Despite waging a brutal terrorist war on the people of Colombia that claimed hundreds of thousands of lives over 50 years, the Marxist narco-terrorist group known as the FARC is making out like bandits in an Obama-backed “peace” deal with the Colombian government.
Under the controversial plan, negotiated in Communist Cuba with help from the pro-FARC dictatorship there, FARC terrorists and their leaders will receive what amounts to amnesty for the atrocities they perpetrated — everything from mass murder and war crimes to kidnapping, torture, robbery, and rape. The war criminals and terrorists will also be allowed to enter the government. Critics, though, including the former Colombian president, are blasting the agreement as a farce and a capitulation to communist terrorists just as the barbarians were set to be destroyed militarily.
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Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos (shown at left), who campaigned as a tough-on-terror leader before stabbing voters in the back and opening “negotiations” with the terror group, announced the “historic” agreement in Havana last week with the FARC leader. Essentially, under the agreement inked last week, the FARC, which in Spanish stands for the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, will receive immunity for their crimes. Of course, the forces supporting the capitulation are pointing to alleged “sanctions” that will be imposed on the most heinous war criminals — those responsible for massacring innocent civilians, for example, or kidnapping children and forcing them to fight against the Colombian people or to live as sex slaves. But those “sanctions” do not include jail time or any other serious punishment. Instead, the worst of the worst will be sentenced to “community service.”
Apparently the FARC will even get to keep much of its weaponry and the proceeds of its crime spree, with taxpayers being forced to shoulder the burden of reparations.
In a scathing online statement posted on his website, former Colombian President Alvaro Uribe, an immensely popular anti-communist leader whose father was murdered by the FARC, blasted Santos for his “suspicious weakness” and for the fraudulent “peace” deal. “The FARC have achieved with Santos that which they did not obtain in 50 years of violence: he vindicated them before the whole world, he granted them constituent powers, he recognized them as a legitimate counterpart of the State, and he washed their atrocities, crimes, and drug trafficking, claiming that they have been altruists,” Uribe declared on June 29. “They will not pay with even one day in prison, a court of justice will be created where they will participate in the election of judges, which will have the capacity to investigate and prosecute any citizen, and to review sentences handed down by the highest courts of justice in Colombia. They will participate in politics, with conditions more favorable than those of the democratic parties, and they wil not pay one peso in reparations to their victims.”
Other critics had even harsher words about the deal. Lia Fowler, an American journalist and former FBI agent, has been a strong critic of the “peace” machinations. In a piece headlined “Redefining Peace: The Triump of Terror in Colombia,” Fowler highlights the FARC’s inhuman savagery, taking special aim at the planting of deadly landmines around schools to target children and civilians. “So: The FARC plants landmines; civilians and soldiers are killed and maimed by them; soldiers die neutralizing them; the Army is blamed for them; and the FARC is rewarded with impunity and government jobs,” Fowler explained, summarizing the absurdity of the situation. “If that is ‘Peace,’ terror is winning in Colombia.”
Polls show some nine out of ten Colombians oppose amnesty for the terrorists, but the Santos administraiton is claiming the “community service” for war criminals means this is not amensty. Fowler noted recently in the Wall Street Journal that FARC will not turn in its weapons and, despite being among the wealthiest terror groups on the planet, will keep its loot.
In an interview with Time magazine, which cited a poll putting his job approval at just 21 percent, Santos absurdly tried to claim that peace was not popular. “Making war is more popular than making peace,” he claimed, apparently believing that Time readers are fools. “Some people don’t understand that I am now sitting down with the enemy and making concessions. This has come at a very high cost (to my popularity) but I think it will turn into an investment when people see that we delivered.” Of course, people are not upset about the prospect of peace. Instead, they are outraged that their government is defying the will of the people and essentially capitulating to a savage terrorist group that murdered and maimed countless innocent Colombians in its effort to enslave the nation under Marxist tyranny. Hundreds of thousands died. Millions were displaced. Nobody will spend a day in jail. That is why people are angry.
Santos has been hard at work promoting his “peace” deal with terrorists. In an interview with NPR, which is partly funded by U.S. taxpayers and regularly comes under fire for promoting government propaganda, Santos tried to put lipstick on the pig. “It is the first time ever that a guerrilla group lays down its arms to submit to a justice system where they are going to be investigated, judged and condemned and sanctioned,” he claimed at his presidential palace in Bogotá. NPR, sounding more like a Castro propaganda organ than a news outlet, outrageously described the FARC as mere “rebels” simply “fighting for land reform and greater equality,” but who had been forced into crime to fund the supposed “equality” mission. In reality, FARC was a front for the mass-murdering Soviet Union and international communism, with a goal of subjugating the Colombian people under a brutal dictatorship. Castro’s propaganda organs are promoting the same narrative as NPR.
In the interview, Santos also bragged about how the communist terrorists, who have helped finance fellow communists and socialists across Latin America with their illicit proceeds from crime, would be welcomed into the government. “I think it will be important for the democracy and the process that [the FARC] will be successful in gaining a space in the political arena,” he was quoted as saying. “This is what democracy is all about.” As anyone who knows anything about communists and the international communist conspiracy could tell Santos, though, communists only use “democracy” as a tactic in their war on freedom, religion, self-government, and humanity when it happens to be convenient. As soon as it stops being convenient, the mass murder and terrorism will continue.
Santos even legitimized the terror force, shaking hands with terror leader Rodrigo Londoño Echeverri, who styles himself “Timoleón ‘Timochenko’ Jiménez.” The FARC was a founding member of the Foro de Sao Paulo, a network of communists and socialists founded by Fidel Castro, the Sandinistas, the Brazilian Workers’ Party PT), and others who have seized power across huge swaths of the region. The U.S. government knows all of this but says nothing.
While the United States traditionally has shunned negotiating with terrorists, the Obama administration has emerged as one of the strongest proponents of the “peace” deal negotiated with terrorists — along with Raul Castro and his barbaric regime. (Obama’s political career was launched in the home of communist terrorist Bill Ayers, whose bombing spree in the United States, like the FARC’s terror, was financed by Havana). Earlier this year, Obama’s secretary of state, John Kerry, went to Havana to meet the FARC terrorists and pose for smiling pictures with them. The administration even nominated a “special envoy,” globalist Council on Foreign Relations operative Bernard Aronson, to secure the massive FARC victory that would have otherwise been inconceivable. In short, it appears that the Obama administration has lawlessly thrown the FARC, along with its Communist Cuban sponsors, a saving lifeline at a critical moment.
Similar White House machinations in support of Marxist mass murderers has occured in a number of other Latin American countries in recent years, even as Latin Americans were making progress in liberating thmselves from communism and socialist tyranny. The globalist Council on Foreign Relations, which helped bring Castro to power, has played a key role in the process.
Unsurpsingly, the UN is also onboard with the scheme, even sending “monitors” who will allegedly help “oversee” the implementation of the peace agreement, assuming it is ratified this summer as expected. The UN’s “expert on conflict and crisis situations,” Fabrizio Hochschild, was quoted as saying that the global outfit, widely ridiculed as the dictators club, along with UN boss Ban Ki Moon, “100 percent support the peace process.” Indeed, UN chief Ban also attended the June 23 signing ceremony in Havana to show his support. Castro’s communist propaganda organs touted the UN’s support for the program, too, as if that legitimized it. Other socialist regimes will help oversee the deal, too, including the murderous Castro-backed autocrats terrorizing and destroying Venezuela from Caracas.
The next step in the “peace” process is to present the scheme to Colombian voters for approval. With Santos and his government trying to terrorize and threaten the public into backing the deal as the only alternative to perpetual war with terrorists, it remains unclear which way the vote will go. Critics are urging a no vote.
Of course, the Colombian people have the right to deal with their issues in whatever way they see fit. However, the Obama administration must not be permitted to further abuse the resources and remaining prestige of the United States to facilitate this massive victory for communist terrorists. Congress needs to get involved in reining in the out-of-control executive branch before it wreaks further havoc on a world already in flames.
Photo of Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos (left) shaking hands with FARC leader Timoleon Jimenez at signing ceremony with Raul Castro in Cuba: AP Images
Alex Newman, a foreign correspondent for The New American, is normally based in Europe. Follow him on Twitter @ALEXNEWMAN_JOU. He can be reached at [email protected]
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