Colombia says it will not meet the demands of the almost 2,000 people recently displaced by violence in Antioquia, on the grounds that they represent the wishes of the FARC, reported newspaper El Tiempo Thursday.
Families from rural areas have flooded the town of Anori over the past few days, allegedly fleeing threats from Colombia’s largest guerrilla organization FARC.
The group has asked the government to suspend the aerial fumigation of coca crops, stop the persecution of illegal mining, and abandon military bases in the region.
The secretary of the Antioquia government, Julian Andres Rendon, attributes the forced displacement to the FARC’s 36th Front, and their requests to FARC interests.
“It is non-negotiable for us to suspend aerial spraying or allow the entry of illegal dredging” Rendon told the newspaper.
However, the president of the Community Action Committee of Las Cruces, one of the towns that has seen mass displacement, says that the spraying “has greatly affected our food crops, orchards and pastures. So please do not continue.”
The Minister of Interior and Justice German Vargas told El Tiempo that the requests are “not negotiable” but that “what the population can be sure of is that we are going to protect it with all of our determination.”
