“Among the many failures, gaps and non-compliance in the implementation of the peace accords, the most troubling, without a doubt, are the killings of former FARC guerrillas and social leaders,” said Juan Manuel Santos, Colombia’s former President and Nobel Prize. for the peace that brought talks to fruition in Havana, when he responded to a letter from Rodrigo Londoño on Thursday, Timochenko, the greatest leader of Colombia’s extinct Revolutionary Armed Forces. Both have had a lively correspondence despite recently admitting that they considered attacking the other during the war.
“I share his grief and pain at the clearly reprehensible and unacceptable death of his former comrades-in-arms who laid down arms in good faith,” writes Santos, admitting to being moved by the most recent letter from Londoño, the current president of the Comunes. . the renamed party that emerged from the peace agreement. “Today, the peace agreement is more like death than life for many of us. Especially for those whose names are almost anonymous, women and men on foot, and today without war shoes, people who will never make headlines, until the day they die, killed in a street or corner of Colombia ”, you wrote Timochenko last Tuesday in an open letter asking him to intercede with President Iván Duque.
The incessant killing of social leaders, environmentalists and ex-guerrillas – more than 250 since they signed the peace – “is not the fault of the agreements, as some would insinuate, but of their flawed implementation, which is in charge of governments. of service ”, Santos appreciates in his writing. “We were fully aware that ending the war with the FARC would not eliminate other sources of violence,” continues the former president, which is why the pact he made with Timochenko in late 2016 at the Colón Theater in Bogotá expressly addresses one of the security guarantees of your items. “Compliance with that point,” Santos said in an arrow to his successor, “would solve the problem, but it requires leadership, coordination capacity and political will.”
“President Duque and his administration must listen to the many voices calling for more bold and effective measures to protect them,” Santos said. The winner of the Nobel Peace Prize recalls, among other things, the damning report Human Rights Watch published this week, in which it considers the efforts of the Duque administration to stop the killings of human rights defenders insufficient.
The former president also refers to the strong support of the international community for Colombians’ efforts to turn the page on violence. It highlights that the nascent Joe Biden administration in the United States has seen the implementation of peace as one of the priorities of the binational relationship, and that even UN Secretary General António Guterres referred to the agreements this week when he appeared in Prevention and action, Duque’s daily television program dedicated to the health crisis caused by the pandemic.
“No one, no one would understand that the government remained deaf and in a state of denial in the face of this avalanche of criticism and demand that the peace accords be honored, especially the security issue, as there is a danger that Colombia will slip back into the disastrous list of pariah countries, with all its consequences, after getting out of that muddy swamp with so much effort and effort, ”Santos emphasizes, admitting that he does not have the best relations with Duque, a staunch critic of the negotiations but he is ready to meet with the president as Timochenko requested. “It would be ideal, but I do not have many illusions,” he says. “A signal from the Nariño Palace is sufficient to formally announce the meeting through the regular channels. to ask.”
In a recent hearing before the Special Jurisdiction for Peace, the transitional judicial system accused of trying the worst crimes of the war, Londoño acknowledged that the FARC was considering attempting an attempt on Santos’ life when he became president. was, but eventually ruled out that option. “I was not so generous and so I authorized the operations against all members of the FARC who were considered high-value targets,” writes Santos in the letter, which launched the operation that ended Alfonso Cano’s life when the greatest leader of the FARC, at the beginning of his mandate. “We never had enough intelligence against you, but you would have authorized it,” the former president wrote to Timochenko. “It was the rules of war, that horrible war that we ended in time.”