Colombia News: FARC Travels to Western Town Seeking Forgiveness for 2002 Massacre

The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, also known as FARC, has traveled to a small town in western Colombia to ask for forgiveness from the locals for a 2002 massacre that killed 80 individuals.

The FARC, represented by guerilla leader Felix Antonio Muñoz Lascarro or "Pastor Alape," attended a ceremony with the inhabitants of Bojaya, Choco, Colombia Reports wrote. More than a decade ago, the guerrillas launched a handmade projectile on a church in the town while attacking an AUC paramilitary.

According to Colombia Reports, the paramilitary was holding an expansion in the area and quarreled with the FARC despite the presence of hundreds of civilians. The paramilitaries was seeking refuge near the church when the FARC fired the explosive, committing one of the worst crimes in the guerrilla's decades-long history.

The explosive didn't strike the paramilitaries as intended, and instead exploded inside the church and killed about 80 of the town's 300 inhabitants who were seeking refuge from the clash between the two groups, the news outlet added.

Alape, who is also a member of the FARC's negotiation group at ongoing peace deals in Cuba, was joined by other guerrillas and members of the Red Cross in the trip to Bojaya. He personally asked for forgiveness to the townsfolk, emphasizing that "there never was the intention to harm the civilian population and less the elderly and children who died in this dreaded attack," Colombia Reports noted.

Alape assured the locals that the FARC will "compensate the damage done and repair the victims of these acts, as well as not ever repeat situations like this," the news outlet further reported. Prior to the private apology, a public one was made around this same month last year, just after the discussions about how to address the around 7 million victims of the FARC's armed conflict with the Colombian government.

Peace negotiations between Colombia and FARC began in 2012, teleSUR wrote. The process aims to conclude over 50 years of conflict that included guerrilla groups, paramilitaries, state security forces, and drug traffickers.

FARC commander "Pablo Catatumbo" said that at their public apology that it "does not repair the irreparable, it does not return any of the people who died, nor undoes the suffering caused to so many families, a suffering of which we are aware and hopefully will be forgiven," Colombia Reports added. Now that the FARC have apologized twice, locals are waiting for the government to follow suit.

The Colombia's council of state said that the government must ask forgiveness for abandoning the region and permitting state-aligned paramilitary death squads to perform brutal territorial expansion, the news outlet noted.