Mr Hugo Rafael Chavez Frias,

President of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela

Dear Mr President:

We hear the news of the release of two of the FARC’s hostages with renewed hope for the future of Colombia. The release of Clara Rojas and Consuela Gonzalez is not only a joyous event for their families but a development with great potentials for Colombian society.

Even the most right-wing news agencies in the world acknowledge Your Excellency’s crucial role in negotiating the release of these two captives. The negotiation process that you have gone through has been a difficult one – requiring uncommon patience on Your Excellency’s part. We sincerely hope that many more people will be reunited with their families and friends through your positive intervention in bridging the communication gap between the FARC and the Uribe government.

Your Excellency, we believe that your negotiation and persuasion skills can be put to further use in the release of captives in other parts of the globe. In particular, as you have developed very close relations with successive Iranian presidents, we hope that you can use your influence to help free the genuine trade unionists, democrats and socialists locked up in Iran.

Today there are many workers, students, women and journalists in Iran’s prisons. In December 2007 around 40 students were arrested for demanding freedom, liberty and singing the Internationale. Over thirty of them are still in prison – with rumours that Saeed Habibi may have committed suicide. Iran’s jails are also full of labour activists who have tried to set up trade unions and organise workers in their struggles to improve their pay and conditions. Mahmood Salehi and Mansour Osanloo are two such organisers. Salehi, who has just one kidney, is in a critical state. He was arrested in 2004 because he tried to organise a May Day rally. Osanloo is the leader of the Vahed Bus Company trade union. He tried to re-launch the trade union and raise the workers’ low wages. He was beaten up by vigilantes connected to the regime and imprisoned.

Your Excellency, we believe that your close relations with the Islamic Republic’s leaders, together with your undoubted persuasion skills, can help free these prisoners. These are not criminals: they are people who merely protested for better rights for workers, students, women, journalists and other sections of society. We are sure that your intervention in this regard, with a government that is much friendlier to Venezuela than Uribe’s Colombia, can bring about a positive outcome.

Yours respectfully,

Iranian Workers’ Solidarity Network
Workers’ Action Committee (Iran)
Militaant, journal of revolutionary socialist youth in Iran.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has called for the group to be removed from the global terrorist list, but unsurprisingly the US isn’t biting.

Paul Wolf is an an attorney based in Washington, DC. He is currently representing Colombian victims of paramilitary violence and argues that FARC is not in fact a terrorist organisation:

Amid the jubilant press reaction to the freeing of Clara Rojas and Consuelo Gonzalez, Venezuela’s President Hugo Chávez has made the surprising announcement, almost immediately ratified by the Venezuelan Congress, that the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia – People’s Army (FARC-EP) is a legitimate belligerent force, and not a terrorist group. Although I have been criticizing Chávez of late, I have to say that I not only agree with this, but also think that America’s official “terrorist list” and “war on terrorism” have an extremely destructive impact on efforts to resolve conflicts all over the world.

While assassination, kidnapping, and the use of indiscriminate weapons are barbaric, they are used in one form or another in virtually every conflict, including by the United States. Just ask the estimated 10,000 people in Iraqi prisons—held without any legal process on the suspicion that they are insurgents—if they have been kidnapped. Or a “high value al-Qaida operative” impacted by a missile on the basis of “actionable intelligence.” Or go to the morgue in Fallujah and ask about people killed in the incendiary bombing a couple years ago.

It’s not a question of accepting the FARC-EP’s goals and methods as legitimate. It’s about resolving a conflict through negotiation, rather than trying to demonize and exterminate an enemy. In Colombia, numerous illegal groups have demobilized and successfully entered into politics. The practical effect of recognizing the FARC-EP’s belligerent status—which of course Colombia will never do—would be to force the Colombian government into negotiations. Also, people like FARC commander Simón Trinidad could not be put on trial for acts that are not war crimes, such as taking enemy combatants as prisoners.