International
Petro considers that the ELN attack in Arauca “closes a peace process with blood”
Colombian President Gustavo Petro condemned the attack of the National Liberation Army (ELN) guerrillas against a military base in Puerto Jordán, in the department of Arauca (east), which left two soldiers dead and 27 injured, and assured that “it is an action that closes a peace process with blood.”
“The consequences of the actions and the flow of history today bring us a dramatic and repeated event in our last years, a dump loaded with explosives that injures 27 young people and kills two, within the data I have, put by the ELN with whom we were talking about peace,” said Petro the inauguration of magistrate Claudia Regina Expósito as a member of the Superior Council of the Judiciary.
The president compared the attack to the attack against the Colombian Police Cadet School in Bogotá, which in January 2019 left 20 dead and 68 injured, including an Ecuadorian cadet, and which put an end to the dialogue that the Government was maintaining with that guerrilla at that time.
“And obviously, as happened that time in another place near here, at the Police School, because many police officers died, ensigns who were studying there, because it is practically an action that closes a peace process with blood,” he added.
The Colombian Government and the ELN began a new peace negotiation in November 2022 in Caracas that, however, stalled at the beginning of this year due to the demands of the guerrilla that the Executive remove them from the list of terrorist groups and abandon regional dialogues such as the one it maintains in the department of Nariño (southwest) with Comuneros del Sur, supposedly split from the ELN.
During the negotiations in Caracas, Havana and Mexico City, the parties agreed to a one-year bilateral ceasefire, the longest agreed with that guerrilla, which ended on August 3, after which the ELN resumed its attacks against public force and infrastructure in different parts of the country, especially in Arauca, where it is particularly strong.
“And it’s like an eternal becoming, to silence a part of the people and continue in wars, killing each other again and again as if that were our story,” the president lamented.
The Minister of the Interior, Juan Fernando Cristo, also expressed himself in this line: “You cannot follow a negotiating table in the midst of the blood of our wounded soldiers, of the civilian population. The ELN did not understand the message (…) has lost a historic opportunity to negotiate peace; it insists on violence, it insists on harming Colombians.”
“The ELN, definitely, was left by the train of history,” Cristo concluded.
The mayor of Bogotá, Carlos Fernando Galán, considered that “the decision of the National Government to end the peace process is the right one.”
“Colombia cannot negotiate with those who have not given any demonstration of having a will for peace,” Galán said in his X account, in which he regretted “the attack that claimed the lives of two soldiers and injured another 27 in Jordán, Arauca.”
The action was at the Puerto Jordán military base, in Arauca (east), which “was attacked with improvised explosive devices thrown from a dump mantip.”
According to figures provided by the Ministry of Defense, 27 soldiers were injured, “of which 20 have splinters” and seven are “seriously injured.”
Last Sunday, two soldiers died in a rural area of Tame (Arauca) in an attack attributed to the ELN that shot them while they were at a checkpoint.
This terrorist escalation also includes attacks on the Caño Limón-Coveñas and Bicentenario pipelines, two of the most important in the country.
The Caño Limón-Coveñas pipeline, 770 kilometers long, transports oil from the Arauca wells to Coveñas, a Colombian port in the Caribbean Sea.
International
María Corina Machado kidnapped and forced to record videos before being released, says opposition
The Venezuela Command, the campaign team of opposition leader Edmundo González Urrutia, denounced the “kidnapping” and subsequent release of political leader María Corina Machado after she led a protest in Caracas on the eve of the Venezuelan presidential inauguration.
In a post on X, the opposition team stated that the former lawmaker was “intercepted and knocked off the motorcycle she was traveling on” after leading a rally in the Chacao area of the Venezuelan capital.
“Gunshots were fired during the incident. She was forcibly detained. During her kidnapping, she was forced to record several videos, and then she was released,” the statement added, which was made public nearly two hours after Machado’s party, Vente Venezuela, reported that she had been “violently intercepted.”
International
Governor Jenniffer González expresses solidarity with Venezuela’s struggling opposition
Puerto Rico’s Governor Jenniffer González expressed her sorrow over Venezuela’s political crisis on Thursday and voiced her support for Venezuelan opposition leader Edmundo González Urrutia, just one day before President Nicolás Maduro is set to take office following the controversial July elections.
“I think it is sad that the Venezuelan people have to suffer the consequences of a dictator who came to power by deceiving the people. I recognize Edmundo González for his leadership,” the governor stated during a press conference, coinciding with a day of protests by Venezuela’s opposition.
“The Venezuelan community has my full support, and, as we have done in the past, we will maintain that line of communication with whatever we can collaborate on,” assured the Puerto Rican head of government.
González Urrutia is currently in the Dominican Republic, the last announced stop on his American tour, where he was accompanied by Dominican President Luis Abinader and former Latin American presidents from the Spain and Americas Democratic Initiative (Grupo Idea).
International
Hundreds of venezuelan protesters demand ‘democratic change’ in Rome
Dozens of Venezuelans demonstrated in central Rome on Thursday to show their support for opposition leader Edmundo González Urrutia and demand a “democratic change,” on the eve of the presidential inauguration that has deeply divided the country.
The protest took place in the Roman square of Largo Argentina and gathered several members of the Venezuelan diaspora and refugees, who sang their national anthem and displayed signs with the slogan “Glory to the brave people.”
Around 150 participants were present, according to one of the coordinators of the protest, Celeste Puerta from the ‘Aiuto Venezuela’ Civic Movement, who spoke to EFE.
Similar actions have been organized in other Italian cities, including Bologna, Florence, and Milan in the north.
María Corina Machado kidnapped and forced to record videos before being released, says opposition
Governor Jenniffer González expresses solidarity with Venezuela’s struggling opposition
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