Will ELN Ever Stop?
BY: Isabella Cartagena & Camila Navarro
In the past year 2014, the National Liberation Army (ELN) attacks increased in a 150% and the most affected place is Arauca. The ELN wants to "invite" people to their army and the UN (United Nations) is very disgusted with ELN's attitude towards the peace talks, in September of 2014, they warned ELN to respect the International Humanitarian Right and "respect the civil population", in fact they were very disgusted because FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) was keeping their part of the deal by decreasing attacks in a 97% but ELN is far from sitting on the peace negotiating table according to Francisco Cartagena, "All guerrilla activities in Colombia, that started as a social related movement, lost all validity many years ago whit the end of communism. Under no circumstance terrorist activities like the ones performed by the ELN can be tolerated by any society. Colombian government has tried many times to dialogue with all the terrorist groups in our territory but they seem not interested in solving the situation, thus the peace dialogues have to be parallel with the increase in legal military actions to weaken the guerrilla power. ELN shall stop all violent activities against the populations and the oil industry in order to sit down on the peace negotiating table", January 2015.
Juan Manuel Santos, the current president of Colombia, made public the fact that his government was considering peace negotiations with the ELN. ELN rebels that they are likely to continue attacks against oil infrastructure in Arauca, Norte de Santander, Nariño and Chocó.
As a democratical country, Colombia chooses their president by voting but as it has been presenced around 2013 and 2014, people are not comfortable with their president but as said by Francisco Cartagena on his interview, "Colombia is not owned by government people, governors are elected by us to serve the people and it is us, the people of Colombia who are the real owners of our destiny, it is definitely important that we all raise our voice and participate to all the issue that matters to our country".
Many people in Colombia have many questions as "Is Juan Manuel Santos going to do anything?" But the real question is, "ELN ever going to stop?" As said in the interview by Francisco, "Peace will bring more investment to the country, more development and more well been to the people".
Bogota - Colombia
