HUNGER STRIKE BY POLITICAL PRISONERS IN COLOMBIA

That this House welcomes the amnesty framework laid out in the Peace Agreement between the Government of Colombia and the FARC-EP of August 2016; notes that all political prisoners should have been freed in January 2017; regrets that only 1,081 of 3,400 FARC prisoners have so far been released from Colombian gaols; is concerned that more than 1,400 prisoners began a hunger strike on 26 June 2017 in protest about the lack of implementation of the amnesty law; is further concerned that many have sewn up their mouths in this hunger strike in what is a painful and dangerous personal gesture; and calls on the UK Government to join the 455 human rights defenders and leading campaigners from all over the world, including Nobel Peace Prize winner Adolfo Perez Esquivel, in asking the Colombian Government to fulfil its obligations under the Peace Agreement and release the remaining political prisoners.