Colombian rebels renounce kidnapping
FARC says it will release its last 10 ‘prisoners of war’
BOGOTA, Colombia – Colombia’s main rebel group said Sunday it is abandoning the practice of kidnapping and will soon free its last remaining “prisoners of war” – 10 security force members held for as long as 14 years.
The leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, announced on its website that it would no longer kidnap civilians “for financial ends,” unequivocally renouncing for the first time a tool it long used against Colombia’s well-heeled as well as foreigners.
It is not clear whether an order has been given to release ransom-kidnapping victims currently held by the rebels, whose number is not known. Nor is it clear, given the insurgency’s decentralized nature, whether the FARC’s ruling seven-man secretariat can enforce its order.
The rebels are known to currently hold four foreigners, all Chinese oil workers abducted last June.
The FARC statement said kidnapping of civilians for ransom had helped sustain the insurgency, but added: “From this day on we are halting the practice in our revolutionary activity.” It did not provide a date for the release of the 10 security force members, two fewer than the government has said the insurgents hold.
The rebels did not say, however, that they were abandoning hostilities. They have recently stepped up hit-and-run attacks, and the military blames them for a bombing and mortar attack on two police posts in the past month that killed 15 people and wounded nearly 100, most civilians.
President Juan Manuel Santos responded to the FARC announcement positively but cautiously via Twitter. He called it “an important and necessary, if insufficient, step in the right direction.”
Analysts expressed skepticism FARC leaders will be able to enforce it.
“One would think that in such a fragmented organization it won’t happen uniformly at all levels,” said Alejo Vargas, a political scientist at Colombia’s National University. He recalled that during peace negotiations in the 1980s the rebels told then-President Belisario Betancur’s government that they would stop kidnapping but did not.