La Gabarra, a border town in Apure state, was taken by 50 men armed belonging to the National Liberation Army (ELN).
The invasion was carried out as a result of the confrontations that they sustain with the dissidents of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, Radio Fe and Joy reported in a statement from the “Self-government of the Simón Bolívar Communal City.”
Below is the full statement.
The self-government of the communal city addresses the Bolivarian Government, the National and State Directorate of Our PSUV Party, the Venezuelan people and the communal movement to denounce that on January 14, 2022 armed men from the Colombian ELN invaded the Communes La Gran Unión and Víctor Díaz Ojeda, under the argument of the war they are waging with the so-called dissidents of the 10th Front of the FARC. This constitutes an unacceptable violation of national and popular sovereignty. These irregular armed actors intend to import violence and terror to destabilize peace and democracy and undermine the role of the Venezuelan State, with which they do the work of the Colombian oligarchy committed to the North American aggression that is being carried out against the country.
At present, more than 50 armed men have taken over the town of La Gabarra, in the purest style of a foreign occupation army, ignoring the Bolivarian State, popular power and bringing anxiety and terror to the population.
The Venezuelan grassroots and popular power organizations are not part of a war between these armed factors over the dispute over drug trafficking routes and border crimes, because that is what is in the background. In these disputes there is nothing of ideology or political project.
We demand that both armed actors, both the ELN and the FARC, take their conflict elsewhere, that Venezuela, Apure and the Simón Bolívar Communal City is a territory of peace, sovereignty and popular democracy.
Fifty or a million armed men doesn’t matter. They will not be able to with the invincible force of a conscious and organized people willing to defend the homeland from any foreign force that offends it. It doesn’t matter if it’s US imperialism, the armed forces of the Colombian oligarchy or the Colombian armed groups.
From the Simón Bolívar Communal City we declare ourselves in peaceful, democratic and patriotic resistance against this invasion of our country.
We call on the entire popular and communal movement to show solidarity with us. We trust the Bolivarian national government and ask for its intervention.