Last night, Saturday April 27, 1996, two men presumed to be FARC guerrillas committed an atrocity against defenseless civilians in Apartadó. These two unknown persons on a motorcycle threw two grenades at Apartadó residents enjoying the evening at an open-air restaurant. Mario Agudelo, a representataive for the Esperanza, Paz y Libertad (EPL) political party, was in the restaurant at the time (the apparent target). He escaped injury, but a young woman was killed and eight other people were wounded.
A couple of weeks ago the FARC also ambushed an Army unit in the Putumayo region, killing 31 soldiers. The Colombia Support Network and the Dane County-Apartadó Sister Community Project totally reject these acts of aggression of the FARC, or anybody, directed at persons not in combat positions and at defenseless civilians. Young men should not be killing each other. The form of struggling for justice and democracy in Colombia cannot include cowardly acts of atrocity such as those just described. What is the difference between a guerrilla and a common criminal when they do the same type of acts?
The Colombian civil war has shown that killing a lot of people is not the answer to solving the problems of Colombia. The attempt to create political parties which are alternatives to the guerrilla forces is the correct path to take to arrive at a more democratic society, but only if the Colombian government also guarantees the participation of the alternative elements in the electoral system.
The Colombia Support Network and the Dane County-Apartadó Sister Community Project call upon the alternative groups who have given up their arms in Urabá to work in harmony and for objectives which benefit the great majority, and to leave aside their petty fights against one another for power.