A letter urging the FARC to free its hostages and negotiate a cease-fire is circling on the internet in the hope of attracting 150,000 signatures before being sent to the guerrilla group’s high command.
The letter seeks the simultaneous liberation of guerrilla prisoners from Colombian jails, reported Spanish press agency EFE. It will be sent to the FARCS top seven commanders at the end of October, senator Piedad Córdoba, who heads the list of senders, told EFE.
Among the signatures, all unconfirmed, are ex-presidents, writers, ex-high court magistrates, priests, union leaders, politicians, intellectuals and journalists.
“We invite them to develop a public dialogue through an exchange of letters by which all of you, ourselves and the Colombian society in general can identify elements for defining an agenda that shed light on routes where it would be possible an understanding, for the sake of yearned humanitarian agreement,” says the letter.
“We are certain that the presidents and chiefs of state of our brother countries in the hemisphere and so-called European friends will concur by supporting in solidarity the process of dialogue we are proposing,” it went on.
If Facebook is any guide, finding enough signatures should be easy. Nearly double the letter’s hoped-for number, some 281,407, have joined the group “1,000,000 ‘Life Sentence for Violators of Minors in Colombia.’ ” And even more popular, though not necessarily made up of cross-over voters, is “A Million Voices against the FARC”, which has attracted 435,552 members.