Join the International Campaign of the ISL Against the State Genocide in Colombia!

Socialist Socialist Sep 10, 2020 06:50 3998

Join the International Campaign of the ISL Against the State Genocide in Colombia!

In Colombia, the assainations of indigenous peoples' leaders, leftist activists, trade unionists and peasants are in a serious escalation. Right-wing death squads, long intertwined with the Colombian state, continue the massacres with great recklessness.

The FARC guerrillas laid down their arms in 2016, and the far-right Duque won the presidential election in 2018. Murders accelerated during Duque's presidency. The genocide, which peaked during the quarantine period compared to the previous year, target the leftist opponents, especially the leaders of the peasants and indigenous people in the southern regions of the country.

182 young people, peasants, social leaders and workers have been killed in 43 separate massacres so far this year. According to many human rights organizations and research institutes, more than 700 social and political leaders have been killed in violence targeting dissidents since the so-called peace deal with the FARC.

The FARC, which decided to lay down its arms because it reached a political and military end, while drawing a social democratic image in the legal political arena, the opponents within the FARC, who opposed the disarmament agreement, could not create an political aternative. The FARC laying down arms in Colombia, which has a tradition of civil war and reckoning since the mid-19th century; it left former guerrillas, leftist mass leaders and opposition figures vulnerable to the revenge attacks of the far-right militias. The vast majority of the murders took place in the south of the country, where the state was almost absent, in an area left vulnerable by the disarmament of FARC guerrillas.

The escalating murders have become the country's new normal. Ivan Duque, led by the former president and also a very bloody figure, Alvaro Uribe, continues this bloody tradition.
The farmers who are struggling for their lands are targeted by the paramilitary groups.

The reason of the violence in the rural areas of Colombia are rooted in the land fight  of the FARC and paramilitary / fascist organizations. The FARC had been the defender of the poor peasants, while the far right represented the big property owners, drug cartels, bourgeois politicians and the CIA. For nearly 50 years, the peasants were protected in this war by the FARC. Now, paramilitary forces are slaughtering prominent political leaders.

Coca, which is the main source of agricultural economy in mountainous and forest areas, is also a serious conflict for guerrilla and paramilitary groups.

The government began to forcibly remove the coca crop from the lands in the months of quarantine, without any consultation. The protests that followed,escalated violence against social leaders who led the struggle and resisted the displacement.

In the period of the COVID-19 quarantine, social leaders became completely open to the asssatinations. In the country where the Duque leadership cooperates closely with the paramilitary forces, the bloody actions of the paramilitary forces, extends to university activists, LGBTI activists, trade unionists and left forces.

The ISL, the international organization of world revolutionary socialists, has launched an international campaign against the state terror prevailing in Colombia, calling for a fight against state genocide. Impulso Socialista, the Colombian section of the ISL, is doing its best to foster the fight against this murders. One of the main leaders of the Impulso Socialista, whose foundations were laid last year, were also on the death list hung on the streets of Medellin by far-right death squads. Our comrades responded to these threats by further institutionalizing and building the Impulso Socialista.


SEP (Turkey) Güneş Gümüş supports the campaing


Our comrades have now rolled up their sleeves to turn the fight against the Duque-led murders by far-right gangs into an international campaign. In the campaign, revolutionaries from more than 30 countries and 5 continents raise solidarity with Colombian workers, peasants and revolutionaries. We call you to join this campaign. What you need to do is take a photo or video using our above image that says "Against The Paramilitary and State Genocide in Colombia" and share it on your social media accounts with the tags #NoMasGenocidioEnColombia and #ContraElTerrorismoDeEstado and e-mail them to impulso.socialista.lis@gmail .