10064

08/13/2002
EDITORIAL NUMBER=0-10064

TERRORISM IN COLOMBIA

The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, claim to be seeking peace and justice for the poor and downtrodden. But a recent series of attacks in Colombia, which officials there blamed on the FARC, once again showed the self-proclaimed revolutionary group to be nothing more than a group of terrorists.

The August 7^th mortar attacks targeted the presidential palace in Bogota and occurred just moments before President Alvaro Uribe [AHL-vah-ro oo-REE-bay] was sworn in at the parliament building nearby. While the political targets of the attack may have been the hemisphere’s leaders, who were gathered for the ceremony, the victims of the shelling were some of the neediest residents of the city. Two shells hit a building next to the presidential palace. At least fourteen people were killed and sixty-nine injured in the attacks. According to press reports, most of the victims of the shelling were homeless or destitute residents of the capital. Among the dead were three children.

The rebels also fired mortar rounds at a military academy in central Colombia but hit twenty houses and a school instead. In all, more than seventy people were wounded in the attacks.

While no one has claimed responsibility for the mortar attacks, Bogota Mayor Antanas Mockus[An-tan-nus MO-koos] said intercepted radio communications implicated the FARC. U.S. State Department spokesman Philip Reeker said the attacks, which showed "little regard for the lives and well-being of Colombian citizens," fit the pattern of the FARC’s recent behavior.

Indeed, the FARC has demonstrated scant concern for the fate of civilians. In addition to killing non-combatants through indiscriminate shelling, the group, like Colombia’s right-wing paramilitary groups, has a long history of deliberate massacres. It kidnaps for ransom, uses children as soldiers, mistreats prisoners and executes those it deems to be enemies. In July, the FARC threatened to murder mayors and other local officials who did not resign.

These tactics, regardless of the political aims they purportedly intend to forward, constitute terrorism. Groups that employ such tactics deserve only unequivocal condemnation and quarantine by the international community.