(Bogotá) Around 25,000 people have been confined for ten days and risk running out of food in indigenous villages in the Colombian Amazon (south), due to threats from FARC dissidents, the local governor said on Thursday.
In the municipalities of Solano and Milan (south), “a confrontation is imminent” between the Central Staff (EMC) and the “Segunda Marquetalia”, indicated on national radio the governor of the Caqueta Department, Luis Francisco Ruiz.
These two rival armed groups are both dissidents of the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia), a Marxist guerrilla dismantled since the signing of a historic peace agreement signed in 2016 with this Marxist guerrilla.
With leaflets, as well as audio and videos broadcast on social networks, the rebels prohibit residents from moving.
“We feel fear, anguish, anxiety […] We can’t sleep,” a local community leader who preferred to remain anonymous told AFP by telephone. “It is very dangerous to go out.”
Audio attributed to a suspected guerrilla leader has been circulating since last week. “No one is allowed to walk along the river […] Lest innocent people fall into it […] Everyone stay calm,” warns this recording, the authenticity of which AFP was unable to verify.
“There is a restriction of mobility on the Orteguaza and Caqueta rivers that mainly harms” two indigenous communities located near the triple border between Colombia, Ecuador and Peru, explained Governor Ruiz.
“This concerns around 25,000 people, isolated by restrictions on rivers in an area where the only access is currently by water.”
Over the past ten days, only “two barges […] with non-perishable goods” were able to enter this area. For the rest, there is “no commercial transport mobility”, he lamented.
The governor joined the call launched Monday by indigenous organizations, who asked President Gustavo Petro for “immediate solutions to the permanent encirclement, threats and attacks on the free movement of communities” in the region. .
“What is demonstrated here is that we have no control over the Caquetá River,” noted President Petro, for his part, asking the security forces to intervene.
The first left-wing president in the country’s history, Mr. Petro began discussions with the main armed groups operating in the country, including FARC dissidents, the Guevarist ELN, paramilitary groups and drug traffickers.
This policy of “total peace” faces numerous obstacles and is severely criticized by the opposition, while some of these armed groups have increased their actions to increase their territorial influence.
The EMC is the largest splinter group of the former FARC, with some 3,500 fighters. He has been talking with Mr Petro’s delegates since October as part of a ceasefire agreed to until July.
The “Segunda Marquetalia” has around 1,600 men under the command of the former number two of the FARC, Ivan Marquez, who participated in the 2016 peace agreement. In 2019, the guerrilla leader renounced the pact, resuming the weapons and took refuge on the Colombian-Venezuelan border where he was at one point thought to be dead, according to military intelligence.