Colombians are set to march today in San José as part of a worldwide protest, “One Million Voices Against the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC),” which is meant to call for the leftist rebel army to lay down its weapons and release its hostages.

The aim is to “demonstrate our repudiation of the hostage-taking and the pain caused by the FARC, and to call attention of good people around the world to its indifference,” María Fernanda Gualdrón, the protest's Costa Rica-based organizer, told Spanish language newswire ACAN-EFE.

Gualdrón said she expects 1,000 people – Colombians and other sympathizers of diverse backgrounds – to turn out. They will gather at 10:30 a.m. in San José's Parque de las Garantías Sociales and begin marching a half-hour later, according to a Colombian Foreign Ministry bulletin.

Similar shows of defiance to the FARC are planned for today in more than 100 cities around the world, according to Gualdrón. “We want everybody to hear the voice of everyday Colombians, the citizens who don't want war, the people who want an end to the violence,” she told ACAN-EFE.

In Costa Rica, protestors will sing the Colombian National Anthem and say a collective prayer for the hostages and for peace, Gualdrón said.

The global march started to spread partly as a “Web-roots” movement on Facebook, an online social-networking site, The Christian Science Monitor reported. The online group now has 230,000 members, the report said, and its founder, Oscar Morales, said the number of cities slated for marches will total 185.

Meanwhile, ahead of the protest, the leftist rebel army said it will free three ailing politicians – Gloria Polanco, Luis Eladio Pérez and Orlando Beltrán – it has held for more than six years, The Associated Press reports. Although the statement by FARC gave no date for the handover, the rebel army's latest push for a high-profile prisoner swap, the Colombian government welcomed the rebel force's gesture.

Today's march is set to raise public awareness of the more than 40 hostages, including three U.S. citizens and Franco-Colombian politician Ingrid Betancourt, whom the FARC seeks to exchange for hundreds of rebels held in Colombian prisons.

“It's time to stop the pain of Colombian families,” Gualdrón said. “Although the FARC (fighters) aren't the only ones who've had the country stuck in a violent cycle for more than 40 years, they are the most representative of the reality that we do not want.”

Some family members of the hostages, however, are skeptical of the possibility of a positive result from the protests.

"Who will benefit from this march?" Betancourt's mother, Yolanda Pulecio, told the Colombian magazine Semana. "Maybe neither the hostages nor the humanitarian exchange or peace will benefit."