---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Fri, 27 Sep 1996 07:25:03 -0700 (PDT) From: Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com> To: fight-censorship@vorlon.mit.edu Subject: Columbian guerrillas get kicked off of the Net [Perhaps it's time to mirror the Columbian guerrillas' home page? Volunteers, anyone? (I wonder what the British, had the Internet existed in 1776, would have done to muzzle the colonial rebels' web sites -- which would have called for a violent overthrow of the government. Perhaps the founding fathers' home pages would have been copied and mirrored in France?) --Declan] ********* Colombia censors guerilla home page By Reuters September 26, 1996, 4:15 p.m. PT A Colombian guerrilla group currently involved in a bloody offensive in the mountains and jungles, suffered a setback in its propaganda battle when its new voice on the Internet was mysteriously silenced. The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), which has periodically paralyzed half the country with road blocks, found its route to the information superhighway barred. The Communist insurgents, who rose up in arms in 1964, embraced new technology last year in their fight to overthrow the government by launching a home page on the Internet. "Using weapons naturally comes within the logic of the armed struggle. Just fighting through the Internet would be like shooting rubber bullets. Not using it would be like continuing to fight the army with a 12-bore shotgun," said Marco LeDon CalarcDa, the FARC's Mexico City-based international spokesman. But in unexplained circumstances, which a spokeswoman for the Mexico City-based Internet provider Teesnet said may or may not be linked to external pressures, the plug was pulled on the service Monday--a day after being publicized in Colombia's leading daily, El Tiempo. CalarcDa admitted the loss of the Internet page was a serious reversal but vowed the computer-age conflict was far from over. [...] The Colombian guerrillas used their Web site to publish their political magazine Resistencia, whose distribution is banned in Colombia, and to offer explanations about their latest armed actions. FARC, labeled narcoguerrillas since the 1980s when U.S. ambassador Lewis Tambs highlighted the group's alleged connections with Colombia's drugs trade, have been dubbed cyberspace guerrillas since their appearance on the Internet. "Cyberspace guerrillas may seem a fun name but I think it is pejorative and belittles what we're doing," said LeDon CalarcDa. "We are looking to topple the government and set up a new Colombia. In the four weeks since the FARC unleashed its latest offensive with an attack on a jungle base in southern Putumayo province, more than 150 soldiers, police, and civilians have died. ###