Argentine Nobel Peace Prize winner Adolfo Perez Esquivel lashed back at Alvaro Uribe Tuesday, saying Colombia’s former president should “learn what peace really is.”
The remark followed a Twitter attack by Uribe, who accused Velez Esquivel of “running errands for the FARC” and “promoting terrorism in Colombia.”
“If looking for peace is terrorism, I think Uribe has to learn what peace really is,” the 1980 Nobel Peace Prize winner said from Argentina, where he is attending a three-day forum on peace in Colombia.
The Argentine considers it “not worth the effort” to sue the Colombian former head of state for slander, he told reporters.
Instead he called on Colombia’s current President Juan Manuel Santos to “visibly” distance himself from the “militarism” of Uribe and “look for peace.”
According to Perez Esquivel, Santos “is making a few steps.”
The sculptor, activist and pacifist received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1980 for his work to promote human rights and his protest against the military dictatorship that ruled his country until 1983. The Argentine has long been an outspoken opponent of Uribe and a friend of leftist Colombian politician Piedad Cordoba, who was banned from the Senate last year for overstepping her authority when talking to the country’s largest guerrilla group FARC.