A song for the living: Colombians crave for peace

More than a month ago, in the Colombian municipality town of Bojayá, a women's choir sang songs in the newly-built church to commemorate all the people who died in the 2002 church bombing. The chorus was also there to say goodbye to the 52-year-old civil war and to welcome peace after the peace treaty was signed with the Revolutionary Armed Forces (FARC) commanders in Havana, Cuba. Some of the songs were dedicated as a tribute to the survivors of that brutal attack on May 02, 2002. At the time, there was an old church that stood there. An intense fighting was going on between the paramilitary and the guerrillas in this isolated town. The town is only accessible by boat. To avoid the bullets that were flying from all direction, many residents of the village took shelter in the old church. A handmade mortar was thrown inside the church by the guerrillas that killed 79 people; half of them were children. Another hundred townspeople were seriously injured. Since then the church has become a symbol of the barbarity of the conflict of the Colombian civil war that has killed about 220,000 people. This war has been tainted with immense atrocities on both sides, and is laced with shame of massacres, kidnappings and rapes that prompted more than five million people to flee the conflict zone.
The island of Bojayáis is mainly inhabited by Afro-Colombians and the indigenous people, and therefore neglected by the government authorities. The sharp divisions of race, class differentiate Colombian society. The white descendants of the Europeans naturally feel superior to those of native or African extraction. Class divisions follow these lines as well, as the better-educated, affluent descendants of the Europeans rule over the poorer sections of society. After the February 2012 church attack, the entire town escaped to different parts of the country and essentially became displaced people as so often happens during a civil war. The town of Bojayá is now almost deserted, as the residents did not return fearing another similar gruesome attack. The church has been rebuilt as a reminder of the horror of this war, and to honour the lives that were lost here. The people who were killed were not fighting the war but became collateral damage anyhow.
The original inhabitants now are living at the newly-built town called the new Bellavista, a mile upstream replete with modern amenities as a delayed compensation as they had suffered the worst atrocities during this long war. However, there is an everyday reminder of what the three generations of war has done to the country. There is a graveside in new Bellavista with unmarked graves of the victims of the 2002 bombing which stands as a testament of this horrible conflict. The isolation of this island made Bojayá very attractive to the guerrillas where they could control the arm and drug trafficking routes. Colombia is in the middle of the narcotics trafficking routes from South to North America. The guerrillas, finding an opportunity with no one else to challenge them, seized the opportunity to take control of the illicit drug trade, and made huge financial gains.  
The residents are simply tired of this war and they crave for peace and stability. "We're tired of so much violence, living with so much uncertainty," Rosa Mosquera, 51, said in an interview. During the attack in 2002, she was huddled with her six children in the church. The mortar strike sprayed her with shrapnel and wounded her children. They all managed to get out alive, but many of her relatives and friends did not.
Slightly more than a month ago, with the signing of the peace deal, Colombia was on the verge of ending one of the most violent civil wars in the history of Latin America. The peace deal was put on a referendum. There was a NO vote at a small margin, and therefore it was rejected. President Juan Manual Santos had to call for a referendum because throughout the deal-making negotiations, the ongoing talk generated fierce criticism and political debate led by opposition leader former President Alvaro Uribe and his central Democratic Party members. The vocal opponents of the deal thought Santos was too lenient on the FARC commanders because he didn't negotiate any kind of punishment for causing so much brutality for five decades. 'Critics of the agreement have said that the government's deal with the FARC would allow perpetrators of atrocities, among the rebels and on the government side, to be dealt minimal punishment or no punishment at all.'
Santos claims that a cease-fire deal is not about politics; it is about saving lives and stop the war by any means. By calling the referendum, Santos took a calculated risk that a show of public support could strengthen the deal in ending the war. Mr. Santos said that the ideas FARC fought for did not resonate with most Colombians, and that he doubted that the FARC would be able to 'reinvent itself as a political organisation,' 'Unless they modernise their speech and modernise their mission, I don't see much success in their political ideas,' he said. 'But the whole purpose of this process is to allow them to try.'
Only 37 per cent of Colombians went to the polls and the rejectionist side, voting NO won by a mere 53,000 votes. Alvaro Uribe and his followers told the voters that Colombia will become a socialist country like Venezuela and the FARC leaders signed the deal after it got assurance from Santos that the leaders will get impunity for war crimes. They also put fear in the minds of deeply religious people that the deal favours homosexuality. Fear works in strange ways on the people, making them behave irrationally and sometimes acting against their own interest. Populists and demagogues seize on the fear and gullibility of the masses, and influence the outcome of elections, and other outcomes. These trends are all too obvious around us, including in the presidential elections of my adopted home, the USA.
Ninety-five per cent of Bojayá residents voted in support of the peace accords. With the rejection of the peace deal they fear that Colombia has lost its long-waited chance to live in peace. Macaria Allin, one of the church bomb survivors, said they are feeling abandoned and betrayed and claim that neither the government nor the FARC leaders care about them. A lot of the Colombians, who voted for the peace deal, feel that the city folks are the ones who want the perpetrators to be tried for war crimes. They are opposing the deal because they are away from the conflict zone and haven't experienced the war personally. Before the referendum, some of the FARC commanders came to the community whose members were victimised during the church attack. They then presented them with a six-foot wooden cross as a peace offering that they had made in Havana and asked them for forgiveness for the 2002 killings. The residents at this point only want the war to stop and want the government to make a newly-drafted deal that is agreeable to all Colombians and find a way to make the rebel commanders go along with it.
Now, President Juan Manual Santos, the winner of 2016 Nobel Peace Prize, is facing the challenge of re-writing the peace deal to make it favourable to those who voted against the deal. At the same time he knows that he has to keep it agreeable to the FARC leaders. Reportedly, the FARC leaders are open to new ideas without much changing the core of the agreement. Santos has to find a way to make everyone see why peace is a better option than war. The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded within days when people rejected the deal and that puts added pressure on Santos as many around the world after the referendum are questioning the Nobel Committee's decision to give him the award just for trying for four years to come to an agreement with the rebel leaders without any tangible result.  
Santos at this point is only blaming himself and told the US media that because of a lot of misinformation the deal was not effective and he has failed to tell people in clear terms what the agreement entails and what it was all about. His statement only a few days ago before the signing of the deal was very different when he was talking to New York Times' Somini Sengupta in an interview during the UN General Assembly's 70th gathering in New York City. "Making peace is much more difficult than making war because you need to change sentiments of people, people who have suffered, to try to persuade them to forgive", the president said.
However, Santos didn't reveal that the deal offers amnesty for rank-and-file fighters which became a major point of contention between him and his opposition. A special tribunal was to be established to try commanders but Mr. Santos was vague about whether the government soldiers will be tried for serious war crimes.
Santos has extended the deadline for a new deal and hopes that there will still be an agreement and reiterated that he is absolutely determined not to allow the country go back to war. The FARC commanders, along with their troops, are spread out in the jungle enclaves of Bojayá waiting further instructions among uncertainty. The people of Bojayá are feeling less hopeful about the future and doubt that the war will ever end. They fear that their ardent desire only a month ago - to compose a new song for the living in welcoming peace in the region might be replaced with songs of lamentations for the dead if Santos fails to lock a newly revised deal success for all parties involved.
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