Hundreds of thousands of people marched through Colombia's major
cities and small towns on Thursday to protest the killing of 11
provincial lawmakers by the country's largest rebel group.
In the capital, thousands of residents waved white handkerchiefs
from their home and office windows. At midday, automobile drivers
honked their horns and other protesters formed human chains.
Their outrage was aimed at the rebel Revolutionary Armed Forces
of Colombia (FARC), which said on Thursday that 11 provincial
deputies it had been holding hostage since 2002 were killed in a
June 18 rescue attempt by the Colombian Army.
The protesters demanded the government and the FARC agree on a
prisoner exchange and sign a peace treaty to end the internal
40-year war, which kills and displaces thousands every year.
They urged "freedom without conditions now" for more than 3,000
people held hostage by the guerrillas.
"It is good to know so many hearts are as excited as mine. I ask
that they be liberated now," Clara Rojas, mother of a man held
hostage for five years by the FARC.
But the government and the FARC appeared unlikely to reach any
agreement over a hostage-for-prisoner swap.
President Alvaro Uribe, long applauded for his tough stance on
the guerillas, said "we cannot accept rebels being released from
prison only to go back to killing people."
Wearing a white T-shirt reading "freedom without conditions
now," Uribe and his ministers on Thursday attended a mass at the
Primada de Colombia cathedral.
(Xinhua News Agency July 6, 2007)
