‘Colombians for Peace’ asked the ELN to stop kidnappings. The written request is the group’s first response to ELN’s expressed desire to initiate a dialogue on 19th January.
The peace activists, “responding to the national desire to reject the practice of kidnapping,” ask Colombia’s second largest guerrilla movement to abandon kidnappings as “an unmistakable sign” that the guerrillas are serious about wanting peace.
According to ‘Colombians for Peace’, the kidnappings have led to a deterioration of the country’s 45-year old violent conflict.
The ELN and the Colombian Government held fruitless peace talks in Cuba between 2005 and 2007. These talks ended, because, according to the guerrillas, there were “two different concepts of peace and methods to achieve it.”