By IANS
Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) : The leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) has said that hostages it holds live in “harsh conditions” in forests but insisted that it treated them humanely.
“The prisoners are not doing eco-tourism in the jungle,” Raul Reyes, one of the leaders of the country’s largest armed rebel groups, told the Brazilian magazine Epoca, EFE news agency reported Monday.
The hostages “bear the difficulties imposed by the tropical jungle with stoicism”, the spokesman said, adding that government operations to rescue them “by force only increase their difficulties”.
The rebel, however, said that all hostages were in good health though they had to face difficulties.
The FARC, Colombia’s oldest and largest leftist guerrilla outfit, was founded in 1964. It operates across a large swath of this Andean nation and is believed to have an estimated 20,000 fighters.