CONDEMN COLOMBIA'S AGGRESSION AGAINST ECUADOR!

Statement from the Central Executive Committee, Communist Party of Canada, March 6, 2008

In an illegal incursion into Ecuador on 1 March, Colombian troops murdered 17 combatants of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia-People's Army (FARC-EP), including Comandante Raul Reyes, a long-time military commander and member of the FARC-EP's Secretariat. Among the other victims was the well-known revolutionary song-writer Julian Conrado.

     The cold-blooded attack on the camp came just days after the FARC had unilaterally released several prisoners into the hands of Venezuela and the International Red Cross in a promising move to prompt negotiations for a more generalized humanitarian exchange of prisoners of war held by the two sides.

     This latest provocation shows once again that the Colombian regime of President Alvaro Uribe has no intention of seeking a political, negotiated solution to the decades-old conflict but rather intends to further intensify its "dirty war" against the insurgency and all those Colombians who oppose its fascist rule. Its brazen violation of the territorial sovereignty of its Ecuadorian neighbour - a clear and unequivocal violation of international law - demonstrates its willingness to destabilize the peace and security of the region as a whole and provide a pretext for direct U.S. imperialist aggression directed against Venezuela, Ecuador and other progressive governments in Latin America.

     There can be no doubt that the Bush Adminstration is pulling the strings behind this whole affair, using its Colombian puppet to provoke a wider war in the vain hope of reversing the growing anti-imperialist movements throughout the region. To cover its imperialist plans, Washington and its flunkies in Bogota are now churning out all sorts of clumsy and patently false accusations accusing Venezuela and Ecuador of secretly supporting and financing the insurgency and even assisting FARC in obtaining uranium to produce a radioactive bomb. Such fabrications and lies should fool no one.

     At this critical juncture, the Communist Party of Canada calls on the Canadian government and all peace-loving Canadians to denounce this dangerous provocation, and to demand that the UN Security Council condemn Colombia's grave contravention of international law, demand that the Uribe regime and its U.S. masters respect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all neighbouring states, end its internal "reign of terror" against workers, peasants, trade union and human rights activists, to seek a political solution to end the civil war in Colombia.

     The CPC also demands that the Canadian government remove the FARC-EP and the ELN from the list of terrorist organizations, and instead offer to facilitate negotiations between the belligerent parties in Colombia with the aim of achieving a just and lasting peace in that country.

Found at: http://www.peoplesvoice.ca/articleprint14/09.%20CONDEMN_COLOMBIA'S_AGGRESSION_AGAINST_ECUADOR!.html