After 52 years of armed conflict inside the country, Colombia’s Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia or ‘FARC’ marxist rebels, have reached the final stages of weapons hand-over to a United Nations at multiple designated ‘demobilization’ camps across the country. According to UN officials, as of this week the weapons transfer is nearly complete.
As the UN closed the doors of one of many full shipping containers of weapons, FARC leader Rodrigo ‘Timochenko’ Londoño (image, left) could be heard shouting to his fighters, “Goodbye, weapons! Goodbye, war!” This latest watershed in negotiations is part of a long-running peace deal with the Columbian government.
Reuters reports:
“On that date the mission will have stored all the existing arms in the camps and extracted the containers from the zones,” the UN said in a statement. The group has also destroyed armaments kept in 77 FARC storage areas. The weapons hand-over will be celebrated in a ceremony in Mesetas, in Meta province, on Tuesday.
The deal will allow for some small arms weapons to remain with rebels for the provision of security at the many FARC camps located across Columbia’s countryside until the camps are scheduled to closed on August 1, 2017.
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