IT WAS shoulder to shoulder yesterday in downtown Bogotá and in more than 140 cities around the world as millions of Colombians gathered to call for an end to the violence by Marxist rebels in demonstrations organised on the internet social networking site Facebook.
"I am here to ask the guerrillas to stop bleeding this country and recruiting children," said university lecturer Anita Panesso, putting a protective arm around her three children as they marched in Bogotá. "The world must know that they do not repre
sent Colombians."
The unprecedented worldwide protests were hatched a month ago when a group of young Colombians met via Facebook and decided a voice must be given to the millions who reject the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc) and its 44-year-old war to overthrow the state.
"We are normal Colombians, not associated with any organisation and we want international public opinion to know this country does not support the Farc and we have never been in agreement with armed struggle as a mechanism for solving conflict," said Oscar Morales, 33, an engineer who launched the No More Farc movement from his living room in the Caribbean city of Barranquilla.
Cristina Lucena, 24, a political science student from Bogotá and one of six main organisers, said: "We felt we were drowning. We had to do something."
The movement has touched a deep vein of outrage in Colombia at continuing attacks and kidnappings by the Farc rebels. National radio and television stations joined newspapers to support the marches yesterday, assuring the protests received the publicity needed to get people on to the streets.
Schools were closed in many cities and businesses allowed their employees to join the marches.
In total there were marches in 45 cities in Colombia and almost 100 elsewhere around the world, including Edinburgh and London, making No More Farc one of the widest international demonstrations in history.
The Farc, led by its legendary founder Manuel Marulanda now in his seventies and rumoured to be dying of cancer, has historically proven impervious to public opinion. Buoyed by income from the drugs trade, the rebels are awash in funds with which they are able to keep their 10,000 fighters heavily armed.
A statement on a rebel website, entitled the Colombian Third Reich, insisted the marches were the work of the US-backed president, Alvaro Uribe, and were part of his plan to perpetuate himself in power with a third term. Mr Uribe has already changed the constitution to allow himself a second term and has not ruled out standing for a third, his popularity underwritten by his relentless war on the Farc.
"The Third Reich is the continuity of the war against the Colombian people," read the article on the New Colombia News Agency site. "It is the continuity of the forced disappearances (13,000), of the extrajudicial executions (28,000 Colombians), of the massacres (more than 3,800)."
However, the protests appeared to be having an effect on the Farc – on Saturday, when it became clear the marches were certain to draw massive support, the rebels announced the release of three of the 43 political hostages they are holding. The armed forces chief, General Freddy Padilla, described the Farc announcement "as the first consequence of this pressure by the majority".
