After recently posting a video on social media expressing his support for the revocation of the mandate of Colombian President Iván Duque, Twitter and YouTube have shut down the accounts of Colombian guerrilla leader Iván Márquez. The social media platforms also suspended the accounts of guerrilla leader Jesús Santrich and FARC dissidents.
The National Police requested the suspension after Márquez, who is currently a fugitive, posted a video of himself in the jungle, armed with a rifle and speaking about revoking the mandate of Duque.
“We will have to seek by all means the way out of the swamp—of the Duque-Uribe dictatorship,” Márquez says in the video. “This is achieved through the mobilization of all the people and the unity of the country’s social and political movement in a great coalition of democratic forces that will guide its steps towards the establishment of a new government.”
Suspended were the Twitter accounts @IvanMarquezFarc, @JSantrich_FARC and @SMarquetalia, which officials said were used for the dissemination of propaganda.
Presidential Security Advisor, Rafael Guarín, responded to Márquez through his official Twitter account.
“Let them speak to us clearly,” Guarín writes. “Does the 2014 electoral alliance between Santismo and Iván Márquez hold? The FARC dissidents are a drug trafficking gang equal to the Clan del Golfo. All political actors must repudiate them and not accept that they interfere in democracy.”
Senator Roy Barreras said Márquez’s latest video shows a dissident betraying the peace process and must be rejected. “Those delusional, absurd videos, disconnected from reality, do nothing but harm,” Barreras says. “They generate repudiation because they contaminate any initiative.”