UN JOURNALISME D'INVESTIGATION

http://www.fightersandlovers.org/ 

http://www.fightersandlovers.org/IMG/pdf/koll-prover_print.pdf 

28 août 2008 

Connectez vous sur ces sites de la société danoise « fightersandlovers ». C’est effrayant. Elle vend depuis aujourd’hui sur internet des t-shirt, bandanas et bouteilles de survie à l’effigie des FARC ! (et du FPLP palestinien). Cf. photo 

Le Danemark fait pourtant partie de l’Union européenne, qui a classé les FARC dans les organisations terroristes en 2002. 

Cette firme avait déjà été poursuivie en 2007 pour avoir réalisé des ventes similaires. Le 13 décembre dernier, les six responsables de Fighters and Lovers avaient été acquittés par un tribunal danois en première instance. Le jugement en appel a été fixé au 3 septembre prochain à Copenhague. 

Les pays nordiques sont réputés pour leur laxisme, voire leur complicité objective avec les groupes liés au terrorisme. L’agence ANNCOL, bras politique des FARC en Europe, est tranquillement installée à Stockholm, capitale de la Suède. Le Danemark tolère sur son territoire un groupe qui aide financièrement les FARC, à l’aide de chemises à l’effigie de la guérilla colombienne. Pire, le commandement des rebelles avait démenti en mars avoir reçu “ni dollars ni armes de quiconque” (note de ma part: face aux révélations de l’ordinateur de Raul Reyes, n°2 des FARC tué le 1er mars par l’armée colombienne, sur une aide vénézuélienne de 300 millions de dollars à la guérilla), pour rendre hommage, dans son dernier communiqué, à “l’honorable exception de l’organisation danoise Fighters and Lovers, pour leur donation symbolique aux FARC”. Je ne crois pas que la vente en France de chemises vantant les crimes de l’ETA serait admise sans poursuites immédiates. Le Danemark va-t-il prendre des mesures pour poursuivre les hallucinés locaux qui ont confondu les criminels des FARC avec de doux rêveurs du Grand Soir? 

Sur son site, fightersandlovers offre également un pamphlet en neuf pages (en anglais) sur les FARC et la guerre en Colombie. Il y est affirmé que « les FARC ne sont ni anges ni démons, mais des êtres de chair et de sang ( !), qui mènent une juste lutte pour la liberté contre un régime brutal. Ce mémoire explique pourquoi la Colombie n’est pas un Etat démocratique gouverné par la loi, et pourquoi les FARC sont un mouvement de libération légitime ». 

Voici ce pamphlet en anglais :   

FARC and the war in Colombia - told in 10 minutes 

Fighters+Lovers believe that FARC neither are angels nor demons – but people of flesh and blood, who are fighting a just struggle for freedom 

against a brutal regime. This folder explains why Colombia is not a democratic state governed by law and why FARC is a legitimate liberation 

movement. Information on these pages comes partly from a number of human rights groups and partly from the American Latin America expert, 

James Petras and the Colombian trade-union movement. All sources are extensively documented in the rapport “On th 

e conflict in Colombia and FARC – EP”, that can be obtained through fightersandlovers.org. 

Why is there civil war in Colombia? Colombia lies in South America and is about the size of Spain, France and 

Great Britain – altogether. The country has about 45 million inhabitants, of mixed European, Indian and African decent. For decades Colombia has 

been affected by civil war between government forces and guerrilla movements. At the end of the 1940’s a bloody conflict between the two 

dominating political parties: the liberals and the conservatives, broke out. More than 200.000 Colombians lost their lives in connection with the 

conflict, that to a considerable extent was about the landowners’ attempt to drive the farmers off their land. After a military coup and the introduction 

of a dictatorship, the violence between the two sides in the conflict lessened up to 1964. 

After that the liberals and the conservatives agreed on forming a coalition government, where the presidency alternated between the two parties 

every four years. All other political currents or factions were excluded from participation. This, together with the regime’s lack of efforts to 

reduce poverty and the tremendous social inequality, lead to armed resistance against the government from new opposition groups. 

Instead of doing something about the social inequality, the government in the 70’s reacted to the growing numbers of guerrilla movements by 

carrying out campaigns against rebellion groups with the help of military advice from the US. A key point in these initiatives, was to establish 

paramilitary groups. These groups were established by the army and their allies amongst the landowners and the political elite. The paramilitary 

groups were sometimes meant to have the roll of protective forces for the landowners and leading businesses against attempts at blackmail from the 

guerrilla movements. But quickly they became the central force in the government’s strategy to fight against the rebellion. In the middle of the 

1980’s the paramilitary groups formed close ties to Colombia’s narcotics mafia. Already at this point, the paramilitaries functioned as regular death 

squads. It began to become more and more difficult to discern who controlled who in the complex network of the state apparatus, the military, 

rich landowners and business people, and the narcotics mafia, who all controlled their own paramilitary forces. In the course of the 1990’s the 

paramilitaries developed into a more homogeneous nationwide organisation. At the same time, American military advisers got more 

influence. The paramilitary umbrella organisation AUC grew close together with the government forces and it became more and more normal 

to see paramilitary and government forces patrolling together and sharing bases and communication equipment. They also went on joint operations, 

including carrying out political assassinations. The death squads became a state supported enterprise. Although the 

paramilitaries declared role is to fight against the guerrilla movements, they prefer civilians as targets for attack. That is partly due to their 

engagement in narcotics traffic and their difficulty in fighting against FARC on the field of combat. The victims are mostly civilians suspected 

of having sympathy for the guerrilla or political opponents to the paramilitaries and the politicians and business circles behind them. It often 

happens that business leaders bring the death squads into action against a whole local society to drive them off their land. 

The human rights situation in Colombia has in the last 20 years been one of the most catastrophic in the world. Thousands of members of the 

democratic opposition have been murdered by government forces and their paramilitary allies. The same is the case for several thousands of union 

leaders. Hundreds of journalists, student leaders, advocates of human rights, lawyers and leaders of the Indian movements also have been 

victims of the regimes murder campaign. To name one example, the paramilitaries and the army together stamped out the political party Unión 

Patriótica – a broad left-wing party, supported by the trade unions – by targeted murder against up to 5.000 of the party’s members. But the wave 

of political murders is not the only form of violation of human rights. Thousands of people have disappeared without a trace, after they were 

abducted by soldiers or paramilitaries. In later years many of the regime’s secret mass graves have been revealed. Human rights activist Iván Cepedo 

considers that up to 20.000 victims of the government’s dirty war lie hidden in this way. Torture and death threats are also common. Many 

hundreds of people, especially from the unions movement and from the peasant organisations, have been jailed on false charges. More and more 

families are subject to expulsion by force by the paramilitaries, who take over the land and the rights to natural resources below ground. Today 3.6 

million Colombians have been forced to flee in this way and the country has the highest number of internal refugees in the world. There is almost 

total exemption from punishment for this type of crime and this is the core of the human rights crisis in Colombia. Changing governments have 

allowed that the people responsible for serious and comprehensive crimes are not punished. In this way the state allows the atrocities to continue. 

The current government under President Álvaro Uribe is closely tied to the paramilitary death squads and the narcotics mafia. During the presidential 

election in 2002 the paramilitaries described Uribe as “our candidate” and threatened to massacre local communities that wouldn’t vote on him. 

Candidates from the opposition were murdered or prevented from holding campaigns in the regions where the paramilitaries had control. Since Uribe 

came to power both the civil war and the atrocities against the civilian population have increased. The president’s supporters correctly claim, that 

security in certain areas has been increased. But the price has been high: Forced expulsion has increased, the army execute a growing number of 

civilians, there are more political prisoners in the jails and many more assassinations against union leaders. The brutal suppression of the people 

is, together with poverty, the reason why there always are new volunteers, who join up with the guerrilla movements. 

What is FARC? FARC is one of the oldest and largest peasant guerrilla movements in the 

world today. The four letters derive from Fueraz Armadas Revolucion-aria de Colombia – Colombia’s Revolutionary Armed Forces. FARC was 

founded in 1964 by a handful of peasants, who wanted to defend their selfruling local community against the attacks from the Colombian military. 

According to the Latin America expert James Petras, FARC has grown today to become a well organized guerrilla army with 20.000 men and 

women under arms. FARC has great influence on about 40 percent of Colombia and counts a support network of several hundreds of thousands 

of people. Until 9. September 2001 FARC was recognized as a legitimate freedom movement over great parts of the world. FARC led peace talks 

with the Colombian government then in power and a number of government representatives from European countries met with the guerrilla 

leaders to discuss a political solution to the civil war. Also the Danish government sent in 2000 a diplomat from the foreign ministry to a FARC 

controlled area in Colombia to take part in an international meeting with the guerrilla. After the president of USA declared a global war against 

“terrorism” the Colombian government however broke off the peace talks and started to receive more and more American soldiers and money to 

fight the rebellion by military means. According to James Petra it is completely wrong to use the term “terrorists” about FARC – for several 

reasons: Partly because FARC specifically aims to attack its adversary’s military forces and not innocent civilians. Partly because FARC is a 

political organisation with historically close ties to a large part of Colombia’s rural inhabitants. FARC has always followed a course of 

trying to negotiate with the Colombian state for the purpose of putting through social reforms to benefit the poorest inhabitants. Also FARC 

fulfills all conditions to enjoy recognition as a warfaring force according to international law. FARC’s troops wear uniforms, distinctly marked, they 

are organized in a military commando structure and follow the rules and standards of war as far as the special Colombian conditions allow. James 

Petras feels that the stigmatizing of FARC as “terrorists” is a purely political manoeuver from the part of the American government – that the 

EU Commission has followed. Today FARC is on the terror lists in the US and the EU. But most of the South American countries refute, that FARC 

are terrorists and the UN also does not have FARC on their terrorist list. What does FARC want to achieve? 

FARCs political goal is to achieve a modern, democratic Welfare State. FARC is working to achieve a pluralistic political system with free 

elections and democratic control of the army. FARC has taken up arms as a last resort and keeps insisting on negotiations when the government 

agrees to it. FARC disarmed in the 1980’s and participated in the legitimate political work within the broad left-wing party Unión Patriótica. 

But the army’s death squads murdered most of the party’s presidential candidates, mayors and members of parliament – and thousands of the 

party’s activists. A large part of the survivors saw no other solution but to take up the armed battle again. One example is the member of parliament, 

Iván Márquez who today is part of FARC’s leadership. As many other popular movements and parties in South America, FARC is a socialist 

movement that works towards a revolution against the authoritarian rule and the enormous social injustice. FARC is also inspired by the Latin 

American hero of independence, Simon Bolívar , whose thoughts about equality and self determination are well esteemed in the neighbouring 

countries Venezuela and Ecuador. Are there innocent victims of FARC’s activities? 

FARC’s attacks are mainly targeted against military goals. The Colombian figures – that probably are a low estimate – show that in 2006 there were 

more than two thousand military actions between government forces and FARC. 49 times FARC attacked the army’s fortified bases and more than 

2.000 soldiers and guerrillas lost their lives in the struggle. Statistics confirm that FARC clearly attack difficult to reach and “hard” military 

goals as their first priority. Rapports in the media of civilian victims of FARC’s attacks often come from information from the Colombian 

authorities, who wilfully twist the truth. The government forces have repeatedly themselves been behind assassinations that they afterwards 

ascribed to FARC. That applies for example to the massacre in the village La Rochela, where 12 employees from the ministry of justice were brutally 

murdered. The perpetrators painted graffiti on the cars where the victims sat, to make it look as if FARC was behind the crime. The Colombian state 

in 2007 was convicted of the massacre by The Interamerican Human Rights Court, that was established by The Organisation of American 

States. The purpose of the mass murder was to prevent the detection of another massacre, that the government also was behind. Another example 

is a series of bombing attacks in the capital Bogotá in the summer of 2006, that resulted in many civilian victims. According to Amnesty International 

militaries took part in in the bombings but the authorities pointed at FARC as the guilty part. The reason why the military stage such terrible 

assassinations is most likely that they want to make a political solution, that would strip the generals of their great power, as difficult as possible. 

But it is also part of the story, that the Colombian government’s informernetwork has resulted in retaliation attacks from guerrilla groups. There are 

cases, where members of FARC have attacked civilians. When FARC liquidate real or suspected stool pigeons, the guerrilla follows the same 

practice as the resistance movement in Denmark during the Second World War. In the spring of 1945 the resistance movement liquidated up to 25 

people a week. Was it possible to avoid error? All wars bring about innocent victims and irregular freedom forces’ possibility to make the right 

decisions in all situations is not always present. Compared to other legitimate freedom struggles, for example the resistance against Hitler’s 

Germany or Nelson Mandela’s and ANC’s fight against the apartheid regime in South Africa, there are actually few civilian victims in 

connection to FARC’s battles. Finally it is also important to judge a freedom movement’s actions and perhaps faults on the background of the 

suppression that the people, including the supporters of the resistance movement, experience. 

‘In the armed conflict the armed forces and their paramilitary allies have pursued a combat strategy against the rebellion that has sought to cut off 

the guerrilla forces from all real or imagined support from the civilian people. Terror is an integrated part of this strategy: cases of forced 

disappearance, torture, sexual attacks and other forms of violence against women, death threats and murder of civilians are used to cut off all real or 

alleged connections between civilians and the guerrilla.’ (Amnesty International, report 23/001/2007) 

Who commits terror in Colombia? Amnesty International has critized FARC for committing assaults in 

connection with the war. But the systematic violence against the Colombian people is seen by Amnesty purely and simply as “terror”. A 

typical example of the government forces’ brutality against civilians, is the attack on the Indian village, Betoyes. Soldiers from the government army 

invaded the village and raped by turn 3 girls of 11, 12 and 15 years of age. Afterwards they raped the pregnant Omaira Fernendez and cut the foetus 

out of her belly. While neighbours were forced to watch, the soldiers cut up the foetus with machetes and killed the mother. Finally they threw the 

bodies in the river. Afterwards the rest of the villagers fled in complete panic. And that was the whole purpose of the assault. This kind of 

atrocities against the civilian inhabitants is very far from FARC’s way of thinking. But there are cases where members of FARC have attacked 

elected politicians supposed to have connection to paramilitary death squads. The paramilitaries are estimated to control directly one third of the 

seats in Parliament. In many local areas they have murdered and persecuted all democratic opposition, so they themselves are the only ones 

to stand for election. FARC looks at the paramilitaries as a legitimate military goal whether or not they hold a public position. International law 

instructs all fighting parties to protect civilians in connection with combat and there are examples where members of FARC have not complied with 

this requirement. One example is a battle in the town of Bojayá in 2002, where paramilitary troops in collusion with the government army took a 

larger group of civilians as bombing shields and placed them in a church. A FARC contingent shot by accident a granade in amongst the civilians 

and over a hundred were killed. FARC has regretted this tragedy in public and have promised to give a compensation to the families – in contrast to 

the government forces and the paramilitaries. The example clearly shows why FARC with their repeated peace proposals insist on trying to find a 

political solution that can put an end to the civil war. FARC officially denounces terror against civilians and have for example publicly 

denounced the bombing attacks in London in the summer of 2005. Why are people taken prisoner by FARC? 

Colombia has over the latest decades become the largest producer of cocaine in the world and the country has been one of the main target for 

USA’s so called “War Against Drugs”. Hundreds of thousands of impoverished Colombian peasants are dependent on growing coca bushes 

to survive. They can not earn a living by growing traditional crops like coffee and rice because of the agricultural crisis that the neo-liberal 

economic policy has created. In spite of the American several billions of dollars support to fight drug dealing the level of production has been more 

or less unchanged and the street prices for cocaine in North America and Europe have fallen – more than risen. The drugs mafia who earn the big 

money on refining coca leaves to cocaine and exporting it abroad enjoy protection from high circles in the government and the military. The most 

frequently used tactics to fight drugs in Colombia has been to put in American planes that spray poisonous chemicals to destroy the coca fields. 

The spraying campaign has not been a very big success but great areas of land have been polluted and thousands of small farmers have been forced 

off their land. Previously the establishment tried to legitimate USA’s military intervention by the fight against drugs, called “Plan Colombia” 

whilst the current military action, that is more overtly aimed at FARC, is called “Plan Patriota”. FARC protects the poor farmers’ crops against 

attack from the government army and soldiers from USA – regardless of whether it is banana palms, potato plants or coca bushes. 

What is FARC’s view on drugs? The UN and independent experts are agreed that FARC neither produces 

nor exports drugs. But FARC imposes taxes on trade with for example coca leaves between farmers and the drugs mafia. After the end of the 

Cold War it became more difficult for the Colombian regime to justify the extensive military aid. For that reason the Colombian military started to 

describe FARC as a “drugs guerrilla” for more easily to gain access to the generous aid from USA, where the “War Against Drugs” became an 

important political priority. FARC are against narcotics smuggling and want a political solution, that provide coca farmers sustainable alternatives 

so they can raise food instead of illegal crops. Does FARC do anything else besides conducting war? 

FARC is first and foremost a political movement and the central point for the popular movements’ opposition against the authoritarian rule in 

Colombia. In the remote parts of the big country the guerrilla is the only institution that attempts to take care of a state’s obligations to the people. 

FARC contributes to creating a framework for the local democracy in the form of local councils and actively contributes to a well developed local 

judicial system based on mediation and conflict resolution. FARC provides for health care and schools and builds roads and bridges. FARC is also an 

important promoter of culture and runs a network of radio stations all over Colombia. FARC har also released 23 albums with new and traditional 

Colombian music as cumbia, salsa and vallenato. More information about  FARC at farcep.org.