Chavez defends Colombia rebels
Bogota angered after Veneuzela’s president says Farc is not a terrorist group.
The Farc is the oldest and largest guerrilla army in Latin America and has been fighting the government for several decades.
“The Farc uses violence against democratic government and civil populations” Jose Obdulio Gaviria, an adviser to Colombia’s president |
The United States and many other Colombian allies label Farc and the ELN, Colombia’s second largest rebel group, as terrorists and have imposed sanctions on the groups.
The rebels say they are fighting for greater equality in the Andean country.
Jose Obdulio Gaviria, an adviser to Alvaro Uribe, the Colombian president, reacted angrily to Chavez’s defence of the two groups.
On Thursday, Farc released Consuelo Gonzalez and Clara Rojas, two politicians held captive for six years.
Al Jazeera Mariana Sanchez in Caracas said that that it seemed that Chavez made the remarks to repay Farc for releasing the hostages.
“Although Farc said at all times that they were going to release the hostages unilaterally, for nothing in return, it seems like this is the time when President Chavez is giving them what they want … international recognition,” she said.
‘Horrible situations’
One of the freed hostages said on Friday that many of the captives held by Farc are kept chained in jungle camps surrounded by barbed wire and are terrified by army artillery and machine gun fire.
Gonzalez said hostages lived under constant fear of being killed by military fire [AFP] |
“[Abducted] soldiers and police live chained all day by the neck,” Gonzalez told Colombia’s Caracol Radio.
“Whatever they have to do, wherever they have to go, to bathe, to wash their clothes, they carry their chains.”
“We lived in horrible situations of risk, of high risk,” she said. “We practically felt the bombs going off only a few metres from where we were. Army helicopters firing machine guns also came very close. Living in war is a horror.”
Gonzalez and Rojas brought photographs and letters from 16 hostages still in the camps and said it was heartrending to leave their former companions behind.