Sinn F\u00e9in\u2019s spokesperson on Foreign Affairs, Se\u00e1n Crowe TD, has outlined his deep concern for the political process in Colombia after the FARC had to suspend their political campaigning for the upcoming Congressional and Presidential elections due to attacks on their campaign.<\/p>\n
Deputy Se\u00e1n Crowe said:<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is clear that the Colombian Government is failing to protect political and community leaders from deadly attacks\u00a0from right wing paramilitaries.<\/p>\n
\u201cLast year at least 170 community leaders were killed in Colombia and 21 were killed last month alone.\u00a0\u00a0Former combatants from the FARC guerrilla group are also being attacked in greater numbers and 37 have been assassinated since the Peace Agreement was signed in 2016.<\/p>\n
\u201cCongressional elections are taking place in March and Presidential elections will take place in May, so political campaigning is well underway. The newly-formed FARC political party, the People’s Alternative Revolutionary Force, is taking part in these elections but they have had to suspend their campaigning because of violent attacks on their public events and threats against their candidates.<\/p>\n
\u201cI want to\u00a0join with many\u00a0others in expressing my deepest concern with this worrying development and call on the Colombian Government to provide guarantees of security and safety for all election\u00a0candidates so that they can campaign freely. Rather than a new beginning in Colombia that would allow all political parties to operate freely, there has instead been a sustained campaign to suppress and close down the limited space that the FARC political party had to work and operate.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf the Colombian peace process is to grow and develop then all political parties, and all strands of political opinion, need to be able to partake in the electoral and political process without the constant fear of attack or possible assassination.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo peace process\u00a0can grow or develop against a backdrop\u00a0of\u00a0systematic killings or in a climate of fear and repression.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
ENDS<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Sinn F\u00e9in\u2019s spokesperson on Foreign Affairs, Se\u00e1n Crowe TD, has outlined his deep concern for the political process in Colombia after the FARC had to suspend their political campaigning for the upcoming Congressional and Presidential elections due to attacks on their campaign. Deputy Se\u00e1n Crowe said: \u201cIt is clear that the Colombian Government is failing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[84],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3350","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-colombia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3350","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3350"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3350\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3351,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3350\/revisions\/3351"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3350"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3350"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3350"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}