Armed strike in Chocó, Colombia: ELN announces its end and bishop asks to remove people from the conflict

The ELN announced for this Monday, August 19, the end of the armed strike that it had called since the 11th; while the elected Bishop of the diocese of Quibdó asked the guerrillas to remove “the people from the conflict in which they have been putting them.”

In a statement published this Sunday the 18th, the Omar Gómez Western War Front of the National Liberation Army (ELN) “ended the armed strike starting at 6:00 am on August 19, 2024, and we thank the population for having complied with the order, since there were no incidents.”

For the guerrilla, “the current humanitarian crisis that the department of Chocó is experiencing is not due to the actions of the ELN” but would be “the result of state abandonment.”

The armed strike has affected the areas of the San Juan, Sipí and Cajón rivers, and the Nóvita-Torrá highway. According to the guerrilla, they summoned him to “prevent the population from being affected” by the “strong fighting” that they are having with the Clan del Golfo in the area of ​​the San Juan River.

The measure was taken in the midst of the freezing of the negotiating table between the government of Gustavo Petro and the ELN, which has prevented the extension of the bilateral ceasefire that expired on August 3.

Nubia Carolina Córdoba, governor of the department of Chocó – which according to the National Administrative Department of Statistics-DANE is the poorest in the country– warned that the armed strike forced some 50,000 people to remain confined to their homes.

The request of the first Afro-descendant bishop of Colombia for the ELN

“As a son of these lands on the San Juan coast, as elected bishop of the diocese of Quibdó, from here in the city of Santiago de Cali I also want to express my voice of protest against this armed strike that the ELN has decreed on the coast of San Juan for which so many people are now confined and, what is worse, lives that are being lost because people cannot mobilize,” said Bishop Wiston Mosquera, Colombia’s first Afro-descendant bishop, according to Celam DNA.

In a video published on August 16 by the Episcopal Conference of Colombia, Bishop Mosquera expressed his support “for the words that Monsignor Mario, the bishop of Istmina-Tadó and Apostolic Administrator of the diocese of Quibdó, has said, and join the statement of social pastoral care at the level of the episcopal conference.

On August 12, Bishop Mario Álvarez Gómez regretted that once again thousands of people from the department of Chocó were affected by an armed strike, which is why he asked to stop this suffering that causes displacement and confinement through dialogue.

In his video of August 16, Bishop Mosquera expressed his closeness, support and hope for “the entire community of San Juan, to all the municipalities that are now living this reality.”

The elected bishop of Quibó then urged the ELN and “of course all the armed groups that are in the territory, to get the people out of this conflict in which they have been getting them” that “they do not have to pay for this situation.” ”.

“People should not die because they cannot move from one place to another. There should be no reason for people to be confined because no one can take freedom away from us,” he stressed.