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E-PrinceWonder what those red, yellow and blue flags are doing in the Frist North Lawn? They represent the flag of Colombia, and are a tiny part of a worldwide protest against a terrorist organization that is gravely harming that country ...
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Somehow I doubt that students at Princeton University are
representative of the Colombian public. Certainly not of
Colombia's poor.
I wrote this article, analyzing some of the more quesionable
activities of the FARC, based on the work of one of your
faculty members, Richard Falk.
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/11...
I am certainly not in favor of holding anyone as a hostage,
but I think today's march was a war march, not a peace march,
and only deepens divisions in that country.
Although I am not a Colombian, I spent about two months
in Colombia last year, interviewing over 750 victims of
paramilitary violence for my case against Chiquita Brands.
It's too bad today's march was so one sided. It came across
as a call for more violence.
When 42 million Colombians reject the farc, which has around 12,000 guerrillas, is that what Mr. Wolf calls 'divisions' in the country? According to that point of view police departments in all US cities shouldn't go after the minority of criminals to 'avoid divisions' amons Americans.
Two things:
1. The Colombian student population in Princeton is very diverse in terms of socio-economic background. And, as many Colombian people that live abroad, many have emmigrated from Colombia due to the kidnappings that the FARC consntly due on civilians and people from all socio-economic classes.
2. Today's protest was not a war march. Completely the opposite, it was a cry for peace. The main idea behind this protest was to request that the FARC release all the kidnapped (not hostages!) and that the international community don't accept their request not te be called a "terrorist" organization.
3. Colombian people don't see today's protest as a "war call", but we aret tired of having to endure the FARC's absurd violence. They do NOT have any ideals, they just want power and money. Money which they get from kindappings and from drug-dealing.
Mr Wolf brought up the violence generated by paramilitary groups. I agree with him in the sense that the march is one sided because it is only against farc, and does not take into account other sources of violence in Colombia. BUT this time Colombians want to tell the world that farc is not the people's army they claim to be. farc has no social base, does not build schools or hospitals, they engage minors into war, kidnap civilians, traffic drugs. This is what the march is about. We are tired of their methods. We are tired of the terror. We want peace. We want the war to be over. This is the clear message we want to send to farc. This time we want them to clearly hear people's voice. It is against farc. If we had added all factors that generate violence in Colombia into the march, the message would have been diffused and farc would have found an excuse to say that the march is not against them. Happened before, but not this time. NO MORE FARC!
Finally, I also want to say that I also reject other sources of violence. If Mr Wolf decides to organize a march against paramilitary violence, I will happily go and protest as strongly as I did today.
I will cordially invite everyone to check the document “557 reasons why the FARC is on The International lists of terrorist group”.
Violence, from where every it comes is totally rejected, and that is what Colombians all over the world showed today. In this special occasion the terrorist group of FARC was the main objective of today’s liberations claims. We were not asking for something impossible, we were merely asking for the most basic human right: that of freedom.
For more than 40 years Colombia has suffer in silence the struggle against guerrilla groups and paramilitary, but not any more. In that sense we are starting to set the record straight against violence, and we’ve started with the FARC.
If the FARC are fighting for the people, as they claim, why do they kill the people? Why do they burn down towns? Why do they leave the people without options to work? Why do they kidnap “the people” for more than 9 years?
Violence, from where ever it comes is totally rejected. Today we reject FARC and ALL its actions, with all our voice and with all our true love for Colombia: No more FARC, no more kidnapping, no more war!
Mr Wolf very sadly makes the mistake of confusing this march with a war-call. Indeed, many people have erroneously interpreted this march as in defense of a military offensive against FARC. What Mr. Wolf obviously fails to notice, however, is that of the millions of people who marched today in Colombia (and around the world), millions denounce FARC while defending the importance of "peace-talks" between these drug-trafficking insurgents and the official authorities.
On a lighter note, Princeton University is exactly one of the only places on Earth where you can find the best of the best Colombian students and from wildly different socio-economic origins, thanks to the University's need-based financial aid policies. I would gladly enjoy an evening of discussion with Mr Wolf about the armed conflict of Colombia.
I cannot agree with Mr. Paul Wolf's comment posted here. Of course, the argument that Princeton's students do not come from poor families anywhere can always be made. However, when Mr. Wolf says that the Colombians students that organized the event today do not represent Colombia's poor, he seems to imply that we are representing the viewpoint of a rich elite that only offers a "one sided" argument about the FARC's actions. That is not true. The fact is that, regardless of the social and economic background of the Colombian students that organized the event at Princeton, millions of Colombians belonging to all social strata marched on the streets of 40 Colombian cities and 125 cities in the rest of the world. Mr. Wolf is very wrong if he thinks that the atrocities committed by the FARC have only hit the wealthy. The Bojaya massacre in May 2002, in which 120 poor peasants were ruthlessly killed is only one example. Just last week, the Colombian Armed Forces rescued another poor peasant who had been kidnapped by FARC rebels. I have the feeling that the 783 people the FARC still holds hostage (some for 10 years and counting) would not appreciate Mr. Wolf's comment. He also talks of today's march creating "divisions in that country". Well, one can hardly see any divisions when 96% of the Colombian population rejects the FARC. Moreover, Mr. Wolf's comparison of the Colombian conflict with the American Civil War (look at his article) is farfetched, to say the least. The analogy between Venezuela's desire to recognize belligerence status for the FARC and the British support for the Southern States during the Civil War is innacurate. Superficially, they may sound like similar cases, but in reality they are very different. He also brings up his investigation about the victims of paramilitary violence. Good. Today was the day to protest against the FARC, and as the article in the Princetonian points out, "to reject all forms of violence". The fact that we are against the FARC does not mean at all that we are for the paramilitary groups. Both groups are human rights violators and they must be brought to justice. The march today was not a march for war, as Mr. Wolf has pointed out. It takes more than 2 months in Colombia to understand this, the many other complexities of the Colombian conflict, and the mind of the Colombian citizen. Today's march was against torture, massacres, kidnapping, and drug-trafficking by those who call themselves "The People's Army". Colombians today said "no" to the nightmare that the FARC have created, and to their horrendous means for their vague and obscure ends. Any other opinion about today's event is simply, like Mr. Wolf's website, "upside down".
Mr Wolf.
A march that covers one side of an issue does not lose legitimacy or value for it.
After reading your article:
I find hard to see how a criminal group, that exerts power through arms in territory's they do not dominantly occupy, but rather move through, and perform targeted and selective threats can be considered legitimate, as you seem to imply in your article.
Those civilians kidnapped would hardly be moving through FARC's "Territory"; most of them were extracted or entrapped. And no point in time were any of those individuals "traveling through its territory without safe conducts" or are treated " as prisoners of war". Which becomes evident when a lot of them have been extracted from their houses (Miraflores Building in the Colombian city of Neiva, 16/06/2001 for example) or have been selectively targeted to be, then exchanged for ransom.
" It disclaims all extortion and other transactions for individual gain; all acts of private revenge, or connivance at such acts." as Lieber's Code says. Revenge has also been enacted by the FARC when pursuing members that have left the group and are in a clear Colombian Government Occupied territory or political opponents, the current Colombian President, before he even was president.
So no, The FARC's actions do Violate the laws of war, in Both countries, where they have kidnapped civilians.
You Complain about the March being one sided, the FARC has only taken care of one side, their own, attacked everyone else for their own gain, and even then by drawing convenient aspects from the civil war and conveniently skewing them to fit your article, only shows you, and your article as one sided. Hypocrisy at its best.
In the meantime we will protest about one side's actions, and hopefully in the near future, the paramilitary and the ELN as focused as well. I'd call this march a good start.
It's cynics like you, so preoccupied with marking everything that doesn't fit your ideal as bad, while missing the point on how good it can be.
You don't need more time in Colombia.
However I do hope that your work with the paramilitary victims goes well. I hope for their sake that it's better than the article.
It will be very difficult for anyone even colombians to disentangle the complexities of a conflict that like the colombian has expaned for at least 100 years, i doubt that by visiting mcdonalds 2 months every day for lunch i will understand in depht the mechanics behind it all. and in that line i hardly believe that someone not from Colombia will ever understand the meaning of the violence that run the country.But it is very difficult for anyone to stand that someone didnt have as a human been the emphatic mecanism to understand the suffering of others, thats what really moved all that people who went in the street of Colombia and the world to protest agains some minority that all in all dont have any emphatic feelings for anyone, at least no more empathy than that a predator has for his prey. Rich or poor i wonder what a human being feels when another one of his species are suffering , and will it change if you know that cry is for an innocent one. Farc or paramilitary, all need to be condemned, thats what the people of Colombia did last monday. An theres nothing more to it, politicals standings aside. FARC are not the peoples army in Colombia, so i thanks the writters of the article for pointing us that very clearly.