Communist Web Wednesday 17th May 2000 9.30pm gmt Colombia: The nation is threatened The following is a Political Declaration by the Plenum of the Central General Staff, Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia-People's Army (FARC-EP) on the situation in Colombia. Using the pretext of the crusade against the narcotics traffic, the Government of the US is widening its intervention in the internal affairs of Colombia and preparing conditions for an invasion. As part of its counter insurgency strategy, and with the approval of the domestic political class, it is trying to implement the so-called Plan Colombia in order to develop without restriction its imperialist neo- liberal policies that will sink our people even further into misery, condemning it to a future of more indignity, violence and social injustice. They are not satisfied with the terrorism the Colombian state has imposed as the means of governing the country, a determining cause of the national crisis. Nor with the massacres carried out by the paramilitary death squads, which leave our countryside in mourning every day and which have caused the displacement of two million compatriots in the last few years. These are practices taught and promoted by the Yankees themselves in their specialised courses for business men, politicians and military commanders of our suffering country. In Colombia, there is no real, legal opposition to the system because the official dirty war eliminated it with bullets. This reality confirmed the armed revolutionary path as the only possible alternative in the struggle for the power exercised by the oligarchy, through which it has imposed its neo-liberal policies in the service of big capital and the transnational corporations, to the detriment of the country. The most productive state enterprises, which were built by the collective effort and wealth of all Colombians, continue to be privatised. Sectors and branches strategic to our development, such as energy, transportation, finance, iron and steel, communications, public health and education are being handed to private capital. This has caused tremendous levels of unemployment and the loss of our national independence and sovereignty as well. In spite of the growth of imperialist interference in the internal life of our country, of the military, paramilitary, political, economic and social violence that the state exercises in every way against the popular sectors and of the profound corruption of the ruling class, the FARC-People's Army persists in the... http://www.billkath.demon.co.uk/cw/columbiathe/columbiathe.html
