Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos on Sunday (October 9) announced he would donate the 8 million Swedish crowns ($930,000 dollars) he will receive as part of the 2016 Nobel Peace Prize to victims of the internal conflict between the Colombian government and Marxist FARC rebels.
Santos won the 2016 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday (October 7) for his efforts to end a 52-year-old war with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, in what was a surprise choice and a show of support days after voters rejected a peace deal Santos signed with the rebels.
Santos made the announcement while attending a mass in the jungle town of Bojaya in western Colombia, which has borne the brunt of guerrilla violence.
At least 79 civilians were killed here in a FARC attack in May, 2002.
"I've come here because after the Nobel Peace Prize was announced, I wanted to come here to share with you all, because you all symbolize what the war in Colombian has been, you are a symbol of the bad, but also the good of this war and the good part is how we are going to end it with spiritual strength, with a capacity to forgive, with the capacity for reconciliation" Santos said.
Bojaya, like many of Colombia's impoverished rural and border area communities, voted in favor of the peace agreement signed by Santos and the FARC guerrilla leader Rodrigo Londono, better known by his nom de guerre Timochenko, in Cartagena on September 26.
"This wonderful Nobel Prize, which some consider the most important in the world, also comes with a monetary prize, 8 million Swedish crowns ($930,000 dollars). I want to announce to you that last night I met with my family and we've decided to donate the 8 million Swedish crowns to victim reparations"Santos continued.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee said Santos had brought one of the longest civil wars in modern history significantly closer to a peaceful solution, but there was still a danger the peace process could collapse.
Santos has promised to revive the plan even though Colombians narrowly rejected it in a referendum. Many voters believed it was too lenient on the FARC guerrillas.
Santos is the first Latin American to receive the peace prize since indigenous rights campaigner Rigoberta Menchu of Guatemala won in 1992, and is the second Colombian laureate after writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez, who won the literature prize in 1982.
REUTERS