Colombia: FARC ends unilateral ceasefire
Colombia’s FARC rebels announced the immediate end of a two-month unilateral ceasefire and renewed its call for a bilateral truce to hold peace talks with the government.
Colombia’s FARC rebels announced the immediate end of a two-month unilateral ceasefire and renewed its call for a bilateral truce to hold peace talks with the government.
The Colombian National Police elite anti-riot squad, ESMAD, stormed the campus of the the Technological University of Chocó, which had been successfully occupied for 40 days.
Embera indigenous communities on Colombia’s Pacific coast came under bombardment by army helicopters, while an Awá community expelled illegal gold miners from their land.
Colombia's peace process continues to advance, with institutional mechanisms for a post-war order falling into place. But violence in the countryside across Colombia remains at an alarming level, as social leaders are targeted for assassination by paramilitary factions. The ELN guerilla organization—which, unlike the FARC, remains in arms—released a statement noting that January had seen an assassination every day across the country, and charged that rightist paramilitary networks are carrying out a "systematic genocide."