocide-Looming-in-Colombia--20161202-0012.html?utm_source=planisys&utm_medium=NewsletterIngles&utm_campaign=NewsletterIngles&utm_content=7"><em>Telesur</em>
recently reported</a>,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>[Aida] Avella is the president of the Patriotic
Union, a party that saw no less than 5,000 of its
supporters, including sitting politicians and
presidential candidates, killed by the state and its
paramilitary allies in what was deemed a political
genocide.</p>
<p>“I don’t think another genocide is starting, rather
it is a continuation of the genocide against
opposition sectors. That’s because the paramilitary
structures have not been dismantled, they are
completely intact,” Avella told Contagio Radio.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Avella makes a good point about the persistence of the
paramilitary assault on Colombia’s “opposition
sectors.” Just this year alone, <a
href="http://afgj.org/an-open-letter-to-fensuagro-the-marcha-patriotica-and-all-the-colombian-people">72
social activists have been murdered in Colombia</a>.
And, in the four years of its existence, the peace
movement known as the Marcha Patriotica has lost 125
members to assassination by the paramilitaries.</p>
<p>Such violence has only accelerated in recent months as
the peace process has approached final agreement.
Thus, in November alone, at least 12 leaders from the
peace, indigenous and labor movements have been
murdered. And, a day doesn’t go by that I don’t hear of
more death threats and attempts against leaders of
organizations I work closely with in Colombia.
Meanwhile, as the Washington Office on Latin America has
reported, “the neo-paramilitary group Autodefensas
Gaitanistas de Colombia (AGC) circulated a flyer warning
of a major ‘cleansing’ in December of the very leaders
who will be key to achieving peace in Colombia.”</p>
<p>Colombia does not receive near enough attention in the
press as it deserves, especially given its dire human
rights situation and its being the recipient of nearly
$10 billion in military assistance from the U.S. since
2000.</p>
<p>In terms of human rights, Colombia is now the Western
Hemisphere’s leader in disappeared persons with well
over 92,000 persons disappeared – this <a
href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-foundation-colombia-missing-idUSKBN0GT22520140829">according
to the International Committee of the Red Cross</a>
(ICRC) back in 2014. This is over three times the
figure for Argentina – the country which usually comes
to mind for most people when thinking about the
phenomenon of disappearances in Latin America. And yet,
when did you last hear of the disappearances in
Colombia? It is the almost complete news blackout on
Colombia which allows the unprecedented political
violence there to continue. Indeed, as the head of the
ICRC himself decried, “[t]he problem of missing people
in Colombia is as widespread as it is silent.”</p>
<p>Those of us who want peace for Colombia cannot remain
silent as the number of victims continue to mount even
as our tax dollars continue to support a military which
is still entangled with the paramilitary death squads
committing the lion’s share of that country’s violence.</p>
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<p class="author_description"> <em><strong>Daniel Kovalik</strong>
lives in Pittsburgh and teaches International Human
Rights Law at the University of Pittsburgh School of
Law.</em> </p>
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