Above photo: Colombian paramilitaries. Colombia Report.
NOTE: The Venezuelan government made a formal appeal to the United Nations over the armed paramilitaries along the Colombian border:
“In a statement to the press at the Miraflores Presidential Palace on Tuesday, Minister of People’s Power for Foreign Affairs Jorge Arreaza informed about the diplomatic steps taken before different UN agencies to facilitate coordination with the Colombian Government to find a solution regarding the attacks of irregular armed groups on the border with Apure state.
“Colombia is a threat to Venezuela’s and the region’s security,” said Arreaza, who also highlighted that Colombia is a failed state permeated by drug trafficking and the lack of will to take actions against these armed groups.
In this regard, Arreaza explained a letter was sent to Ilene Cohn, deputy director and Officer-in-Charge of the United Nations Mine Action Service (UNMAS), to request technical assistance and update guidance to detect and deactivate anti-personnel mines laid by Colombian irregular groups in Venezuelan territory to sow terror and cause deaths on the border.
The Venezuelan foreign minister shared some statistics by the International Committee of the Red Cross, which registered 389 victims of explosive devices in Colombia in 2020.
Likewise, Arreaza said they also sent a letter to Dang Dinh Quy, permanent representative of the Socialist Republic of Viet Nam to the UN and president of the Security Council for the month of April 2021, to request that the next quarterly meeting on Colombia decides to investigate the activities of Colombian armed groups, which launch attacks from Colombia against Venezuela’s territory and population, and ensure that these two nations live together in peace with one another as good neighbors, as established by the Charter of the United Nations.
Minister Arreaza explained that a similar letter was sent to UN Secretary General António Guterres, and a second letter requesting him to provide his good offices to deal with these important binational issues and establish a direct, permanent communication channel between the appropriate authorities to solve the issues concerning the Colombia-Venezuela 1,378-mile border.
Arreaza announced that the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela will soon address a letter to the Mexican Government, in its role as the Pro Tempore President of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), requesting it to act as a mediator before Ivan Duque’s government to guarantee the Zone of Peace declared by CELAC in December 2014.
“We remain committed to peace in Colombia,” stressed the Venezuelan foreign minister.”
The Network of Intellectuals, Artists and Social Movements in Defense of Humanity, in view of the confrontations that began on March 21 between the Bolivarian National Armed Forces and irregular armed groups in La Victoria, Apure State, near the Colombian border, declares:
-It is an insistently repeated historical fact that irregular armed groups from Colombia, sometimes with the complicit tolerance, sometimes with the connivance, and sometimes with the declared support of the government of that country, crossing into Venezuela’s borders to commit common crimes and destabilize the legitimate government.
-We are listing here some regrettable examples of these intrusions including the invasion of a force of a thousand Colombians with false Venezuelan flags across the Táchira border under the command of stateless General Carlos Rangel Garbiras in 1901; the massacre of the Cararabo border post perpetrated by irregulars from that country in 1995; the infiltration of more than a hundred paramilitaries in Venezuelan uniforms in the vicinity of Caracas to perpetrate the assassination of President Hugo Chávez Frías in 2004; the assassination attempt against President Nicolás Maduro carried out by Colombian-trained opponents in 2018; the invasion attempt disguised as the introduction of humanitarian aid through the border with San Cristóbal in 2019; the defeated invasion by Colombian-trained and armed Silvercorp mercenaries transported in a Colombian army landing craft in 2020, and the recent occupation by Colombian armed irregulars of areas near La Victoria, in the border state of Apure.
-Due to its repetitive and systematic character, this multiform and continuous aggression must be considered as part of the Fourth Generation War against Venezuela, and justifies the words of President Nicolás Maduro in the sense that: “We are facing criminals, and bloodthirsty drug traffickers, who came to apply in Venezuelan territory the formulas that they apply in collusion with the government of Iván Duque against the people of Colombia: population control, territorial control, armed terrorism, drug trafficking, smuggling and they intend to put claim to our national territory.”
-Such operations, preceded by a long preparation in Colombian territory; is being ostensibly tolerated or explicitly supported by the authorities of that country; in accordance with the aggression plans of hegemonic powers that maintain military bases there. These operations also justify the content of the communiqué of the Bolivarian National Armed Forces according to which: “It is imperative to remind the international community that the aforementioned groups are sponsored by the government of Colombia and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), reason for which, their incursions into the Venezuelan geographic space must be considered an aggression sponsored by Ivan Duque, since he provides them with logistic-financial support, creating a criminal corridor on the border with the advice of the Southern Command of the United States of America; therefore, it is not by chance that these events coincide with the recent creation of an Elite Unit of Special Actions”.
-Therefore we are faced with a tactic that has become classic for the destruction of governments supported by the peoples of progressive countries: the infiltration of mercenary irregulars financed, trained, and supported by imperialist countries and their accomplices to bring chaos and disintegration to those who do not know how to defend themselves against them.
-It is fair to emphasize that these actions of irregulars of various nationalities against Venezuela, supported or tolerated by the government of the border country, do not involve the support of the majority of the population of Colombia, nor that of the almost six million Colombians living in Venezuela, many of whom have justly arrived there fleeing the conditions of inequality, violence, and insecurity that prevail in their place of origin and have found and will always find among Venezuelans the fullest, most supportive, egalitarian and cordial welcome.