Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

The internal armed conflict in Colombia from 1964 to 2008 has caused more than 100,000 deaths and three to four million displacements. The main issues for the anti-war movement in Colombia have centered around paramilitarism and the US-sponsored military program, the Colombia Plan, which started in 2000. The government anti-terrorism policy, including the paramilitary groups widely connected with governmental politics, the Colombian army, and transnational companies, produces rising human rights violations, especially in the rural areas. Presented in 2000 to the International Cooperation as a plan with a strong civil focus, the Colombia Plan very quickly turned out to be a mere military-based counterinsurgency program that safeguards the economic interest of multi- and transnational companies. Colombia's peace movement arose in the mid-1990s, in the middle of the most violent period of the internal armed conflict. After Pablo Escobar was imprisoned in June of 1991, drug trafficking caused more than 4,000 deaths throughout the country between 1991 and 1995. In 1996 a break-in at the military base of Las Delicias in the Putumayo department by FARC-EP (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia-Ejército del Pueblo; Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia-People's Army) guerillas led to the detention of 60 soldiers, with 28 being killed and 16 injured. After that, rural protests in ... log in or subscribe to read full text