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Marchers condemn Colombia violence
Protests held in Colombian capital and across the world against paramilitary killings.
Last Modified: 07 Mar 2008 02:58 GMT
The paramilitaries have been blamed for scores of
massacres, kidnappings and disappearances [EPA]
Thousands of Colombians have marched in the capital, Bogota, in support of victims of violence carried out by the country's paramilitary groups.
 
Families of victims carried photographs of those killed or missing during the country's civil war, which has pitted rebel groups such as the Farc against various militias and government forces.
Marchers called on Alvaro Uribe, the Colombian president, to acknowledge rights abuses by the army and by paramilitaries guilty of many of the worst massacres of the country's decades-long conflict.
 
Smaller protests were held in other Colombian cities as well as in Venezuela, Ecuador and the UK.
A larger anti-Farc rebel group protest was held in Colombia and in cities across the world in February.
 
Demobilisation
 
Colombia's so-called "paras", including groups such as the United Self-Defence Forces of Colombia (AUC), were largely formed as private security forces in the 1980s to protect wealthy Colombians and to combat groups such as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc).
 
However, the groups have been blamed for scores of massacres, kidnappings and disappearances, and the AUC has been designated a terrorist group by the US and the European Union.
 
More than 30,000 paramilitary fighters have been demobilised and decommissioned since 2004 in a peace deal.
 
Thursday's rally came amid a diplomatic crisis in which Ecuador, Venezuela and Nicaragua have all cut diplomatic ties with the Colombian government following a Colombian army raid this weekend in Ecuador which killed a senior Farc commander.
Source:
Agencies
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