Political Report # 1222 Killings of Colombia rights activists casts shadow over peace deal

By Anastasia Moloney, Thomson Reuters Foundation

BOGOTA, Jan 25 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Even with two bodyguards, a government-issued bulletproof vest and bulletproof car, human rights activist Doris Valenzuela still does not feel safe in her native country, Colombia.
Her work denouncing rights abuses by criminal gangs has led to an attempt on her life, the murder of her teenage son and rape of her daughter.
After fleeing her home six times to escape death threats, Valenzuela now hopes to find refuge in Europe.
The last death threat came in December when two men approached the 37-year-old on the street in her home city of Buenaventura on Colombia's Pacific coast - even as she was flanked by her bodyguards.
"One of the men had a gun tucked into his belt and told me, 'We will make you disappear'," Valenzuela, a mother of three, said.
It's no empty threat.

Political Report # 1082 Peace in Sight: Historic Agreement between Colombia and the FARC By Miguel Salazar, Research Associate at the COHA

Featured Photo: Colombians protest for peace (2008). From: Marco Suárez

On Wednesday, September 23, 2015, Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos and FARC leader Rodrigo Londoño pledged to end the country's internal conflict by March 26, 2016. Following La Violencia-Colombia's infamous civil war lasting from 1948 to 1958-the polarization of the country's political parties and ideological factions has led to a continuation of violence throughout Colombia. The left-wing Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia, FARC) were initially formed as an armed peasant movement in 1964 that demanded comprehensive land and social reforms. Since then, the government and right-wing paramilitaries have waged a violent conflict against the FARC in rural Colombia that has resulted in a total of 220,000 deaths and over 5.7 million displacements.[1]

Political Report # 1045 A Journey Toward Colombian Unity by Michael Paczkowski

Featured photo: © European Union 2014 - European Parliament. Political Report # 1045 A Journey Toward Colombian Unity By: Michael Paczkowski, Research Associate at the Council on Hemispheric Affairs

Since December 2012, representatives from the Colombian left-wing guerrilla movement, the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC), have been in peace negotiations with the Colombian Government in Havana, Cuba. This is the fourth attempt in the past 30 years to find a solution to the continuing violence in Latin America's most war torn nation. The negotiations in Havana have been slogging forward, but have found some successes on the issues of land reform, drug trafficking, and future FARC member political participation. The nation has now suffered through five decades of conflict, and the results have been brutal: some 220,000 dead and another five million people are refugees. There are many warring parties. The FARC, the largest and oldest group, claims to be fighting for agrarian reform and anti-imperialism, with the ultimate goal of the violent removal of the Colombian government. A second left-wing guerrilla movement, the Ejército de Liberación Nacional (the National Liberation Army, or ELN), claims that it is battling for a Marxist revolution and the liberation of Colombia. The most murderous group involved in the fighting has been the Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia (United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, or AUC), a collection of right-wing paramilitary death squads responsible for the preponderance of the savage human rights crimes that have plagued this nation.[1]