Twitter has suspended Antonio García’s account, top commander of the ELN guerrilla which is negotiating peace with the government of Colombia, after the rebel sent a series of harassing messages against a journalist.

The guerrilla chief dedicated the stanza of a popular song to the communicator María Alejandra Villamizar in response to her criticism of the organization, which she collected in an article in The country of Spain and which is the owner ‘No one is eternal in the world’like the name of the famous melody.

“@MariaAlejaVM says ‘no one in the world is eternal’, referring to the ELN. I answer him with the same song by his favorite singer, Darío Gómez: “You will suffer, you will cry, as long as you get used to losing, then you will resign yourself if you don’t see me again,” García wrote in a tweet. Then his account was suspended.

President Gustavo Petro rejected “threatening messages” via Twitter and asked “the authorities to ensure the integrity” of the journalist.

Along the same lines, the Press Freedom Foundation (FLIP) described the messages as “harassment”.

“We urge the ELN and other armed groups negotiating peace with the government or submitting to the courts to stop threats, harassment and harassment of the press,” the NGO added on Twitter.

Amid the protracted internal conflict, FLIP recorded 200 threats against communicators in the country in 2022 and two reporters were killed.

The first leftist to come to power in Colombia has been negotiating peace with the Guevarista guerrillas since November, in talks that have suffered more than one setback.

In the latest setback, the rebels killed nine soldiers in an ambush that angered the government in late March. Months earlier, they had refused to agree to a bilateral ceasefire offered by President Petro.

A third cycle of talks between the ELN and official spokespersons will take place in Cuba on April 26.

The president is also negotiating peace with FARC dissidents who deviated from the 2016 peace deal, and is in talks with drug traffickers to get them to leave the cocaine trade in exchange for criminal benefits.

According to Reporters Without Borders, Colombia is the third most dangerous country for journalists in Latin America, after Mexico and Brazil.

Drug traffickers, guerrillas and state agents face off in a conflict that has bleed the country dry for half a century and left more than 9 million victims.