Three demobilized FARC members were reported missing on Tuesday after a group of alleged paramilitaries raided a farm in Remedios, Antioquia the former guerrillas were tending.
The armed men also ransacked the property, robbing goods that the FARC had listed as official assets belonging to a fund to repair victims of the armed conflict, according to newspaper El Colombiano.
Police are investigating the event, which locals claim involved at least thirty armed men associated with an unnamed paramilitary organization operating near a former FARC demobilization camp.
Why paramilitary groups still exist in Colombia
The FARC members, whose whereabouts and names are currently unknown, belonged to the FARC’s 4th Front before they laid down their arms as part of a peace process to end the 52-year armed conflict between the FARC and government.
Colombia Reports called the Antioquia Police Department and Antioquia Government Secretary Victoria Ramirez, but neither would comment on the alleged kidnapping.
The disappearance of the three ex-FARC members has only heightened internal concerns among FARC members that they are not safe from rival armed groups.
Anonymous demobilized guerrilla via El Colombiano
Since transitioning into a formal political party earlier in September, members of the FARC are no longer obligated to remain in the camps where they collectively demobilized.
On September 12, Maicol Guevara, a former member of the FARC’s Teofilo Forero mobile column, took advantage of his new freedom to visit his parents in El Roble, Caqueta. That afternoon he was shot dead by two unknown men.
As political website La Silla Vacia reported, Guevara’s death deeply upset former guerrillas who fear for their safety, while officials in the government and police still have not made any statement on the event.
Why are Colombia’s former guerrillas and their families assassinated?
Guevara’s death is only one of many recent killings that are encouraging members of the FARC to abandon the peace process.
According to data from conflict monitor Nuevo Arco Iris, at least 24 members of the FARC and their family members have been killed since the former guerrilla group began concentrating in demobilization zones in May.
As part of the peace agreement between the government and FARC, military and police officials are supposed to be providing protection guarantees for the FARC.
Former FARC guerrillas abandoning peace process ahead of reincorporation
The recent killings of demobilized FARC members and their families is hauntingly reminiscent of the FARC’s first attempt to make peace with the government in the late 1980s.
During that time, former members of the FARC and their sympathizers formed leftist political party Patriotic March (UP) to represent the FARC’s political ideology in politics. Although the party did well in elections across the country in 1986, paramilitaries, the military and drug traffickers began to systematically target and assassinate members of the party through the year 1990.
By the early 1990s, between four thousand and six thousand members of the UP had been killed, and the party was eventually disbanded due to a lack of members.
In response to the extermination of their political party, the FARC abandoned that peace process and redoubled their efforts to confront the state through violent warfare.