COLOMBIAN former liberation movement guerilla leaders Ivan Marquez and Oscar Montero have written an open letter this week to the country’s parliament, accusing President Ivan Duque’s government of reneging on the country’s peace agreement.

While reaffirming their belief in peace as the only way forward for Colombia, the two leaders of Farc — previously the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, now the People’s Alternative Forces of Colombia — accuse the United States-backed right-wing government of systematically destroying the peace accords concluded in late 2016 in Havana, with Cuba and Norway as guarantor countries.

The scale of their desperation can be measured by their self-criticism over how trustingly they participated in the peace process.

“We naively believed in the word and the good faith of the government, despite the fact that [late Farc-People’s Army founder] Manuel Marulanda Velez had always warned us that arms were the only certain guarantee of compliance with possible agreements,” they said.

The Farc demobilised its guerilla army, encouraging its soldiers to engage in peaceful activities, including support for its transformed political movement.

According to Colombia’s Indepaz development and peace research institute, the period November 2016 to May 2018 saw 385 members of the country’s Afro-Colombian, indigenous, and campesino communities murdered, in addition to 80 Farc members who had returned to civilian life.

Venezuela-based TeleSUR, which provides an alternative source to pro-imperialist media networks based in the US and Europe, suggests that figures are even higher.

Of those killed, state security forces are directly implicated in just 11, leaving open the likelihood of shadowy death squads — the boundaries of which often overlapped the army’s — still operating.

The death squads, funded by landowners, ranchers and transnational corporations, claimed to be a counterweight to the Farc guerillas, but their main targets were the very Afro-Colombian, indigenous and campesino communities seen as most supportive of Farc.

Leading right-wing politicians, notably former president Alvaro Uribe, a key backer of Duque, were involved up to their necks with the death squads, which operated with impunity.

The Havana peace accords followed a decades-long civil war that had reached military stalemate after racking up over a quarter-million dead, seven million internal refugees and 80,000 people “disappeared,” presumed dead.

The guerilla army carried out its obligations under the agreement concluded with former Colombian president Juan Manuel Santos, while the government has sought to criminalise Farc members through various dubious manoeuvres.

The most notorious and recent was the arrest in April of Farc peace negotiator and congress member-elect Jesus Santrich on the basis of an extradition request from a New York court claiming he conspired to smuggle cocaine into the United States.

Santrich was arrested at his home in Bogota shortly after he and other senior Farc officials had met the Justice for Colombia Peace Monitor delegation to discuss implementation of the peace process.

Both attorney general Nestor Martinez and then president Santos claimed there was “irrefutable proof” against the Farc negotiator, but Martinez admitted later that the Colombian authorities had no such evidence.

After Farc senator Pablo Catatumbo urged the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP), the specially created court designed to establish truth and justice around the civil war, to grant his release, the attorney general confessed that Washington alone was in possession of evidence and had not shared it with Bogota.

The US and Colombia initially said that the alleged offences were committed after the signing of the peace agreement and therefore were not covered by the amnesty law.

As such, TeleSUR reported Santrich could be extradited through the standard justice system to stand trial in the US. Colombia’s Supreme Court and the United Nations subsequently said that the JEP must review the case before further action could be taken.

Santrich and his lawyers have continually stressed his innocence and said that he is the victim of a set-up.

Since his arrest, Santrich’s health has deteriorated sharply due to the poor conditions of his detention. He was admitted to hospital after collapsing following a hunger strike, while he recently suffered an epileptic fit.

Authorities have refused to allow treatment from a trusted doctor, with prison medics tending to him despite his legal team’s petitions. He has also spent the majority of his detention in isolation.

In August, a delegation from the Justice for Colombia Peace Monitor visited Santrich at La Picota prison in Bogota.

In a statement, the delegates said they “were concerned to observe that he has been in isolation and denied basic equipment which helps him manage his lack of sight. We are concerned that he has not been able to be sworn in as a Congressman.”

Last month’s TUC congress in Manchester unanimously approved an emergency resolution in support of Santrich and requesting guarantees for his welfare.

Train drivers’ union Aslef general secretary Mick Whelan, who is also Justice for Colombia chair, told congress that the blind Farc congress-member-elect “deserves our support, our recognition.”

The successful TUC resolution pinpoints the charges against Santrich as “trumped-up,” adding: “Congress believes that access to medical treatment is a basic human right and calls on the Colombian authorities to immediately ensure he has safe medical treatment, to provide for his specific access needs and to move him to more adequate conditions.

“Neither Santrich nor his lawyers have been given details of the alleged evidence against him nor have the US authorities provided evidence. His arrest and detention, as well as attempts to weaken the transitional justice system, pose a direct threat to the agreement between the Colombian government and the Farc.

“Congress calls on the TUC to write to the Colombian government urging them to comply with their obligations under the agreement.”

Farc said in April, after the seizure of Santrich, that “the peace process is at its most critical point and threatens to be a true failure.”

It charged that his detention was part of a “plan orchestrated by the US government and supported by the Colombian Prosecutor’s Office” that “threatens to spread to the entire staff of Farc ex-commanders, with the purpose of decapitating the political direction of our party and burying the desire for peace of the Colombian people.”

The party leadership called for “the solidarity of all sectors of Colombian society that have supported the agreements not to cease in the effort to prevent the peace process from being taken to the abyss.”

It also urged the president to comply with the peace agreement, requesting an emergency meeting, which fell on deaf ears.

Guarantor countries Cuba and Norway responded to the Farc appeal by writing a joint letter to Bogota, expressing “our concerns about the recent events related to the peace process” and urging the Colombian authorities to “guarantee protection of the final agreement.”

While the Farc leadership is resolute in its determination that there can be no return to more than half a century of civil war, a few local units have refused to disarm.

The major threat to peace, life and social justice, especially agreed measures to promote land redistribution, comes, however, from the landowners and corporate elements that have habitually exploited and dispossessed Colombia’s working people.

It is perhaps futile to expect any commitment to internationally guaranteed peace and reconciliation in Colombia from the current occupant of the White House, but supporters of the Colombian people’s ongoing struggle for peace with justice must continue to make their voices heard.

John Haylett is the Morning Star’s political editor.