By IANS
Bogota : Millions of Colombians have poured into the streets of the country’s main cities to protest against the leftist rebels, demanding they release their captives and abandon hostage-taking, EFE news agency reported Tuesday.
People of all ages carrying posters and banners Monday took to the streets of Bogota, Medellin, Cali, Barranquilla, Bucaramanga, Cartagena and dozens of other cities and towns to demonstrate against the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) rebels.
Although no official figures are yet available, at least a million people demonstrated in Bogota, 500,000 more in Medellin and Cali each, media reports said.
In the northern city of Valledupar, President Alvaro Uribe thanked the people who participated in the marches and said: “This chain of spiritual energy is against kidnapping and against crime”.
Juan Carlos Lecompte, husband of the rebels’ most prominent captive, former presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt, said that he believed that this march would send “the message to the FARC that we Colombians – the rich, the poor, those on the left, those on the right, those who live in the city, those who live in the country – are tired of violence and war”.
“It has been a single day against kidnapping and against all those who kidnap, but with multiple voices,” the director of the independent human rights organisation Codhes Jorge Rojas said.
In Bogota, the main march arrived at Bolivar Square, where protesters dressed in white chanted slogans against the FARC in particular, and against kidnapping, terrorism and violence in general.
The march was called by a group of young Colombian professionals through the Internet social-networking site Facebook under the title “One million voices against the FARC”.
The FARC is the largest and best-equipped leftist outfit in Colombia with some 30,000 trained cadets. It has taken more than 100 people hostage and wants to swap them with hundreds of its cadres in Colombian jails.
Last Saturday, the group announced plans of a second unilateral release of “exchangeable” hostages, following the Jan 10 release of the running mate of former presidential candidate Betancourt and a former senator.