Colombian President Iván Duque urged his fellow heads of state to “resist tyranny” in his U.N. General Assembly speech Wednesday, accusing neighboring dictator Nicolás Maduro of aiding drug traffickers, terrorists, “murderers, and child rapists.”
Duque compared Maduro to genocidal Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic and announced he would hand over a dossier of evidence to the head of the General Assembly proving that Maduro is harboring Marxist terrorists belonging to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the National Liberation Army (ELN) that are engaged in an ongoing war against the Colombian government.
Duque acknowledged that some members of the FARC have laid down their weapons as part of a 2016 peace deal that preceded Duque, and granted the terrorist group multiple uncontested seats in the Colombian Congress. Given the existence of the deal, he noted, “these groups have not enjoyed the fruits of reintegration or disarmament simply because they chose not to.”
“A group of narco-terrorists sought to intimidate Colombia hiding behind claims of ideological goals, but the reality is that these groups have not enjoyed the fruits of reintegration or disarmament because they simply chose not to,” Duque told the General Assembly. “They have not left behind their life of crime, they have lied to Colombia and Colombians, and they have aligned themselves with a dictatorship that is repressing its people in Venezuela.”
The terrorists have “found themselves resisted by a people that will not be cowered …. let there be no room for doubt, I will use all tools available to me so that Colombia enjoys peace,” Duque warned the terrorists.
Duque appeared to be addressing two main FARC terror leaders directly, “Jesús Santrich” and “Iván Márquez,” who the Colombian government gave Senate seats to before they defected to Venezuela and announced a new civil war against Bogotá. Maduro and his cronies have insisted they have “nothing to do” with the FARC war, but Duque insisted otherwise on Wednesday.
“The Venezuelan dictatorship is one more link in the chain of transnational terrorism. Its corrupt structures are the handmaidens of drug cartels,” Duque affirmed. “Its followers are adherents of a mafia and fuel the violence in Colombia. The dictatorship gives refuge to murderers and child rapists – and those who ignore these facts are, by their silence, accomplices of the dictatorship.”
The FARC is over a century old and has for nearly just as much time been guilty of abducting children to use as soldiers. Girls forced into terrorism often fall prey to rapist terrorists, and are later forced into unwanted abortions to keep from slowing down terror cells with babies. One FARC abortionist arrested was believed to be responsible for as many as 500 murders of unborn children.
“My government has credible and resounding proof that corroborates the support lent by the Venezuelan dictatorship to criminal and drug trafficking groups that are operating in Venezuela and assume activities in Colombia as a assault on our nationhood,” Duque said, displaying a thick dossier that he promised to hand over to the president of the General Assembly.
Duque also addressed the damage that Maduro has done to his own country, not just Colombia.
“Since 2015, at least 4.2 million people have fled Venezuela. They flee from a nation that was wealthy and is now in the abyss, that cannot feed its people,” the Colombian president said. “That was a flourishing democracy and is now an authoritarian regime that is now without a free media … its citizens have no choice but to jump ship.”
Duque affirmed that Colombia does not recognize Maduro’s legitimacy, but that of constitutionally appointed interim President Juan Guaidó, along with over 50 other nations, most in Latin America.
“We adopt this stance driven by the need we see for the Venezuelan people to have their democracy restored,” Duque said. “The Venezuelan tragedy has a name and we all know what that name is.”
Duque said that Maduro’s human rights abuses “can be justifiably compared to the crimes of Slobodan Milosevic in Yugoslavia,” who was tried before an international tribunal for genocide following a vicious campaign to eradicate non-Serbian people from Bosnia.
“We cannot sit by idly watching,” Duque urged. “Venezuela needs the urgent convening of genuinely free and fair elections and it needs the full restoration of the rule of law.”
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