By Matthew O. Berger
WASHINGTON, Sep 1 2010 (IPS)

As a new administration takes over in Bogotá, some groups are hoping for change in the human rights record of Colombia – and that the U.S. will use its clout in the country to ensure that change occurs.

At some point in September, the U.S. State Department will likely certify that Colombia is meeting the human rights conditions required for receiving some of the military aid provided by the U.S. But in the year since the last certification numerous human rights violations have occurred in the country, Colombian and U.S. NGOs said in a statement issued Monday.

The groups hope that the fact that those human rights violations occurred while former president Álvaro Uribe was in power means that Colombia has a chance to break that trend under new president Juan Miguel Santos – and that the U.S., which gives hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to Colombia each year, has a chance to pressure them to do so.

The certification requirement only affects U.S. military assistance – and only a percentage of it. Moreover, the State Department has never not certified that Colombia meets the human rights conditions required for receipt of the aid in the ten years that certification has been required.

The certification requirement has “still been a useful tool because the State Department, in anticipating these decisions, sometimes delays certifying and discusses with the Colombian government the serious issues of human rights,” says Lisa Haugaard, executive director of the Latin America Working Group, one of the 18 groups behind the statement.

“It’s been the one tool we have available to put some pressure not just on the Colombian government but on the State Department,” she told IPS.

Rather than simply asking for delays, the groups would like the State Department to not certify Colombia’s human rights record. Haugaard explains that it has been a particularly bad year for human rights in the country. “We’ve seen considerable backsliding, particularly in terms of investigating and prosecuting effectively abuses by the army, even the most egregious ones,” she says.

Over the past year, several infractions have remained unaddressed, including the supposed failure to prosecute rights violations like the “false positive” extrajudicial executions in which Colombian military personnel have allegedly executed civilians then dressed them up as guerrillas in order to inflate their combat body count.

Though the cases involve 3,000 victims of extrajudicial executions dating back to 2002, results are slow, according to the groups.

In response to the false positive scandal, 27 military personnel were dismissed in 2008, but none have been charged with crimes, they say.

They also write that 31 union leaders, 7 community leaders and one indigenous leader have been killed so far in 2010, and that there has been an “exponential increase in threats against defenders via email since April 2010.”

They also point to the expanded operations of paramilitaries and criminal groups as well as evidence of military-paramilitary cooperation.

Six of the groups – WOLA, CIP, Human Rights First, Latin America Working Group, Lutheran World Relief and the U.S. Office on Colombia – wrote a letter to U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton Aug. 20 in which they ask the U.S. to press for reform in these areas and in protecting human rights defenders.

Their hope is that the new Colombian administration will offer a new opportunity for reform.

Uribe’s government had come under fire for presiding over a multitude of human rights abuses, including, most famously, a scandal in which recordings of the wire-tapped conversations of people supposed to be critics of the government – including human rights defenders, politicians, journalists and even Supreme Court justices – became public.

The majority of blame for the eavesdropping activities – illegal under Colombian law – was directed at the Department of Administrative Services, or DAS, an intelligence agency under the president’s authority. DAS had grown considerably in size and scope since being founded in the 1950s, but following the wiretapping scandals, and especially the discovery of a recording of a conversation between a Supreme Court justice and a U.S. embassy attaché, Uribe ordered the dismantling of DAS. That dismantling has yet to be carried out.

These actions by DAS are the “very antithesis” of the condition that Colombia respect the rights of human rights defenders – required for them to receive some of the U.S. aid, the groups behind Monday’s statement say.

For his part, Santos has showed signs that he will move to distance himself from his predecessor’s record.

In his inaugural speech Aug. 7, he vowed to do more to defend human rights, and in the weeks since his government has continued to emphasise making human rights – as well as social issues – a more central issue than they were under Uribe.

But, says Haugaard, “He’s no clean slate.” She notes that as Defense Minister under Uribe, Santos “was somebody who put in place policies that escalated the killings of civilians.

“But he was also somebody who then, after there was international pressure and outcry, put in place some policies that began to bring down the number of killings of civilians,” she adds. “So he’s somebody who listens to what the international community thinks, but also someone who was implicated in the problems in the first place.”

In the statement, the groups are asking the State Department “to withhold certification until marked results are seen in advancing human rights cases and combating Colombia’s rampant impunity.”

While she feels the evidence for non-certification is there, Haugaard is realistic about the prospects of their request’s success. “I think the State Department will be reluctant to not certify right now – not only because it always has but also because a new government is coming in – but [our request] is based on the past year of the facts on the ground, and that’s what we’re asking the State Department to look at.”

And if the certification goes ahead anyway? “We’ll see what’s next,” she says.

Excerpt:

By Helda Martínez
BOGOTÁ, Mar 30 2010 (IPS)

Hopes that a humanitarian prisoner-for-hostage swap may be negotiated in Colombia before August added to the emotion over the release of Sergeant Pablo Emilio Moncayo by the FARC guerrillas Tuesday and his reunion with his family after more than 12 years in captivity in the jungle.

After a helicopter flight delayed by bad weather, the 31-year-old Moncayo finally embraced his family and friends at the airport in Florencia, the capital of the southern province of Caquetá.

The sergeant was the last of 14 hostages freed in unilateral goodwill release operations by the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) since 2006, the rebels announced in a statement made public by Senator Piedad Córdoba of the opposition Liberal Party.

The 13th, army soldier Josue Daniel Calvo, was released Sunday. He had been kidnapped a year ago, after he was wounded in combat. The FARC are still holding 22 police and soldiers.

Córdoba, who brokered the hostage releases and was in the Brazilian air force helicopters that picked them up, is the head of the non-governmental organisation Colombianos y colombianas por la paz (CCPP – Colombians for Peace).

When the humanitarian team reached the airport in Florencia, she read out a statement in which the FARC expressed their gratitude to the guarantors of the operation, including the Red Cross and especially the Brazilian government and military, which provided logistical support.

The FARC also issued a call “to all countries interested in a political solution to Colombia’s social and armed conflict, as well as to the CCPP, to join forces and focus their concentric efforts towards achieving a swap of prisoners of war,” referring to an exchange of hostages held by the rebels for imprisoned insurgents.

With the “unilateral gesture” of releasing Calvo and Moncayo, “the FARC believes the way is clear for the immediate exchange of prisoners of war as the only viable way for the prisoners in the jungle and the guerrillas imprisoned in the dungeons of Colombia and the United States to return to freedom without threatening their physical integrity,” the statement adds.

On Sunday, Córdoba said a humanitarian swap is more urgently needed than ever, addressing the presidential candidates for the May 30 elections, in which the successor to right-wing President Álvaro Uribe, whose second term ends Aug. 7, will be elected.

The president responded that same night, saying he was not opposed to a prisoner-hostage exchange, as long as the released guerrillas did not rejoin the FARC and continue to commit crimes.

To which Córdoba responded “of course.”

Iván Cepeda, a member of the CCPP and legislator-elect for the left-wing Alternative Democratic Pole, told IPS by telephone from Florencia that “we have achieved a very important step: more flexible conditions, on the part of the FARC as well as the government.”

He was referring to the fact that the FARC have stopped insisting on the creation of a demilitarised area for the talks before they would negotiate an exchange, and to Uribe’s agreement to consider a swap.

Besides kidnapping people for ransom, the FARC has taken hostages – politicians and members of the police and military – with the hope of swapping them for imprisoned guerrillas.

But up to now, Uribe had been staunchly opposed to an exchange, along the lines of operations carried out under previous governments.

The first swap of hostages for imprisoned rebels took place in June 2001, during the government of Andrés Pastrana (1998-2002), in the context of peace talks with the FARC in a 42,000 sq km demilitarised zone in the southern municipality of Caguán. On that occasion, 55 members of the military and police held by the insurgents were exchanged for 14 guerrillas.

After the operation, the rebels unilaterally freed another 304 soldiers, only holding onto officers and non-commissioned officers, including Moncayo.

But although Uribe has now stated a new willingness to negotiate a humanitarian agreement and the FARC have relaxed their conditions, “there is nothing concrete yet,” said Cepeda, spokesman for the Movement of Victims of State Crimes (MOVICE).

“A negotiating panel made up of representatives of the FARC and the government – hopefully the current administration – will be set up,” he said. “But if we don’t achieve this under President Uribe, we’ll still go forward,” although that could delay the process, Cepeda added.

The prospect of a humanitarian agreement has revived the hopes of many Colombian families, who for years have been calling for a prisoner-hostage swap so they could be reunited with their loved ones.

The hostage released Tuesday is the son of high school teacher Gustavo Moncayo, known around the world as “the peace walker.”

His son Pablo Emilio was an 18-year-old conscript when he was seized by the FARC in December 1997. After completing his compulsory military service he planned to attend the university. He was promoted to sergeant during his captivity.

Several years into his son’s captivity, Moncayo began to engage in public protest activities, demanding that the government negotiate a prisoner-hostage exchange. He first chained himself to a tree in his hometown of Sandoná, in the southwestern province of Nariño, and later in Pasto, the provincial capital.

“No one paid any attention to me,” he told IPS in 2007. “They looked at me as if I were a madman. I told them, we have to do something for our boys.”

“Until one day he decided to walk all the way to Bogotá,” Yury Tatiana Moncayo, the second of his three daughters, told IPS at the time. “My mom and sisters and I were terrified, but he had made his decision. So I got ready to go with him.”

He walked 1,186 km to the capital, where he camped out in a tent in the central Bolívar square, which is surrounded by Congress, the Supreme Court, city hall and the cathedral. He later held other protest treks and visited Europe, where he met with presidents and Pope Benedict.

Moncayo, who admits that he tears up easily, wears chains around his wrists to demand his son’s release – chains that were removed by his son when they were finally reunited Tuesday.

Sandoná declared Tuesday a holiday, and the release operation was followed on big screens in city squares in different cities, including Bolívar square in the capital.

At 14:00 local time (18:00 GMT), the International Committee of the Red Cross announced that Moncayo had been handed over. Shortly afterwards he talked with his family on a satellite phone. But before taking off for Florencia, the humanitarian team had to wait one hour, to give the guerrillas time to disappear back into the jungle.

It was also announced that Córdoba would be providing the coordinates for the handover of the remains of police officer Julián Ernesto Guevara, who died in captivity in the jungle in 2006 after almost eight years as a hostage.

Excerpt:

By Helda Martínez
BOGOTA, Mar 29 2010 (IPS)

After Colombia’s FARC rebels released 23-year-old soldier Josué Daniel Calvo, Colombian President Alvaro Uribe said he is not opposed to a humanitarian swap of imprisoned insurgents for hostages, as long as the guerrillas do not return to the fighting.

On Sunday, the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) handed Calvo over to a humanitarian commission aboard a helicopter loaned by Brazil, which provided logistical assistance for the operation.

The unilateral release took place at an undisclosed location in the jungles of the central department (province) of Meta.

Calvo was wounded in the leg and seized by the guerrillas in April 2009 in a clash between government forces and the FARC, Colombia’s main rebel group, which has been fighting since 1964.

His family gave him up for dead, until they received proof that he was alive two months after his capture.

The young man joined the army at the age of 17, “because he considered it his best option,” his father Luis Alberto said.

The family had suffered forced displacement because of the nearly five-decade civil war, and settled in Tambo in the southwestern department of Cauca, a poor area with few opportunities for young people.

When he was recruited, the young peasant farmer’s dream was to join the Colombia Battalion that is taking part in the United Nations peacekeeping mission in Egypt’s Sinai peninsula. But he ended up hostage in the jungle instead.

The government’s peace commissioner Frank Pearl said Calvo asked for respect for his preference to not speak to the press.

The commission to which he was handed over included opposition Liberal Party Senator Piedad Córdoba, who has mediated and served as a guarantor of all of the unilateral releases by the FARC since 2006.

It was also made up of delegates of the International Committee of the Red Cross and Catholic bishop of Magangué, in the Caribbean coastal department of Bolívar, Leonardo Gómez.

When the helicopter landed at the airport in Vanguardia de Villavicencio, the capital of the department of Meta, a tense silence reigned. The FARC had stated that Calvo was in extremely poor health, but he was able to walk, leaning on a stick and limping, and did not use the wheelchair that had been provided.

He met with his father and sister in a private room, which he exited later wearing camouflage fatigues.

His father showed the media photos of people from his region who have been kidnapped or forcibly disappeared in recent years, and read letters describing their cases.

Córdoba thanked the ICRC and the Brazilian government for their cooperation, and said Calvo had been handed over in Santa Lucía, “a community of people who are very poor, where children are malnourished and adults have no teeth.”

In the last few years, the FARC have released 13 hostages unilaterally, including politicians, police and soldiers.

The senator referred to a new call by the citizen movement Colombianos y Colombianas por la Paz (Colombians for Peace) for a humanitarian exchange between the government and the guerrillas, to secure the release of 21 hostages still held by the FARC.

“We are in the process of writing letters to President Uribe, all of the presidential candidates and the FARC,” Córdoba said.

The last hostage that the FARC says it will hand over unilaterally is 32-year-old Pablo Emilio Moncayo, who has spent 12 years in the jungle. His release is to take place Tuesday.

The rebel group also announced that it would deliver the remains of Julián Ernesto Guevara, a police officer who died in captivity in 2006, nearly eight years after he was captured by the FARC.

The insurgents “told us they have his remains, but that they have not been able to bring them out of the jungle because of the continuous attacks by the army. They asked us to be on the alert,” Córdoba added.

Referring to the need for a humanitarian prisoner swap, the senator said “yesterday it was very painful to me to receive a phone call from the boy Johan Estiven Martínez, asking me to help get his father released.”

When Moncayo is released, José Libio Martínez will become the longest-held hostage, having spent more than 12 years in the jungles of the south of Colombia.

Excerpt:

By Constanza Vieira
BOGOTÁ, Aug 18 2009 (IPS)

“You look as good as ever,” was the radio message that Olga Valderrama sent over the airwaves to her son, army corporal Antonio Sanmiguel, who is being held captive somewhere in the jungles of Colombia by the FARC guerrillas.

She had just seen videos released by the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) showing her son and another hostage, police officer Guillermo Javier Solórzano.

The videos, broadcast on Monday, were handed over by the leftwing rebels as “proof-of-life” for the 25-year-old Sanmiguel, the FARC’s most recent hostage, who was captured in combat in May 2008, and 33-year-old Solórzano, seized in June 2007.

“Be strong. I am not defeated. This is just one of the risks I faced in my job,” Sanmiguel said in one of the videos, to try to calm his family’s fears.

The videos were the third proof-of-life provided for Solórzano.

The families of 21 other members of the military and police being held hostage by the FARC – some for more than a decade – were frustrated this time, hoping for some word of their loved ones as well.

“More ‘proof-of-life’ will be received in the next few days; it is important for the families to known this,” said Liberal Party Senator Piedad Córdoba, the head of the Colombianas y Colombianos por la Paz (CCPP – Colombians for Peace) movement, which has been holding a public dialogue with the FARC over the past year.

The problem is that the messengers carrying the videos out of the jungle and handing them over to the mediators – in this case, Córdoba – are in danger of “being thrown in jail and accused of terrorism,” the senator told the press. “No one wants to take the risk.”

The soldiers and police hostages “will only be released through a swap” for imprisoned insurgents, FARC commander Alfonso Cano reiterated last week in an interview with the Bogotá magazine Cambio.

But rightwing President Álvaro Uribe is staunchly opposed to a hostage-prisoner exchange, along the lines of swaps carried out under previous governments.

And even though until early this year he said he was willing to accept all of the unilateral hostage release operations offered by the FARC, after the guerrillas announced on Apr. 16 their decision to hand over corporal Pablo Emilio Moncayo to Córdoba and the CCPP, Uribe slammed the door shut.

Nor did he open it when the FARC announced on Jun. 30 that they would also release counterinsurgency soldier Josué Daniel Calvo.

Some suspect that the president’s decision not to cooperate with the rebel group’s offer to release Moncayo and Calvo may be linked to plans for new attempts to rescue the hostages through a military operation or by bribing the guerrillas guarding them.

There is also speculation that the government hopes to take advantage of U.S. intelligence agents and equipment to be deployed shortly in several military bases in Colombia under a recent agreement.

Whatever the case may be, the government is undermining the possibility of a swap with its own quiet strategy, consisting of promising certain legal benefits to imprisoned FARC insurgents if they renounce the armed struggle and quit the guerrillas – thus removing themselves from the list of rebels eligible for any eventual hostage-prisoner swap.

IPS found out that the government provides monthly payments of around 450 dollars to an unknown number of imprisoned guerrillas, as well as assistance in education and housing for their families.

The FARC have declared insurgents who accept the payments and assistance – which are offered discreetly by government envoys – “military objectives.”

The result is that the leaders of the rebel group themselves do not even know how many imprisoned insurgents they want to exchange hostages for, or how many have been removed from the list – which, moreover, has never been published.

Besides kidnapping people for ransom, the FARC takes hostages – politicians and members of the police and military – with the hope of swapping them for imprisoned guerrillas.

But it no longer has civilian hostages to exchange.

Thirteen regional lawmakers were killed in an unclarified shootout between the FARC and an unidentified armed group; two managed to escape; one – former presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt – was rescued in a bloodless military operation (along with 14 police and military hostages); and eight others were freed by the FARC as a result of mediation led by Córdoba (and Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez in six of the cases).

ASFAMIPAZ, the association that represents the families of kidnapped police officers and soldiers, which has been attending the CCPP meetings, advocates a hostage-prisoner swap based on a negotiated agreement between the government and the FARC – “the miracle of a humanitarian accord,” as Solórzano described it in the videos.

“We have always believed that there are first- and second-class hostages in this country,” Marleny Orjuela, president of ASFAMIPAZ, told IPS. If Moncayo or Calvo were politicians, “the president would have put his heart into this.

“Humanity, humanitarianism: that is what we have been calling for all these years: for President Uribe to really throw his support behind (efforts to secure) the release of the military and police hostages,” she added.

“The dangerous thing about these rescue operations is that people can be killed, and in this case we’re talking about soldiers and police officers,” Senator Córdoba warned Tuesday. “A great deal of care is taken when public figures of national or international renown are involved, as in the previous cases. But it would appear that in this case, because the hostages are soldiers and police, they are doomed to die.”

Hostages have been killed in previous forced rescue attempts by the military, to which the families are opposed.

Corporal Moncayo was taken prisoner by the FARC in December 1997, at the age of 18, when the rebels attacked a military telecommunications base.

His father, high school teacher or “profesor” Gustavo Moncayo, known as “the Peace Walker”, has walked hundreds of kilometres around the country demanding the hostages’ release. He has also turned to the justice system to press unsuccessfully for a hostage-prisoner swap, asked the ombudsman to review the legal decisions that have gone against him, and sought support at the international level.

“Just imagine how we feel, helpless to do anything about all of this,” Moncayo told IPS, referring to the four months of anxious waiting since the FARC announced that his son would be released.

He and his family dream that the day will come when Uribe decides to allow Córdoba to fly in to the jungle to receive their son from the guerrillas. “In the meantime, we are waiting here with our pain, our suffering,” he said.

Moncayo has had to quit his teaching job, and travels constantly, supporting his family as he can with donations from organisations and individuals.

Over the last four months, he has spent a large part of his time in Bogotá. “No, profesor Moncayo, of course I’m not going to charge you,” taxi drivers often tell him.

“Wherever I go, people are constantly greeting me: ‘Profe, how are you?’ They show me so much affection,” he said. People come out to have their pictures taken with him, and invite him to lunch, he added.

But he feels that he does not have the support he really needs, “powerful support that would enable the release of Pablo Emilio.”

Since he began the crusade for the release of his son in mid-2007, Moncayo has worn a chain around his neck and wrists, to remember what his son and the rest of the hostages are going through.

Exhausted after a 27-hour bus ride from his home in Sandoná, in the southwestern province of Nariño, he is wearing only a cotton t-shirt in the chilly Bogotá evening. On the t-shirt are images of his son, his wife Stella and his daughter Tatiana, over the caption “They will never forget the beauty of a morning in freedom.”

The phrase comes from “a letter that Pablo Emilio sent us years ago, in 2000, or before,” says Moncayo, trying to remember exactly when it was. “I liked it, and since then I’ve used it as a slogan.”

Excerpt:

By Constanza Vieira
BOGOTÁ, Feb 7 2009 (IPS)

“Why did they kill them? Out of physical cowardice. It’s what we call murder. Sheer physical cowardice. It’s what we call a war crime,” said former lawmaker Sigifredo López, just freed by the FARC, about the massacre of his 11 colleagues on Jun. 18, 2007, when they were hostages of the Colombian guerrillas.

“It takes more courage not to murder a defenceless citizen,” he added.

Kidnapped together with the 11 other regional lawmakers in April 2002, López remained in the hands of the rebels until Thursday, when he was unilaterally freed by the insurgents.

“Some idiots from the 29th (Front) turned up without telling us beforehand,” one of the three guerrillas he used to talk with during his captivity told López.

“There are some things I can’t mention, because if I give certain details, they will know who it was,” and that person will be shot, López said at a press conference in Cali, the capital of the western province of Valle del Cauca.

According to his version, the people responsible for the deaths of the 11 regional legislators were six members of the 29th Front of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), which operates in the jungle of southwestern Colombia.

Upon the unexpected arrival of this group of guerrillas at the camp where the hostages were held by rebels belonging to the 60th Front, the guards carried out their standing orders from the high command of the FARC, which were to execute the hostages in the case of any attack or rescue attempt by the army.

At 11.30 on that sunny morning (16.30 GMT), two shots were fired, “from outside, coming toward” the camp, López said.

He assumed the guerrillas were shooting ducks, but another two shots followed almost immediately, so he threw himself flat on the ground.

Three minutes later, there were bursts of machinegun fire and he heard yells, “like fighters in combat”.

“Don’t let them go, don’t let them go!” López heard the guerrilla commander of the unit in charge of the hostages shout, through the machinegun fire.

“Someone said ‘the vultures are here,’ and the commander said ‘kill them and let’s go,'” the rebel who talked to López told him.

López was chained to a tree, 50 metres away from the rest of the hostages, behind a screen made of canes, as “punishment” for being “rude” and “insubordinate”, so he did not hear the order from the rebel commander, nor did he see his colleagues being killed.

His personal guard was at a nearby creek, washing the lunch dishes. When the other guerrillas left, the guard remembered López and came back for him 10 minutes later.

When López and his guard passed by the place where the other hostages had been, there was no one there.

“Have they taken them away already?” he asked. “Yes, they’ve taken them away,” his guard replied. Later on, he realised that his question had been ambiguous, and the answer could imply that his colleagues had been taken away alive and well.

López heard what had happened to them 10 days later, at four in the morning, when the widow of one of the dead politicians said on the radio that, according to the FARC’s Joint Western Command, the 11 lawmakers had died in the crossfire when an unidentified military group attacked the camp where they were located.

Reeling from the news, he asked a rebel to find out from the unit commander whether it was true. The guerrilla came back the same morning and told him bluntly: “They send word that everything you have heard is true.”

The death of those 11 people was not a consequence of an attempted military rescue by the government, López said.

His conclusion is consistent with the government’s version.

If it had been a military rescue, he would have heard helicopters, he reasoned. And the guerrillas would not have been there, “because as soon as they see a soldier they run for it.” “There was no fighting there, and there were no helicopters,” he repeated.

“They were murdered by the FARC,” he accused, a movement of armed peasants “that is insurgent and terrorist at the same time,” and whose fighters join its ranks “to be able to eat” because the state “hasn’t given them any other options”.

“Why did they kill them? Because of something called paranoia,” in López’s view, which was again consistent with the government’s interpretation.

Thus the sole survivor, López, contradicted an account of the events published by this IPS correspondent in August 2007, which was based on a civilian source connected to the FARC’s supply network.

“The word I used most in the four to six months after my colleagues were killed was not ‘God,’ but ‘s.o.b.’s and murderers,'” he said.

“I was eaten up by hatred. I saw them and I couldn’t stand them. I asked them not to talk to me beyond what was absolutely necessary, not to say hello to me,” he said, describing his relationship with the guerrillas immediately after the massacre. “I wept all day, those first days,” he said, and he lost his appetite.

Eventually he decided he could not continue mired in depression and hatred. He had stopped writing, but he began an essay on the conflict in Colombia, which included the ideas of his murdered companions.

The FARC did not let him bring this essay with him on his release.

López was the sixth hostage to be unilaterally freed as a goodwill gesture this week by the FARC, who are still holding 22 military and police officers, some of whom have been in captivity for over 10 years, with the goal of exchanging them for an undetermined number of guerrillas imprisoned by the government.

These releases were negotiated by the civilian organisation Colombians for Peace, led by opposition Senator Piedad Córdoba.

“The terrible killing of my colleagues,” said López, “leaves a mark on the soul that Colombians will never be able to forget,” and he called for further mass demonstrations to protest against kidnappings.

“I will only forgive the FARC the day that ‘Grillo,’ the commander of the 60th Front who gave the order to murder my companions, gives a press conference (for their families) and says: ‘Forgive me, it was a mistake made during the war,’ looking their children in the eye,” he said.

And he told the children of the deceased lawmakers who were present at the press conference that their fathers “were honourable men who died with the very highest human dignity.”

“In the jungle, all that one has is one’s dignity. Even life ceases to matter. The great battle we all waged was simply to be treated with respect, to be spoken to properly, instead of being called ‘sons of bitches,'” he said.

“But among the guerrillas, as everywhere else, there are uncouth louts, and others who treat you with respect,” he qualified.

López declared his support for a negotiated solution to the war, saying that in spite of everything, “We can’t carry on sending messages of hate.”

He proposed an immediate exchange of prisoners, brokered by Senator Córdoba and Catholic bishop Luis Augusto Castro, head of the Colombian Episcopal Conference.

To that end, the guerrillas should give up their demand for a demilitarised zone for negotiations, and the government should study the legal situation of imprisoned guerrillas who want to return to the ranks of the FARC, he said. Anything less is a “yes, but no,” he said about Colombian President Álvaro Uribe’s repeated refusal to free guerrillas who would not give up the armed struggle.

Meanwhile, Defence Minister Juan Manuel Santos announced a new all-out offensive against the FARC.

Excerpt:

By Constanza Vieira
BOGOTÁ, Feb 4 2009 (IPS)

"At one point I thought we weren't going to find him," said Colombian Senator Piedad Córdoba about Alan Jara, the latest hostage to be freed as a goodwill gesture by insurgents after more than seven-and-a-half years as their captive in the jungle.

Alan Jara hugs his son at Tuesday's press conference. Credit: Constantino Castelblanco/Gobernación del Meta

For 394 weeks made up of 2,760 days, or rather "nights", as Jara himself described them on Tuesday at a press conference in Villavicencio, the capital of the central province of Meta, he was a hostage of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).

The former governor of Meta province was captured in July 2001, when travelling in a United Nations vehicle with a U.N. mission, and was held since then in the jungle, pending a deal to swap him and other hostages for FARC rebels imprisoned by the government.

Shortly before 13:00 hours (18:00 GMT) on Tuesday, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) announced that Jara was free, and was on the way to Villavicencio in a helicopter loaned by the Brazilian government for the operation.

Less than half an hour later, a congratulatory message arrived from the European Union's Commissioner for External Relations and European Neighbourhood Policy, Benita Ferrero-Waldner, showing that the unilateral release of six hostages by the FARC, which began on Sunday and is due to finalise on Thursday, is being closely watched by the international community.

Today "all the conditions were met," and the handover was accomplished rapidly as planned, said the ICRC spokesman in Colombia, Yves Heller, who travelled with the mission led by Córdoba and coordinated by the humanitarian agency.

Heller's report indicated that the obstacles and risks to Sunday's operation, in which three police officers and one soldier were released, had not been repeated. Heavy rains, and the violation by the government of Colombian President Álvaro Uribe of the protocols guaranteeing the mission's safety, nearly upset the earlier liberations.

"We spent three hours," at the place arranged by the FARC for Jara's handover, Senator Córdoba said.

The government ceasefire in that region was due to expire two hours after the Brazilian helicopter left the area.

"May you all travel safely, may no one be killed or injured" on any side in the rescue operation, 998 feminist organisations told Córdoba at a meeting in Bogotá last week.

Since September, Córdoba has led a "Diálogo Público Epistolar" (exchange of open letters) with the FARC, initiated by the group Colombians for Peace and supported by 130,000 signatures.

In fact, Córdoba took the opportunity of Jara's release operation to send another message from the group to the FARC.

"The message was verbal, not written," said Alpher Rojas, one of the intellectuals who signed the Colombians for Peace open letters. Córdoba was to convey "that it is very important to maintain the policy of releasing hostages and to end the scourge (of kidnappings) once and for all," he said.

The FARC and the second largest guerrilla group in Colombia, the National Liberation Army (ELN), kidnap people for ransom in order to raise funds for themselves.

Colombians for Peace wants a commitment from both insurgent groups to end the practice of kidnapping, which the International Criminal Court describes as equivalent to enforced disappearance, and a war crime.

The civilian group hopes for "more releases and the opening of not just a window but a gateway to peace in this country," feminist leader Olga Amparo Sánchez, also a member of Colombians for Peace, who accompanied the eventful mission on Sunday, told IPS.

The FARC guerrillas are not defeated, Jara told the press. "I see no possible solution to the conflict other than negotiation. Therefore I would like to join Colombians for Peace, and I hope they will accept me," he said.

The FARC "have an enviable supply network" and remarkable logistics. Young people continue to join their ranks, he said.

"As long as the social causes persist," the politician said, referring to the poverty in which half the Colombian population are mired, the guerrilla warfare "will not end".

In regard to the conditions of his captivity, he said "there is no mistreatment, no humiliation or anything of that kind. They simply give us what there is" to eat, a meagre diet, which Jara described humorously.

Sometimes he was given jaguar meat, called "tiger" in the Amazon region, but he ate all manner of strange foods, anything and everything that was available.

About the chains that other freed FARC hostages have talked about, Jara said they were a "security" measure used by the guerrillas, not without regret, only when their captives are not penned behind wire fences in jungle jails, although he cannot forget "the cold feeling" around his ankles.

The former governor also said that for the past two years, two government soldiers have been shackled together with one chain because the guerrillas thought they might attempt to escape. Jara called on FARC commanders "to eliminate" the use of chains, "because it is degrading."

The guerrillas are still holding 22 officers and non-commissioned officers, whom they wish to exchange for rebels imprisoned by the government in reciprocal liberations. It is known, from other released hostages, that members of the military and police are treated more harshly than civilian hostages.

"The priority is to get them out of there," Jara said about the captured members of the security forces. As for hostages held for ransom, "We demand freedom for them all, and what must be done is to achieve an agreement," the politician said.

Last week, on the march toward his liberation, "my life was in grave danger," said Jara, confirming the warning given by Córdoba on Jan. 29.

In the jungle, "the world is upside down: the guerrillas protect us and the army shoots at us." During his seven-and-a-half years in captivity, what he was most afraid of was military rescue attempts and bombardments, he said.

Appearances would suggest that it suits President Uribe for the war in this country to be prolonged. And it would seem that "it would suit the FARC for him to remain in power," Jara said, looking back on the intense combat between the government and the rebels for the past six-and-a-half years.

According to Jara, a rebel commander told him he personally hoped the president would be reelected, because a greater level of violence would lead to "a revolutionary situation," an argument put forward by the leader of the Russian Revolution, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin.

Over recent weeks, Jara had to trek 150 kilometres on foot through the jungle.

"That was really tough," he told Gustavo Moncayo, the teacher and "peace walker" who in 2006 founded the present national campaign against kidnapping and who was at the press conference.

Moncayo walked from the southwestern border of Colombia to the Venezuelan capital, a distance of some 2,000 kilometres, seeking the release of his son, an army corporal, who has been in the hands of the FARC for over 11 years, waiting for a humanitarian agreement.

The third and last phase of the present hostage release operation is planned for Thursday, when Sigifredo López, a former regional legislator for the western province of Valle del Cauca, is due to return home. He was kidnapped in April 2002 along with 11 of his colleagues.

López is the only survivor left of this group of lawmakers, and his account of how the others were shot to death on Jun. 18, 2007 is keenly anticipated.

"Apparently it was 'friendly fire' (from other guerrillas)," Jara said, an explanation that agrees with the government's version of the massacre.

Two huge protest marches against the FARC and kidnappings last year, the first mass demonstrations in Colombia since the start of the civil war in the late 1940s, were "an injection of life and hope for us," because until then the country had appeared to be indifferent to the fate of the hostages, Jara said.

The former governor saluted Colombian media for promoting a campaign against kidnapping, which has "raised awareness in the country," he said.

"I do not rule out the possibility that this influence and this political about-face may have come about because of the massive repudiation of kidnapping shown by ordinary Colombians," he said.

"We have made progress. In fact, I am here because we have made progress," said this man, who watched the collapse of the twin towers of the World Trade Centre in New York on live television in the jungle, following the terrorist attacks of Sep. 11, 2001.

During his captivity "there was no conversation" with the rebels. "I don't understand them," he said about the FARC.

*Constanza Vieira is a member of Colombians for Peace.

Excerpt:

By Constanza Vieira
BOGOTÁ, Feb 3 2009 (IPS)

Alan Jara, the former governor of the central province of Meta, was released by Colombian guerrillas on Tuesday, instead of Monday as originally scheduled. Former regional lawmaker for the western province of Valle del Cauca, Sigifredo López, was scheduled to have been freed on Wednesday, but his handover has now been postponed until Thursday.

Non-fulfilment of the conditions agreed between the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the Colombian armed forces during the operation to release four members of the security forces held by the guerrillas on Sunday caused a day’s delay in the freeing of the two civilian hostages.

In its customary diplomatic language, the ICRC confirmed Monday that the government had violated its guarantees for the mission that picked up three police officers and one soldier from their former captors, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).

Minutes after the ICRC declaration, Colombian President Álvaro Uribe ordered the cancellation of all air force flights, at any altitude, during the second and third phases of the hostage rescue operation.

Jara was released in the southern province of Guaviare, and López is expected to be freed in the southwest of this Andean country.

The ICRC had already managed to achieve the reversal of one presidential order, at midnight on Sunday, to exclude Colombians for Peace, a civil society group led by opposition Liberal Party Senator Piedad Córdoba, from the remaining handover missions.

The group has carried on a “Diálogo Público Epistolar” (an exchange of open letters) with the FARC since September.

Uribe had issued an order that only the ICRC and members of the Brazilian air force, which has loaned helicopters and their crews, could take part in future rescue operations.

The exclusion of Colombians for Peace, made up of 150 intellectuals, artists and journalists, and now supported by a further 130,000 signatures, would probably have meant the end of the current hostage release process, because this is a gesture by the FARC in recognition of the group’s actions.

The crisis arose because journalist Jorge Enrique Botero, a member of the delegation of Colombians for Peace which travelled on Sunday to the Caguán river to pick up the four members of the security services, complained by satellite phone from the handover site that the humanitarian mission was being followed and harassed by the military.

The interference by the armed forces came within a hairsbreadth of causing the failure of the hostage release mission.

The Colombians for Peace delegation, which also included Córdoba, feminist leader Olga Amparo Sánchez and journalist Daniel Samper Pizano, brought back audio and videotapes, recorded by Botero, showing the military actions.

Botero said that it was only “the efforts and persistence of the Red Cross and Senator Piedad Córdoba, together with the FARC’s firm decision to continue with the operation, that ultimately brought about the successful release of the three police officers and one soldier.”

The contents and context of the tape recordings were discussed by Botero, the ICRC and Córdoba at a lengthy meeting on Sunday night with the Colombian government’s High Commissioner for Peace, Luis Carlos Restrepo, IPS learned.

The head of the ICRC delegation in Colombia, Christophe Beney, made an urgent plea on Sunday night to maintain “calm and prudence,” saying that nothing justified jeopardising the return to their homes of persons deprived of their freedom.

After the ICRC talks with the government, Córdoba announced at midday on Monday that Colombians for Peace would make no statement on the crisis, but would continue working for an end to the war that has afflicted this country for 45 years and is rooted in conflicts dating back to the 1940s.

The senator also condemned the terrorist attack perpetrated a few minutes before midnight in Cali, the capital of Valle del Cauca province, when a car bomb killed two people and damaged a building housing a police archive as well as the regional headquarters of the Communist Party.

Uribe almost immediately blamed the FARC for the attack, and appeared to use the attack to justify the exclusion of Colombians for Peace from the rescue missions.

Jara had been a FARC hostage since July 2001, and López since April 2002. They were held pending a humanitarian exchange with jailed FARC rebels. The guerrillas are holding 22 army and police officers and non-commissioned officers, including a general.

Uribe is against a humanitarian exchange; instead, he has offered large sums of money and residence abroad to members of the FARC guarding the hostages being held for exchange, as well as the guards of the many hostages being held for ransom.

While Samper, the other journalist who was present at the handover of the four hostages, is keeping silent about what happened at the Caguán river, Botero has been subjected to a hail of criticism for revealing the risks to which the release operation was exposed.

IPS asked historian Jaime Zuluaga, professor emeritus at the state National University of Colombia and academic director of the Institute for Development and Peace Studies (INDEPAZ), why information should be regarded as harmful in these cases.

“It depends on the priorities at a given moment,” he told IPS.

“If the priority is to carry out the operation successfully so that some people regain their freedom, complete transparency has to be temporarily sacrificed. To start an argument at that particular time is to put the operation at risk,” he said.

In Zuluaga’s view, it is not a matter of “hiding the facts and bowing one’s head, but of setting priorities. Once the hostages are free, a well-documented, serious communiqué can be issued, explaining how the operation went ahead in spite of the obstacles.”

“In political terms, this is a more effective approach. The alternative creates the impression that each side is vying for political advantage, and the freedom of the hostages is a secondary consideration,” he added. However, “I have no doubt that both the FARC and the armed forces are trying to make political capital out of this whole process.”

In his view, “if President Uribe’s priority were the freedom of these people,” he would have kept silent in the face of the accusations, said Zuluaga, “and he would have said: let them be released, and afterwards we will discuss the matter.”

“In an armed conflict, one cannot expect the parties not to try to gain a political advantage. But if the goal and the prime interest is a humanitarian mission and securing people’s freedom, one must avoid being caught up in that game,” he said.

*Constanza Vieira is a signatory of the Diálogo Público Epistolar (exchange of open letters between Colombians for Peace and the FARC).

Excerpt:

By Constanza Vieira
BOGOTA, Jan 21 2009 (IPS)

“Operation Mistrust” could be the name of the efforts surrounding the planned unilateral release of six hostages by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), which has run aground a month after it was announced.

As the days go by, the anxiety of the hostages’ families, as well as the mistrust and doubts, are growing.

Distrust on the part of the right-wing Colombian government of Álvaro Uribe towards a group of intellectuals who have maintained contacts with the FARC, and who secured the rebel group’s promise to free hostages. And also on the part of activists towards the authorities, who have been dragging their feet and delaying arrangements.

In addition, doubts have been raised as to the Red Cross’ capacity to ensure that the security forces will respect the operation – and even with regard to the level of neutrality of the aid group.

These are the most serious obstacles standing in the way of the release operation.

And since Uribe asked the Vatican last week to oversee the hostage release, fears have arisen that he is trying to gain time to plan some kind of military or intelligence intervention in the release.

At the same time that he asked the Red Cross to handle the logistics of the operation, the president set the condition that no foreign government or personality could take part.

But Uribe then “authorised” the Vatican to help monitor the release – although without previously consulting the Church, which apparently annoyed leaders at the Vatican.

People close to the efforts to bring about the hostages’ release said the Colombian government has not even begun to take the official steps required to arrange the Vatican’s participation.

Furthermore, “one thing the Holy See does not do is run,” an unidentified source remarked to the Bogota newspaper El Espectador in an article in its Sunday edition.

To all of this was added the fact that since 2008, the FARC has publicly stated that it would not accept Catholic Church participation in overseeing any hostage release operation – a refusal that it reiterated last week, IPS was told.

On Dec. 21, the FARC announced that it planned on handing six hostages over to a group of concerned intellectuals who have been holding a public dialogue with the guerrillas by means of open letters.

The group, now known as Colombians for Peace, emerged at the initiative of Liberal Party Senator Piedad Córdoba, a staunch opponent of Uribe and advocate of negotiations for an exchange of hostages held by the FARC for insurgents who are in jail. A humanitarian agreement for a hostage-prisoner swap is seen by the movement as a possible first step towards peace talks between the rebel group and the government.

The hostages’ families, meanwhile, say the government has stepped up bombing in the area where it believes the hostages might be released, although Colombians for Peace does not yet know where the handover would take place.

In previous negotiations, Córdoba and Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez successfully brokered the release of six civilian hostages, in January and February 2008.

Both the opposition senator and Venezuela’s left-wing president were named by Uribe in 2007 as facilitators of negotiations for a hostage release. But the Colombian leader abruptly cut off their mediation role in November 2007, triggering a diplomatic crisis with Caracas.

The hostages, whose release is now in doubt, are Alan Jara and Sigifredo López, a former governor and regional lawmaker, respectively, who were seized by the FARC in 2001 and 2002, as well as three police officers and one soldier, whose names have not been provided by the insurgents.

FARC has taken hostages with the aim of swapping them for imprisoned guerrillas, along the lines of humanitarian exchanges carried out with previous administrations.

In early July, 15 hostages – including former presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt and three U.S. defence contractors – were rescued in a bloodless military intelligence operation.

In the operation, one of the members of the military intelligence team used the Red Cross symbol, which is protected by international humanitarian law, and the misuse of which can constitute a war crime.

The team also disguised itself as a humanitarian mission – the helicopters carried a fictitious logo with the words “International Humanitarian Mission” as well as the “no weapons” symbol used by all such missions – while some of the members of the team posed as journalists.

In statements made after the operation, high-level army officers said they had closely studied the modus operandi and logistics used in the January and February 2008 hostage release operations, which were organised by Chávez, a former army lieutenant colonel.

After the stunning July rescue operation made world headlines, the question of the use of the Red Cross symbol drew loud criticism from some quarters.

But in Colombia the overall impression was that the Red Cross did not vigorously defend its logo from being misused, which perhaps contributed to the current doubts about the group’s neutrality.

The FARC says Red Cross facilitation of the hostage release, along with the presence of Senator Córdoba and delegates of Colombians for Peace, is “insufficient,” and has called for the participation of some international figure.

The people taking part in the Colombians for Peace movement also consider that the only way to provide safety guarantees in the operation is the presence of international observers.

Uribe has made statements about Colombians for Peace, saying the public dialogue with the guerrillas vía open letters is “a new ruse” by the FARC.

The problem is that in Colombians for Peace, made up of 150 intellectuals and journalists who signed the open letters to the FARC, known as the Diálogo Público Epistolar (Epistolary Public Dialogue), urging the rebels to abandon the practices of hostage-taking and kidnapping for ransom, there is no one with the training and background needed to assess the security of the logistical aspects organised by the Red Cross.

Although Colombians for Peace and the government agree that the Red Cross should hire the necessary helicopters and planes in Brazil, there is no confidence among the former as to guarantees that the aircraft would not be fitted out with devices that would endanger the safety of the hostages, the facilitators or the guerrillas.

This is a matter of concern because the aircraft would have to stay overnight in hangars in Colombia before setting out for the site designated by the rebels for the handover of the hostages, and it is not clear who would be responsible for ensuring a kind of “chain of custody” of the planes and helicopters in such a way as to provide safety guarantees for the operation.

So far, all of the names of international personalities, including religious figures, suggested by Colombians for Peace as observers have been rejected or simply ignored by the Uribe administration.

In an attempt to get things moving, Senator Córdoba proposed on Sunday the participation of U.S. Democratic Congressman Jim McGovern, who is vice chairman of the powerful House Rules Committee, a member of the House Budget Committee, and co-chair of both the Tom Lantos Human Rights Caucus and the Congressional Hunger Caucus.

According to the U.S. chapter of Amnesty International, “Congressman McGovern has been a leading voice on a range of political, civil, economic, social and cultural rights issues during his tenure, highlighting crisis situations in countries from Darfur and East Timor to Colombia and El Salvador.”

Córdoba believes McGovern’s participation in the release operation would not be opposed by the Uribe administration, which is keen on gaining U.S. congressional approval of a free trade deal between the two countries that has been blocked since last year by Democratic lawmakers on the grounds that the Colombian government has not done enough to clean up the country’s human rights record.

Last year, McGovern took part in meetings with the families of both hostages and imprisoned rebels – an unusual move that would make it unlikely for the insurgent group to oppose his eventual participation.

McGovern called Córdoba last week and told her he was interested in accompanying the release mission.

As of Tuesday night, the government has remained silent on the issue.

*Constanza Vieira is one of the signatories of the Diálogo Público Epistolar letter.

Excerpt:

By Constanza Vieira
BOGOTA, Jan 8 2009 (IPS)

Nearly three weeks after the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) announced that they would release six hostages, the government of right-wing President Álvaro Uribe has agreed to provide security guarantees for the operation, which is expected to take place this month.

“The national government reiterates its confidence in the International Committee of the Red Cross (to facilitate the operation), and will continue providing all necessary guarantees for the release of hostages announced by the FARC,” said a statement issued Wednesday.

The government also authorised opposition Senator Piedad Córdoba to form part of the mission.

In response to a September open letter backed by 25,000 signatures and addressed to the FARC by Córdoba and 150 intellectuals and journalists, calling for a public dialogue and asking the rebels if they would abandon the practice of kidnapping, the insurgent group announced Dec. 21 that it would unilaterally release six civilian and military and police hostages.

The senator described a meeting Wednesday with the government’s High Commissioner for Peace Luis Carlos Restrepo as “very positive.”

“Piedad framed the situation as the start of a long process that could be the first step towards the construction of an eventual peace process” in Colombia’s nearly five-decade civil war, said Alpher Rojas, the director of the Institute for Sociopolitical Studies and Research (INESTCO), who helped organise the open letter and signature campaign, known as the Diálogo Público Epistolar (Epistolary Public Dialogue).

“That opened the door for them to say ‘yes’ to everything she proposed” in the meeting with Restrepo, the analyst told IPS.

On Tuesday, Uribe called the efforts being made through the Diálogo Público Epistolar “a new ruse,” and reiterated his staunch opposition to the possibility of an exchange of hostages held by the FARC for imprisoned guerrillas.

Rojas said the government position shifted because “it finally understood that the indecision regarding this case could not continue.”

In a letter dated Dec. 30 and published Wednesday, the FARC stated that the hostages would be handed over to Senator Córdoba and one or more of the public figures who signed the open letter to launch the public dialogue, which has now become a movement named “Colombians for Peace”.

The condition outlined by the guerrillas in their letter, that “some democratic personality from a brother country or the international community” must monitor the hostage release operation, is not an obstacle, said Rojas.

Although the participation of an international figure “has not completely been ruled out, it is no longer a point of contention between the two sides,” he said.

In the week or so since the FARC produced its letter, “other things have helped ensure that it won’t be a hurdle,” he added, declining to provide further details.

“In negotiations on guarantees (for a hostage release), it is not possible to set forth just one single proposal,” said Rojas. “After other points of view were accepted, other alternatives emerged on the menu of options for monitors and guarantees. No one proposed just one single option.”

The Red Cross said it was pleased that it had been entrusted with the design and logistics of the hostage release operation.

But Córdoba told Restrepo that once she is given the coordinates for the location where the hostages are to be delivered, she will only communicate them to the pilot once they are “in the air,” on the way to the secret spot in the jungle.

According to the FARC, the hostages to be released are civilians Alan Jara and Sigifredo López and four members of the police and military whose names were not given.

Jara, a former governor of the central department (province) of Meta, was kidnapped by the FARC on Jul. 15, 2001, when he was seized at gunpoint from a United Nations vehicle during a U.N. mission.

López is the only survivor of a group of 12 regional lawmakers seized by the FARC from the regional legislature in the western department of Valle del Cauca on Apr. 11, 2002. The other 11 were killed in unclarified circumstances during a shootout on Jun. 18, 2007, as they were being transferred by boat by the FARC. (López was not with them).

Jara and López are the only civilian hostages still held by the guerrillas, who kidnapped them and the others with the aim of negotiating a humanitarian swap of hostages for imprisoned insurgents.

After the six are released, the rebels will still hold 22 members of the military and police.

The number of guerrillas in prison is unknown, because the authorities often seize peasant farmers who live in rural areas under FARC control and jail them as insurgents.

FARC commander Alfonso Cano said in an interview with the Spanish magazine Cambio 16, which was published Wednesday on the rebel group’s web site, that a hostage-prisoner swap would help create an atmosphere that could “pave the way for a peace agreement.”

The guerrillas said the hostages would be released in two groups, starting with three low-ranking police officers and one rank-and-file soldier.

According to a list released by the FARC on Aug. 21, the only hostages fitting that description are soldier William Domínguez and policemen Juan Fernando Galicio, José Walter Lozano and Alexis Torres.

With respect to the three police officers, the FARC commented at the time that “the government has not informed the public (of their kidnapping) and has made no demand for their release, because as poor men, they are of little propaganda value for the government.”

Fifteen hostages were rescued in a stunning bloodless Jul. 2 military intelligence operation. The hostages included former presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt and three U.S. defence contractors captured while working for the U.S.-financed counterinsurgency and anti-drug Plan Colombia.

The rescue operation drew criticism because one of the members of the military intelligence team used the Red Cross symbol, while the helicopters carried a fictitious logo with the words “International Humanitarian Mission” as well as the “no weapons” symbol – an automatic rifle in a red circle with a bar through the middle – used by all such missions.

The team successfully posed as an international humanitarian mission, inspired by earlier unilateral release operations negotiated by Córdoba and Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez in early 2008.

Because of that, the FARC said in their letter dated Dec. 30 that Red Cross participation in the hostage release is “a good but insufficient guarantee.”

The guerrillas did not insist on the involvement of foreign governments, which has been vehemently opposed by Uribe since the diplomatic row with Venezuela triggered by the Colombian president’s abrupt decision to cut off Chávez and Córdoba’s role in negotiating a prisoner-hostage exchange.

The FARC also kidnap wealthy people for ransom, as a source of financing.

In response to the September open letter by “Colombians for Peace”, the rebel group said “the indefinite use of these methods does not form part of our ideals or principles.”

For the first time, massive street demonstrations against kidnapping were held in Colombian cities last year, which disconcerted the guerrillas, according to hostages released in early 2008.

The non-governmental organisation País Libre, which bases its estimates on Defence Ministry statistics, found that the FARC guerrillas were responsible for nearly 30 percent of kidnappings in Colombia, one of the world leaders in that practice.

From 1996 to June 2008, a total of 15,331 people were kidnapped for ransom in Colombia, according to País Libre.

*Constanza Vieira is one of the signatories of the Diálogo Público Epistolar letter.

Excerpt:

By Constanza Vieira and Mario Osava
BOGOTA, Dec 8 2008 (IPS)

Wherever there are minorities or marginalised groups in Colombia, or the rights of women are violated, you will find Senator Piedad Córdoba.

Piedad Córdoba Credit: Mario Osava/IPS

In 1999 she was kidnapped by Carlos Castaño, the then head of the far-right paramilitary groups that are inextricably tied up with the drug trade. After she was released two weeks later with a message that the paramilitaries wanted to be included in peace talks, she fled into exile in Canada.

But she returned a year later, leaving her four children in Canada for their safety. She herself has escaped two attempts on her life

Córdoba has urged the international community to isolate the right-wing government of Álvaro Uribe, who she accuses of being a paramilitary.

She convinced Venezuela’s left-wing President Hugo Chávez to get involved in efforts towards a humanitarian accord in which the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) would swap hostages they are holding for imprisoned insurgents.

With the support of several governments, Córdoba and Chávez got the FARC to unilaterally release six hostages in January and February 2008 in operations that were later copied by the Colombian army to rescue the group’s highest-profile hostage, Ingrid Betancourt, and 14 others held by the guerrillas, in July.

In her country, Córdoba has been accused of betraying the fatherland and working on behalf of the FARC. Stoic in the face of the attacks and threats, and despite the fact that any contact with the leftist rebels is liable to criminal prosecution, she has sustained a public exchange of letters with the FARC since September.

On Nov. 27, she asked the FARC, in a letter backed by 25,000 signatures, if they would be willing to abandon the practice of kidnapping. She is now awaiting the response.

Following is an interview she gave to IPS.

IPS: Is it possible to resume discussions on a prisoner-hostage swap or peace talks with the guerrillas, while Uribe is still in office? PIEDAD CÓRDOBA: It is difficult to move forward towards a humanitarian accord or a negotiated political solution to the conflict. These are issues that have no echo and stand no chance in this government, because of its hawkish, militaristic and authoritarian stance.

Neither peace talks nor a prisoner-hostage exchange are possible, because they go against the interests and privileges of major vested interests that the government represents. Moreover, they would require a departure from the policy of the United States government.

Despite the difficulties, we continue working to build and strengthen the movement of Colombians who want peace, with a view to seeking a prisoner-hostage exchange and, especially, to achieving a negotiated solution to the conflict.

IPS: But doesn’t the election of Barack Obama in the United States change the outlook for Colombia? PC: Expectations and hopes have to remain within the limits of what is reasonable. I think that in the case of Colombia, areas that could be affected to some extent are the war’s impact on the country, violations of the (Universal) Declaration of Human Rights, and especially issues like the free trade agreement with the United States, which I don’t think will be approved by Obama’s government, because of his commitments to U.S. trade unionists.

What we are interested in is insisting that the Obama administration help work towards a negotiated solution to the conflict, in terms of what (the U.S.-financed counterinsurgency and anti-drug strategies) Plan Colombia and Plan Patriot mean, and with regard to U.S. recognition of and concern about human rights violations in this country. And third, we would like to see aid and cooperation to start working towards a political solution.

IPS: But won’t Obama’s triumph have more positive effects in Colombia than in other Latin American countries? PC: Yes, but fundamentally because of U.S. meddling in the internal affairs of our country, and the way they interpret and stoke the conflict.

IPS: Would an end to Plan Colombia be possible? PC: It might be continued, but I don’t think it will be expanded. Not because the United States considers that the war effort must be brought to a halt, but because its economic problems are going to limit the funds. For us, that is important, because it would help us convince the guerrillas to agree to negotiate a political solution.

IPS: What is the key to overcoming the violence in Colombia, what is the main factor? PC: Colombia has to start off by acknowledging that there is an armed conflict (which the Uribe administration has refused to do, merely referring to the leftist insurgents as “terrorists”), that mainly has to do with the guerrillas and the government.

The paramilitary commandos are the creation of a very broad section of Colombian society, and have been supported by this government which, furthermore, has been elected as a result of the paramilitaries.

IPS: It is said that the paramilitaries control 10 provincial governments. PC: Exactly. So that has to be acknowledged. But it also has to be recognised that the conflict was not caused by a group of men who went into the jungle and started shooting. It has to do with exclusion, inequality and the lack of opportunities in the country. It has to do with a system that makes even debate and dialogue impossible, and with the country’s authoritarian structures.

But one way to move forward is for social movements to come together, for us to commit ourselves to a popular movement with the aim of winning the elections. We must move ahead to action; we cannot merely continue to hold demonstrations, make declarations, hold public debates that do not lead to concrete results in terms of political power. What we need to do is win a majority in Congress in 2010, and win the presidency.

IPS: Is that the goal of the Liberal Party? PC: Not just the Liberal Party, but also all of the social movements and a part of the left that is not in the parties.

IPS: Aren’t social movements more active and mobilised today? PC: Yes, especially the ones involving indigenous people, blacks and women. Peasant farmers are also beginning to mobilise and organise again, having suffered the conflict in rural areas, which has hit them very hard. The impact of the free trade agreement (not yet ratified by the U.S. Congress), of the threats to their livelihood and of the opening up of the economy, had undermined their unity.

I see the trade union movement as more in the background, not only because of the murders of their leaders, but also because they have lost capacity to mobilise workers and to accomplish gains on the labour front.

IPS: To what do you attribute the scandal of the pyramid schemes, which have now turned millions of beneficiaries against the Uribe administration? (The schemes began to collapse in November, triggering widespread rioting, and prompting the government to take the unpopular decision to shut down other investment plans). PC: The situation has not been handled responsibly, and a debate is needed on the shared responsibility of the United States and the drug trade. This has to do with money laundering and the overall decline of ethics in Colombian society.

Drug trafficking has permeated public and private life in Colombia, fuelling a ‘mafioso’ culture, which is reflected in the greed for easy money. The government itself establishes strategies based on rewards that can supposedly put an end to crime and the guerrillas. That has become a way of life for many people, it comes from army officers and police chiefs themselves, the people who organise themselves to get their hands on the reward money.

There are also those who have benefited enormously from the power of the financial system. The government carries out reforms that make it possible for that sector to consolidate neo-liberal power, and it is increasingly difficult to gain access to low-cost loans to generate development, or to a mortgage to buy a house. And the lack of job stability, which makes it impossible for people to project any sort of plans for the future, is disturbing.

IPS: So the pyramid schemes are merely money laundering rackets for drug traffickers? PC: I think there is money laundering going on, but there are also people who don’t know that the narcos are behind this, who are just trying to earn money to help finance their necessities. The state has played the fool, because it has many people involved in the business.

IPS: What can you tell us about the victims of forced displacement? It is estimated that there are four million internally displaced persons and five million Colombians living abroad – altogether, more than 20 percent of the population. PC: Or more. It is a very complex situation that is not only a consequence of the war, but also of the way the paramilitaries operate and of the projects (like mining initiatives or palm oil plantations) pursued in rural areas, which have driven people out so their land can be seized.

The land problem is a touchy one, because besides being a strategic question, there is now a drive to produce biofuels, and rural populations have become increasingly uprooted.

At the same time, many people are leaving the country to flee the war, and to escape persecution and poverty.

IPS: Is there any solution for Colombia’s numerous problems? PC: The government and its policies have to be changed, because this administration is not changing a thing.

Excerpt:

By Constanza Vieira
BOGOTA, Nov 12 2008 (IPS)

At 11:40 AM on Nov. 6, 1985 there were more than 300 people in the Palace of Justice, which lines one side of Bolívar square in the Colombian capital, when 35 guerrillas belonging to the 19 de Abril Movement (M-19) seized the building.

René Guarín and other relatives of victims cover with flowers the last stretch of street that their loved ones walked across alive. Credit: Adriana Cuéllar/IPS

Just 25 minutes later, an all-out military and police assault began, to regain control over the building.

Oddly enough, the military siege was prepared beforehand, according to a civilian who carried out "dirty work" at the time for the army and now lives in exile, and to a document found by the attorney general’s office in the Defence Ministry.

The siege lasted 27 hours and no negotiations were undertaken.

The order given to the military to hold their fire, issued by radio from inside the building by Supreme Court president Alfonso Reyes when the insurgents were already giving up in the face of the heavy military response, was ignored.

President Betancur left the crisis in the hands of the army. Eleven Supreme Court magistrates, considered the most outstanding jurists of their generation, died, along with 80 other people. In addition, 11 people who worked in the cafeteria, or just happened to be there at the time, remain missing.

For several years after the tragedy, threats were received regularly by the families of the 11 people who disappeared from the cafeteria, at least two of whom were filmed leaving the courthouse alive.

And 10 years ago, Eduardo Umaña, the prominent human rights lawyer who was assisting the families in trying to find out what happened to their loved ones, was murdered in his office.

The M-19 demobilised in 1990 as the result of a peace agreement, which included an amnesty for those involved in the occupation of the court building, six of whom are still alive today. (It was originally reported that all of the rebels had died in the siege).

Curiously, over the past three year new evidence has gradually come to light, and more and more of the victims’ families have begun to doubt the official version of how and where their loved ones were killed. (See an earlier IPS story, COLOMBIA: New Videos Shed Light on Palace of Justice Massacre: https://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=39068).

The disproportionate military response was questioned from the start. But since 2005, testimony emerging from various sources has implicated the armed forces in torturing people to death, forced disappearances, intentionally setting fire to the courthouse, and giving orders to kill witnesses, including injured civilians who had been taken from the Palace of Justice to the hospital.

The military officers who led the storming of the Palace of Justice continued their successful careers, and only now is the judicial system prosecuting several of them. However, no one has been convicted.

The fire that broke out a few hours after the army siege began not only claimed lives, but also destroyed numerous court records on cases in which members of the military were being charged with human rights violations. A judge concluded in 1989 that the fire was intentionally set. And according to witnesses, it was set by the security forces.

Both the Supreme Court and the Council of State – whose members were among the hostages taken by the M-19 – had recently handed down convictions of members of the armed forces in human rights cases.

According to Colombian journalist Maureén Maya, one faction of the M-19 had turned to drug lord Pablo Escobar – the then head of the powerful Medellín drug cartel who was killed in 1993 – for help in buying weapons for the occupation of the courthouse. But he merely warned the army, and did not provide assistance.

She said the insurgent group and the drug cartel saw eye to eye on one important point: they both opposed the extradition of Colombian nationals to the United States, an issue being considered at the time of the occupation of the Palace of Justice.

But "the drug mafia betrayed them," Maya told IPS last year. "It made a deal with the military, and the cartel and army decided to use that excellent opportunity to squash both the M-19 and the Supreme Court, which was investigating the military for human rights violations and was about to approve the extradition treaty."

While it has long been stated that the aim of the M-19 was to burn the extradition documents of drug traffickers in the courthouse, the originals were actually held elsewhere, in the Government Ministry.

The Supreme Court eventually set up a truth commission, comprised of three former Supreme Court presidents, in November 2005, to clarify what happened in those tragic hours. The final report is scheduled to come out in April 2009.

Meanwhile, for 23 years, computer engineer René Guarín has been trying to find out what happened to his sister Cristina.

His sister, who was 27 years old and had completed her undergraduate degree in social science, was doing a brief stint as cashier in the Palace of Justice cafeteria until December, when she planned to start a graduate degree in education at the Complutense University in Madrid.

In COLOMBIA: New Videos Shed Light on Palace of Justice Massacre, IPS reported that a videotape seized from Colonel Alfonso Plazas, who led the military assault, showed that Cristina Guarín left the courthouse alive and uninjured.

Her father, who refused to believe she was dead, wrote her 300 poems over the years. And until his death, in 2001, he continually searched for her among the mentally disturbed homeless people who wander the streets of downtown Bogotá.

"Leave that to God now," Cristina’s 85-year-old mother says about the fate of the seventh of her eight children. But René, who spoke to IPS, refuses to give up, despite the death threats he has received.

IPS: Is the truth starting to come out about what happened at the Palace of Justice? RENÉ GUARÍN: Apparently it is, but very slowly. And more is being discovered by the media than by the truth commission, which clearly is trying to take things out of context by depicting the occupation of the courthouse as merely a job the M-19 was carrying out for the drug traffickers. Justice cannot be served this way.

And now, on Oct. 30, under the argument that a legal deadline had expired, they released (retired) General Edilberto Sánchez (then B-2 intelligence chief for the 13th army brigade in Bogotá), who is accused by the attorney general’s office of forced disappearance.

And we hear the lies of (retired) Colonel Luis Alfonso Plazas, then commander of the Cavalry School, who was arrested on Jul. 14, 2007, and whose trial began on Jul. 26, 2008. He is the first member of the military prosecuted by the civilian courts on charges of forced disappearance.

IPS: According to you, what is Colonel Plazas lying about? RG: His lies…First of all, that "there are no ‘disappeared’ (victims of forced disappearance); everyone died on the fourth floor, in the fire."

He openly denies what the attorney general’s office has already established: that at least two "disappeared" persons left the Palace of Justice alive, and that Irma Franco (an M-19 guerrilla) was alive in the place where the army's B-2 intelligence service was operating.

His second lie is that the remains of the "disappeared" persons are in the National University’s forensic anthropology labs. That claim was shown to be false by DNA studies signed by 11 experts, who say the bodies of the "disappeared" are not among the remains of the Palace of Justice victims that the university has studied.

IPS: In the meantime, what is clear to the families about what happened there? RG: It is clear that the building was seized for what were obviously political reasons, and that the drug trafficking angle was not the only ingredient. That is proven by earlier events: there was a truce that was declared broken on Jun. 20, 1985, and the ceasefire agreements were violated by the government.

It is also clear that our family members never reappeared, either dead or alive. And our anguish is also clear, ever since we went to the forensic medicine department on Nov. 10, 1985, and didn’t find a thing.

IPS: Why do you think witnesses and evidence against the military are appearing now, after so many years have gone by? RG: I think many witnesses don’t see the members of the military of the past as such strong enemies today.

The case of the Palace of Justice perfectly reflects Colombia: impunity, lies, rewards for the victimisers, oblivion, and the worst thing: that since then, there have been 450 "palaces of justice". The killings here have been continuous, to gain control over land or to wipe out the opposition.

The most recent offensive in terms of crimes of the state has involved at least 1,000 young men killed by the army to present them as battlefield casualties.

Day by day, I gain a better understanding of why Colombia has more and more "Tirofijos" (Sureshot, the alias of the long-time FARC guerrilla leader who died of natural causes in March) and more and more Pablo Escobars.

Excerpt:

By Constanza Vieira
BOGOTA, Oct 28 2008 (IPS)

Dialogue – or, more accurately, the lack thereof – was the common denominator in two high-profile events Sunday in the western Colombian city of Cali, demonstrating to what extent this vehicle of mutual understanding is missing in this civil war-torn South American country.

Demonstrators camped out at University del Valle. Credit: Judith Henríquez Acuña/IPS

After fleeing through the rainforest for three days with a guerrilla deserter, the 62-year-old Lizcano, who completed his eighth year as a hostage in August, was flown by the Defence Ministry from the jungle province of Chocó to Cali, where he met with President Álvaro Uribe.

“You must comprehend my incoherence, because I haven’t talked much, I wasn’t allowed to communicate with the guerrillas who were guarding me,” he told reporters.

To fight the silence and pass the time, Lizcano, who once taught at the university, stuck three sticks in the ground, named them, and gave them classes.

Lizcano was the last parliamentarian in the hands of the rebel group, which hoped to swap him for imprisoned insurgents. (The highest-profile FARC hostage, former presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt, along with three U.S. military contractors and 11 other hostages, were rescued in a successful operation carried out by the Colombian army in July, in which not a single shot was fired.)

Two civilians and 26 members of the military and police are still being held hostage in the jungle.

But a negotiated humanitarian hostage-prisoner exchange seems increasingly unlikely, due to the strong public reaction against kidnapping and the sustained and increasingly effective military action.

One of the soldiers held by the FARC is Pablo Emilio Moncayo, the son of high school teacher Gustavo Moncayo, dubbed the “peace walker” for his lengthy cross-country treks, one of which even took him to the capital of Venezuela, calling for negotiations for the hostages’ release. Pablo has spent over 10 years as a captive in the jungle.

Moncayo was one of the facilitators who unsuccessfully attempted in Cali to bring about a face-to-face dialogue between President Uribe and thousands of indigenous demonstrators who marched to that city demanding fulfillment of agreements signed by previous administrations and never implemented.

The talks were to be moderated Sunday by Inspector General Edgardo Maya, as proposed by the 45,000 people taking part in the march, known as the “Minga” (a Quechua term for collective work for the common good) of Indigenous and Popular Resistance.

The Minga began on Oct. 12 as a protest against the four-decade civil war, in which indigenous people are caught in the crossfire, with one member of Colombia’s native groups dying every 53 hours.

Colombia’s 102 different indigenous groups represent 1.6 million people in this country of 44.6 million. According to the National Indigenous Organisation of Colombia (ONIC), 18 of the communities are at imminent risk of disappearing.

The Minga reached Cali on Saturday, after a 100-km trek from the La María indigenous reservation in the southwestern department (province) of Cauca.

In the first week of the protest, the anti-riot police were sent in to disperse the demonstrators, and opened fire on them with live ammunition, as the president himself later admitted. Three Indians were killed and around 170 people were injured, including 39 members of the security forces.

The protesters are demanding an end to attacks on indigenous communities and occupations of their land, the adoption by Colombia of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, the repeal of legislation – rural, forestry, water and mining laws – that threaten indigenous reservations and the survival of native cultures, and compliance with a number of agreements with indigenous and social movements signed by previous governments.

But at the top of their agenda now is the demand that their names be cleared, after the president labeled the Minga participants as “terrorists.”

In what was seen as a first victory for the indigenous marchers, the president agreed to meet with them Sunday in Cali.

Present to broker the talks were Moncayo, United Nations resident coordinator in Colombia Bruno Moro, Catholic priest Darío Echeverri, who is head of the National Conciliation Commission created by the Catholic Church, Jesuit priest and human rights advocate Francisco de Roux, Blanca Chancoso of the powerful Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE), and Pedro Núñez, vice president of the Confederation of Indigenous Peoples of Eastern Bolivia, among others.

But the facilitators were unable to arrange an agreement between the Minga and the president on where to meet.

The indigenous leaders wanted Uribe to meet with the entire movement in the public square in front of city hall, as they had already agreed with Cali Mayor Jorge Iván Ospina.

But the government wanted the meeting to be held at the Telepacífico TV station’s Imbanaco theatre, and to include just 200 delegates of the movement, “for security reasons.”

“The Minga took an increasingly radicalised position, insisting that if the meeting wasn’t held in the square, it wouldn’t take place at all,” ONIC president Luis Evelis Andrade told IPS.

“And meanwhile he (Uribe) was arguing that it should be in Telepacífico and that he couldn’t go to the square because of security questions. Then nightfall came and neither option was possible anymore. Compromise sites were proposed, but nothing worked out,” said Andrade.

“And in the end, Uribe showed up at the square – when the indigenous people were already leaving – to talk about indigenous issues, even though they weren’t there anymore. It was quite strange,” he said.

For their part, the marchers met first in the square and later at the public University del Valle. And although they drew attention to their concerns at both the national and international levels, they were unable to express their grievances to Uribe himself.

The rightwing Uribe, along with ministers and deputy ministers, decided to outline the government’s position on the state TV channel. But the Minga participants were unaware of that, as they were meeting at that time in the University del Valle, where they were camping out.

So, just as the FARC guerrillas wasted their opportunity to talk with their hostage, an opportunity for dialogue between the government and the indigenous community was also wasted in Cali, although talks could still happen.

Uribe announced that next Sunday, he would make space in his busy schedule for the indigenous protesters. But so far no agreement has been reached on where the meeting would take place, or on how many indigenous leaders would take part – details that could once again turn into hurdles.

Since the FARC and the much smaller National Liberation Army (ELN) took up arms in 1964, peace talks have been between governments and armed groups, at times with the participation of commissions made up of prominent civilian personalities.

But the Minga is proposing a major change: a group of mainly indigenous civilians is calling on the government to sit down and negotiate on aspects that touch on causes of the civil war.

Perhaps their proposal is such a novelty in Colombian political life that the president was unsure as to how to respond.

What happens over the next few days will show whether the government sees this novel scenario as a minor, relatively unimportant development and will once again dodge talks, or whether it will sit down to engage in dialogue.

LOGISTICAL CHALLENGES

Providing space and facilities for 45,000 indigenous demonstrators was a huge challenge for the University del Valle, which since Saturday allowed them to camp out on 35 of the campus’s 100 hectares.

Classes and administrative activities at the university, with the exception of those revolving around the Minga, were suspended as of Friday.

To meet the requirements of such a large group of people, who were initially expected to number around 20,000, the university authorities named a committee headed by vice rector Edgar Arenas.

Arenas worked with the university’s indigenous students, who are organised in their own council. The students set up a brigade of 280 people: 140 cleaners, 80 “guards” or watchpersons, 30 maintenance and infrastructure employees, and 40 members of the university’s emergency and medical staff.

They were also joined by members of the student council and other student associations, members of the union of university workers, and several professors.

The university also had the support of the Cali mayor’s office and local delegations of the Ombudsman’s office, the office of the inspector general (Procuraduría General de la Nación), and the child welfare institute.

To the university’s infrastructure was added “the support of the Cali municipal utilities, which provided water for free at the various hydrants on campus,” Arenas told IPS.

In addition, the showers were supplied with water by the city’s fire fighters.

The city government provided 60 portable toilets. But “some people from the more remote indigenous communities didn’t know how to flush, so part of the work brigade took on the job of explaining how to do that,” said Arenas.

The rector of the University del Valle, Iván Enrique Ramos, said “this Minga is a historic event.”

“It’s the first time in many years that such a large indigenous movement has mobilised to defend their rights and draw attention to their concerns,” and “we have to recognise how well-organised the indigenous movement is in Cauca,” said Ramos.

The Minga participants, who belong to a number of native groups from 20 of Colombia’s 32 departments, began to head back to their reservations Monday, after promising to leave the campus as clean as they found it. *With additional reporting by Judith Henríquez Acuña in Cali.

Excerpt:

By Constanza Vieira
BOGOTA, Aug 6 2008 (IPS)

“It is a serious matter that members of the armed forces clandestinely leaked news without coordination with their superiors,” says a presidential communiqué issued in Colombia after a local TV station broadcast a video on the operation in which Ingrid Betancourt and 14 other hostages held by the FARC guerrillas were rescued last month.

Red Cross symbol as seen in video. Credit: Video broadcast by RCN.

In his statement, Colombian President Álvaro Uribe thus indirectly confirmed Tuesday that the video was not provided to the RCN TV station by the Defence Ministry, a doubt that had circulated among the media since the video was aired, at 8:00 PM local time Monday in Bogotá.

Although RCN news director Clara Elvira Ospina did not clarify whether the station paid the 60,000 dollars that were being asked for the 58-minute recording, the press had information that a member of the military was offering the video for 30,000 dollars, while a middleman was asking for a similar amount.

According to the government, “Operation Check” (as in chess) consisted of tricking the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) rebels guarding the hostages into believing that they were handing the prisoners over to an international humanitarian mission that would take them by helicopter to the camp of FARC chief “Alfonso Cano”.

THE U.S. ROLE

The video clearly shows that at least one U.S. military cargo plane was involved in the rescue operation.

The broadcast by RCN, a station close to the government, also shows that the military helmets used by the intelligence team that carried out the rescue mission, which had been painted red and white, were carrying microphones, reportedly connected to the Defence Ministry and the U.S. cargo plane.

Thus, the Colombian military forces and the U.S. army Southern Command directly received coded messages from the officers taking part in the operation: “Fuel Ok” meant that everything was going as planned, and “Takeoff Ok” meant that the helicopter was taking off with the 15 hostages.

Gerardo Aguilar, alias “César”, the head of the FARC unit that was holding the hostages, who was captured in the operation, said the first thing he saw when the helicopter rose above the jungle were two planes flying high overhead in a wide circle.

The Colombian government has not yet acknowledged the U.S. Southern Command’s active participation in planning and implementing the mission, although Colombian generals who said they commanded Operation Check admitted that there was a “button” installed by the United States in the helicopters.

The “button” was to be pushed if the guerrilla unit guarding the hostages did not fall for the ruse, which would have activated an unprecedented all-out military attack by the Colombian air force.

According to a so far unconfirmed version obtained by IPS, the Southern Command headed the operation from the very start, a year earlier.

Besides French-Colombian politician Betancourt, the group of hostages included three U.S. military contractors and 11 members of the Colombian military and police. The FARC had seized the hostages with the aim of swapping them for hundreds of imprisoned guerrillas.

THE RED CROSS

The video also clearly shows that the use of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) emblem by the mission was not merely the result of a hasty last-minute decision by one of the soldiers taking part in the operation, as Uribe had stated.

The president had to publicly apologise to the ICRC when CNN reporter Karl Penhaul reported on Jul. 16 that a “confidential military source” had tried to sell him a video and three photos that clearly showed the Red Cross emblem used in Operation Check. The source said the photos were taken before the mission began.

“CNN declined to buy the material at the price being asked; it was therefore unable to verify the authenticity of the images,” Penhaul’s article stated.

After the CNN report came out in mid-July, Uribe said he had ordered an internal investigation on the use of the Red Cross symbol by one of the members of the military intelligence team that carried out the rescue mission. According to Uribe, the officer “said that when the helicopter was about to land, he saw so many guerrillas that he got terribly nervous, and fearing for his life, he pulled a piece of cloth with the Red Cross emblem out of his pocket and put it over his vest.” The president added that the officer would not face sanctions and that he himself assumed complete responsibility.

But the video shows the officers on the morning of Jul. 2 at a farm in southern Colombia, disguised as members of a supposed humanitarian mission. As they pose for the camera before the helicopters took off for the jungle pickup of the hostages at 11:59, one of them can be seen wearing a bib with the Red Cross symbol.

The statement released Tuesday by Uribe added that “It is serious that in the initial investigation of the operation, the whole truth did not emerge.”

The Defence Ministry announced a new inquiry among those taking part in the mission, because the video was supposedly in the hands of the Ministry.

Defence Minister Juan Manuel Santos announced that the decision to decorate the members of the mission with the Cruz de Boyacá, Colombia’s highest honour, had been reversed.

The ICRC released a statement Wednesday expressing “serious concern over what appears to have been a deliberate misuse of the Red Cross emblem” in the Jul. 2 rescue operation.

“If authenticated, these images would clearly establish an improper use of the Red Cross emblem, which we deplore,” said the ICRC’s deputy director of operations, Dominik Stillhart.

The ICRC explains that the use of the red cross, red crescent and red crystal symbols is governed by the Geneva Conventions and their protocols, and the symbols may not be used by organisations or persons not entitled to do so under international humanitarian law.

“Complete and total respect for the red cross emblem is essential if the ICRC is to be able to bring assistance and protection to the people worst affected by armed conflicts and other situations of violence,” says the statement.

Through Defence Minister Santos, the government once again apologised to the ICRC on Tuesday.

But his cousin, Vice President Francisco Santos, denied that the use of the symbol constituted a war crime, because “no one was killed or injured” in the rescue operation, which also resulted in the arrest of two guerrillas.

The defence minister said the controversy “should not tarnish the results of the operation…which we are all still celebrating.”

“We have seen the images,” ICRC spokesman in Colombia Carlos Ríos told IPS. “The information initially obtained (from the president’s office) was apparently not so accurate.

“The emblem was misused, with the wrong intentions. That is not a good thing, because humanitarian efforts could be affected,” he added.

Although he clarified that the ICRC has not had any problems in its 12 offices in Colombia since the rescue mission, he underlined that the misuse of the emblem is “a violation of international humanitarian law, whether or not it generates security problems.”

TELEVISION LOGOS

The video also confirms the use of the logos of the Venezuela-based regional Spanish-language TV network Telesur and the Ecuadorean TV station Ecuavisa by members of the team posing as a camera crew.

The two helicopters, which had been painted white, did not carry the Red Cross symbol. Instead, they bore a fictitious logo invented for the operation, with the words “International Humanitarian Mission”.

The helicopters also carried prominently in several places the “no weapons” symbol – an automatic rifle in a red circle with a bar through the middle – used by all international humanitarian missions.

Towards the end of the tape, the members of the rescue team can be seen burning the emblems used in the mission, while one of them can be heard to quip “burning the evidence.”

Two women formed part of the team, and not just one “disguised as a nurse,” as army chief Mario Montoya had reported.

The insurgent known as “César” said one of the women was wearing a FARC uniform.

He also said the Red Cross symbol and the apparent presence of reporters helped convince him and his fellow guerrillas, according to his lawyer Rodolfo Ríos.

“We have told the whole truth. Operation Check was planned and implemented by the Colombian army, using members of the army, and emerged from army intelligence,” General Montoya stated on Jul. 3.

Excerpt:

By Constanza Vieira
BOGOTA, Jul 16 2008 (IPS)

“Occupation: Guerrilla. Address: Colombian mountains. Distinguishing marks: Combat scars.” That is how Gerardo Aguilar, alias “César” and Alexander Farfán, “Enrique Gafas,” answered questions on forms for their extradition to the United States.

The emblem of the International Committee of the Red Cross, as represented by its Spanish acronym. Credit:

“I did not sell out. I am a FARC [Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia] fighter,” César told his lawyer, Rodolfo Ríos. He also asked his lawyer what prison cells in the U.S. would be like. César’s extradition was formally requested Jul. 10 and Colombia has said it will agree.

Ríos fears that his client and the other guerrilla may be treated in the U.S. like members of the Islamic extremist network al Qaeda.

The two rebels were captured in Operation “Check” (as in chess). Former presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt – one of 15 hostages freed by a Colombian army commando unit on Jul. 2 – described the operation as “perfect”.

Three U.S. contractors working in an anti-drug programme, Keith Stansell, Marc Gonsalves and Thomas Howes, and 11 Colombian police and soldiers were also safely liberated in the operation.

The hostages had been held for at least five years – some up to 10 years – by the leftwing FARC, which planned to exchange them for imprisoned rebels. Three political hostages and 27 police and military troops remain captives in the jungle with the rebels.

César’s account of Operation Check is, in outline, similar to the description given by the Defence Ministry. His lawyer, Ríos, told IPS what César – known as the FARC’s “jailer”, and until last week commander of the insurgents’ First Front, the unit guarding Betancourt and her fellow hostages – had to say about it.

The hostages guarded by César’s guerrillas were indeed being kept in three separate groups, as General Freddy Padilla, the commander of the armed forces, has said. Padilla had added that the groups were 50 kilometres apart from each other.

About a month and a half before the operation, César started to receive text messages on the Front Command’s satellite phone. Some time earlier, the FARC had started using this form of communication, avoiding radio contact or voice conversations by satellite phone because they were being intercepted.

The text messages came – so César thought – from the commander of the Eastern Bloc, Jorge Briceño, known as “Mono Jojoy”, and other members of the Secretariat of the FARC High Command, including “Alfonso Cano”, the current commander-in-chief, himself.

The messages were orders to bring the different groups of hostages together. A message would arrive from Cano, another from Briceño, and more from several different commanders, all confirming that there was to be a liberation operation. He described the flurry of messages as “a zigzag”.

César thought this was strange, but he carried out the orders and assembled the hostages into one group.

“César” said there was never a messenger to confirm the orders “from above” in person – as stated in the official description of Operation Check – and that the messages he received remained on the satellite phone in the hands of his Front comrades.

In the last 20 days leading up to the operation, the text messages became more frequent. They told him the rendezvous site where he should take the group of hostages – which according to Padilla was 150 kilometres north of the point where the groups had been brought together – a clearing which turned out to be a coca plantation.

From there they would be airlifted to Alfonso Cano’s camp, César was led to believe.

When the guerrilla unit and their captives arrived at the place, “I had some doubts; I was excited but nervous at the same time,” César said, according to lawyer Ríos who was relating the story to IPS.

The first thing the veteran guerrilla saw were two airplanes at a great height, circling the area. These had not been mentioned before in any of the accounts of the operation.

Then he saw the helicopters, white with a red stripe in the same design as those used in January and February to transport hostages unilaterally released by the FARC after mediation by Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, in operations coordinated by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), which César had watched on television in the jungle.

One helicopter landed and four civilians wearing jeans and T-shirts got out. Two wore T-shirts with the image of Argentine-Cuban guerrilla Ernesto Che Guevara and a stripe at stomach height saying “International Red Cross.” The other two had the ICRC logo on their T-shirts, the insurgent said.

“According to César, he could make out the International Committee of the Red Cross, the ICRC logo perfectly clearly,” his lawyer Ríos told IPS.

Colombia’s President Alvaro Uribe has since admitted the unauthorised use of the ICRC emblem in the rescue operation – a ruse that is specifically prohibited by the Geneva Conventions – and apologised to the humanitarian group, saying is was a mistake.

The men wearing the Che Guevara T-shirts greeted him with “¡Qué hubo, camarada!” (What’s up, comrade?), the customary greeting among Colombian guerrillas, also commonly used in Venezuela.

The fifth person to get out of the helicopter was a woman in FARC uniform and insignia, who was unarmed. The government’s reports of the mission mentioned a woman disguised as a nurse.

Then a “double” looking very like Colombian journalist Jorge Enrique Botero appeared, according to César. Botero is the only journalist who has been able to visit the hostages’ camps, and has written several books on the FARC.

The presumed Botero was followed by another man who had a Venezuelan accent and wore press identification for the multi-state owned South American television network Telesur, based in Caracas.

At that point, César relaxed. The woman in the FARC uniform, who was later identified as a captain in the Colombian army, starting tying the hostages’ hands. At first, César said he could not ride in the helicopter because he could not leave his guerrilla unit, and delegated others to go instead. But the supposed FARC woman and the other members of the operation told him that Cano needed him. “You are the one who must go and talk with him,” they said.

César was not carrying his rifle at that point because he had handed it over to another guerrilla in order to “help with the logistics” of getting the hostages on board, his lawyer said.

Gafas and he were the last to board the helicopter. “You cannot bring your weapons,” said someone from the presumed humanitarian mission, and so they left their nine-millimetre pistols on the ground too. The official report said that the guerrillas were asked to hand over their weapons once they were on board.

In the helicopter, they were told to sit at the back.

As they were about to sit down, the four agents wearing the Che Guevara and ICRC T-shirts pounced on them, punched and overwhelmed them. César felt an injection and lost consciousness while they were still hitting him.

The captured guerrillas received medical care, although when Ríos first saw them, the day after they were captured, they were still partially under the effects of the sedative injection. They both wear glasses, which were broken to pieces.

“I was taken in by military intelligence,” César admitted to his lawyer, “All the satellite phones and radios are tapped.” The Defence Ministry spoke of “message diversion.”

Ríos asked César several times if he was sure that the troops in the operation were wearing the ICRC logo, and he has always answered, “Yes, I’m absolutely sure, and that is what gained my confidence, because I had a lot of doubts.”

The ICRC symbol is a red cross surrounded by a double circle in black, with the inscription “COMITE INTERNATIONAL GENEVE.”

“The International Red Cross symbols gave me confidence,” César told Ríos.

The apparent presence of the Telesur network also gave him confidence, because a Venezuelan cameraman had recorded the previous unilateral hostage releases brokered by Chávez. So did the presence of journalist Botero’s look-alike.

The lawyer also said that, “the fact that there were young men there in Che Guevara T-shirts, who behaved like guerrillas, people who had undergone guerrilla training, really boosted César’s confidence.”

The first meeting between President Álvaro Uribe and his top generals, and the released hostages, was televised on the night of Jul. 2.

Uribe stressed three times at that press conference that “the helicopters had no markings, of the Red Cross or anything like it, nor of a humanitarian mission,” but he did not mention the T-shirts. “It was a special mission with the goal of transporting the hostages to another camp, with the consent of the FARC,” he summed up.

However, on the three-minute video taken during the operation – which was edited by the Defence Ministry and publicly broadcast – a double black circle with the last three letters of the word “GENEVE” is visible on a T-shirt.

On Jul. 6 the Colombian newspaper El Tiempo published a reconstruction of the planning and execution of Operation Check, based on the story of “one of the masterminds behind the greatest coup in history against the FARC.”

“This did not depend on our weapons or our shooting skills, but on the atmosphere we had to create to convince the guerrillas, especially César, that we were really a humanitarian mission. We also designed some logos to be worn by the members of the mission and the supposed journalists,” the interviewee told El Tiempo.

SIDEBAR: FARC Say it Was “Betrayal”

A communiqué from the secretariat of the Central High Command of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), dated Jul. 5 but published Jul. 11, says that the two rebels captured during Operation “Check”, “César” and “Enrique Gafas”, are thought to have absconded with the hostages in their charge, one of whom was Ingrid Betancourt.

The secretariat of the FARC High Command accused both fighters of “despicable conduct” and betrayal.

The communiqué makes no reference to an ongoing liberation operation by the FARC itself, a version IPS received from a source close to the FARC, located on the Colombia-Ecuador border, which was further supported by sources in Bogotá on Jul. 10.

The reaction from the guerrilla high command, on the other hand, strengthens international accounts that suggested that the hostages’ guards might have been bought off, to which IPS sources very close to the negotiations between European facilitators and the FARC lent support.

The rebel leadership confirmed its “policy to reach humanitarian agreements” to protect civilians from the effects of the war and to “achieve an exchange” of the hostages still in their hands, three of whom are civilians, for imprisoned guerrillas.

“If the government persists in direct rescue attempts as the only way of freeing the hostages, it must take responsibility for all the consequences of its risky and reckless decision,” said the FARC, who have ordered their fighters to execute hostages if there is an attempt to rescue them by military means.

“The most important thing, in our view, is that 15 families have ceased to suffer the pain” of family members being held hostage, Marleny Orjuela, head of ASFAMIPAZ, the association of relatives of military and police hostages held for exchange, told IPS.

Families of the remaining hostages began to drive in a series of convoys towards the south of Colombia on Jul. 10 to demand a humanitarian agreement, which they regard as the only safe means to obtain their loved ones’ release.

“Give them all back to us, alive and free,” said Orjuela, about the “27 police and soldiers still rotting in the jungle, who have been in captivity for nine, 10 or 11 years,” the three political hostages, and all those kidnapped by the FARC for ransom, numbering about 700 according to official figures.

“We will continue to be stubborn, insistent, persistent and determined in pursuit of the humanitarian agreement,” but we also call on government and guerrillas “to move towards peace,” she said.

When a Ruse Turns into ‘Perfidy’

“Ruses are not forbidden in war. In fact, they are praised because they save lives. The condition is that no humanitarian matters are interfered with,” Gustavo Gallón, head of the Colombian Commission of Jurists (CCJ), told IPS.

But if those who planned and executed Operation “Check” “used a humanitarian mission as cover, that is perfidy, and a breach of International Humanitarian Law (IHL)” under the Geneva Conventions.

“It’s like using a white flag of truce to get close to an enemy and then killing him,” Gallón said.

He said “humanitarian missions are protected, and cannot be used in any way, either for acts of war or for confrontations with the enemy. Their absolute inviolability is the grounds of their credibility.”

“If combatants perfidiously makes use of any humanitarian organisation, they simply annihilate the action capability of legitimate humanitarian organisations in future, because they lose their own credibility and also undermine the confidence” of the other side, the jurist said.

The CCJ, which has consultative status at the United Nations, issued a communiqué requesting “government authorities to make known to society at large the details that have not yet been revealed of the Jul. 2 military operation.”

It also asked “judicial authorities to investigate, put on trial and punish perpetrators of kidnapping crimes,” the CCJ added. (END)

Impersonating Journalists May Be Criminal Offence

“Journalists who are covering armed conflicts are protected by International Humanitarian Law (IHL),” Andrés Monroy, legal adviser at the Solidarity Centre run by the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), told IPS in Bogotá.

“Soldiers passed themselves off as journalists, which is unlawful because they posed as persons protected by IHL,” said Monroy, referring to the Jul. 2 military intelligence operation that freed Ingrid Betancourt and 14 other hostages held by guerrillas.

The impersonation of a team of journalists as part of the operation was made public by the Colombian Defence Ministry itself.

Monroy said that “journalists on missions to war zones are also protected by the Colombian Criminal Code, Article 135, which defines such journalists as protected persons.”

Excerpt:

By IPS Correspondents
QUITO, Ecuador, Jul 8 2008 (IPS)

A source close to the insurgent Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) told IPS that the Jul. 2 rescue of Ingrid Betancourt and 14 other hostages by the Colombian military “intercepted their liberation, planned for this weekend (Jul. 5-6) or the next,” by the FARC rebels.

Rebel commander "César" (left) captured along with a colleague by the Colombian army. Credit: Colombian Ministry of Defence

“Their release was planned for this weekend (Jul. 5-6) or the next, as agreed by the Secretariat (FARC’s governing body) and ‘Alfonso Cano’ (their top commander) himself, that’s why they were brought together,” said the source, who requested anonymity, about the hostages who were previously separated in three groups in different parts of the jungle.

“The (Colombian) armed forces found out, and intercepted their liberation to make it look like a rescue,” said the source, located on the border between Ecuador and Colombia.

The Colombian government’s description of the successful operation was that by infiltration and other espionage techniques, the army had given the guerrillas guarding the hostages false orders, supposedly from their superiors, to bring the captives together and hand them over to the members of a fake “humanitarian mission”, who would take them by helicopter to one of the FARC’s top commanders.

In Madrid, Colombian Defence Minister Juan Manuel Santos said on Jul. 5 (Saturday) that the intelligence operation “was brought forward 10 days so that the terrorists would not realise” that they had been infiltrated.

IPS consulted several analysts in Bogotá about the story that the hostages had been “stolen”, and their conjectures were in theoretical agreement with the statements given by the source close to the FARC.

However, they all said they had no concrete information, and neither would they speculate to whom the hostages were going to be released by the FARC, if the story were true.

Other observers consulted, all of whom have been closely following the issue of the hostages held by the FARC, were convinced that at least one guerrilla leader in charge of guarding the hostages had sold out. Specifically, they mentioned Gerardo Antonio Aguilar, alias “César”, the commander of the FARC First Front, who got into the helicopter with another guerrilla and the hostages. The guerrillas were both captured.

One of those consulted was journalist Carlos Lozano, editor of the Communist weekly Voz, and an official facilitator for negotiations with the FARC. When IPS told him about the suggestion that César had “sold” the hostages, he said: “I have no doubt about that.”

Another source, close to the European negotiations with the FARC, told IPS on condition of anonymity that the French and Swiss facilitators who were in Colombia Jun. 26 to Jul. 1 presumably knew “that the president had said he was trying to convince César,” and added he was “almost certain” that Uribe had mentioned the guerrilla by name “a month or three weeks ago”.

In his view, “of course” César must have been bribed, and that explained the success of the operation. “I have no proof, of course. But they have been trying to do it for several months. The president talked about the fund of 100 million” dollars to buy off the hostages’ guards, he said.

On Jun. 2, at a meeting with students parallel to the 38th General Assembly of the Organisation of American States (OAS) in the northwestern city of Medellín, opposition Senator Piedad Córdoba alerted them about the operation.

She referred to the fund of “100 million dollars to buy off one of the members of the FARC’s Secretariat, or someone close to them, and then go in to rescue Ingrid Betancourt with guns blazing, without the country knowing.”

Córdoba was an official mediator between the Colombian government and the FARC from August to November 2007, together with Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez. They obtained the unilateral release of six hostages.

In fact, no one was killed in Operation Check.

The observers who concluded that César must have been bought off wondered how it was possible that two guerrillas should have so tamely left their weapons on the ground when they entered the helicopter, when it is known that the insurgents never part with their weapons, even to sleep. They also wondered why the rest of the guerrilla guards kept at least 100 metres away from the helicopter during the operation.

But César and his companion were shown to the press on Friday (Jul. 4), and the rebel appeared to have been beaten and his facial expression and body language conveyed depression and defeat. Both men remained silent.

The operational commander of the rescue mission, General Mario Montoya, said that Operation Check cost little more than 1,700 dollars, and that no one was paid a cent.

“The important part of the story” was how military intelligence got César’s regional superior Jorge Briceño (known as “Mono Jojoy”), the commander of the FARC Eastern Bloc, to give César the order to hand over the hostages, Montoya said, but did not elaborate.

The fact is, said the general, “the order was given, and as the guerrillas say, ‘orders are obeyed.’ And they (those in charge of guarding the hostages) were obeying orders, as far as they knew. They were obeying orders,” he stressed.

“We infiltrated and penetrated human sources which produced that final result,” said Montoya, that is to say, the hostages who had been split up into three groups 50 kilometres apart were gathered into one group, and then they were taken on foot 150 kilometres north, to meet the helicopter and the fake international commission.

The hostages’ walk through the jungle lasted a month and a half, according to General Freddy Padilla, the commander of Colombia’s armed forces.

*With additional reporting from Constanza Vieira in Colombia.

Excerpt:

By Constanza Vieira
BOGOTA, Jul 7 2008 (IPS)

Among the many questions raised by Operation Check, which ended with the Jul. 2 release of Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) hostages Ingrid Betancourt, three U.S. contractors and 11 members of the Colombian army and police, is the role played by the United States, France and Switzerland.

According to the leftwing Alternative Democratic Pole (PDA)’s publication Polo, launched on Jul. 4, there are between 2,000 and 3,000 U.S. military contractors working in Colombia, like the three who were freed with Betancourt.

“Many of the decisions taken in Colombia [follow] prior consultations with the United States,” a source described by Polo as “close to the U.S. embassy in Bogotá” told the newspaper.

Defence Minister Juan Manuel Santos himself said that the rescue operation had been the subject of consultation with U.S. Ambassador William Brownfield “a week” or “10 days” in advance, and Brownfield had given it his approval.

Brownfield, for his part, said he had been informed of the operation “two weeks” in advance.

Santos pointed out that Colombian President Álvaro Uribe had promised the governments of the United States and France not to attempt, without their prior approval, a military rescue of U.S. hostages Keith Stansell, Marc Gonsalves and Thomas Howes, and of Betancourt who has dual Colombian-French nationality.

France has not said whether it was consulted beforehand, but on Jun. 26 two recognised European facilitators working for a humanitarian exchange of prisoners arrived in Colombia and on Jun. 27 asked for government permission to contact the FARC “in the south of the country,” Minister Santos said on Jun. 29.

The European facilitators “have not informed us that they have made any contact,” he said at that time.

Meetings between facilitators and the FARC are not normally publicised, but the government decided to leak this news because their presence contributed to “the soap opera,” as Santos called the intelligence operation to trick the FARC rebels guarding the hostages.

IPS learned that the French and Swiss facilitators met that very day with a member of the FARC high command who acted as a courier to and from “Alfonso Cano”, the rebels’ top commander.

The mission’s principal success was reestablishing contact between the Europeans and the FARC high command for the first time since the death of “Raúl Reyes”, previously the guerrillas’ main interlocutor, who was killed Mar. 1 in a Colombian military action on Ecuadorean territory.

The talks ranged “over many subjects, with no taboos,” a European source close to the negotiations, who requested anonymity, told IPS. Among several proposals discussed was the release of two hostages, whose identity could not be established.

Cano sent word that the facilitators could wait for answers to the series of proposals, but they replied that it was too dangerous, both for themselves and for the FARC. They were in a very remote location, which they had never been to before, but there was Colombian army presence in the area.

The facilitators returned to the Colombian capital on Jul. 1, and the next day the hostages were freed.

The French diplomatic facilitator Noël Sáenz, a former consul in Colombia, stayed in Bogotá and returned to France on the same plane as French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner and Ingrid Betancourt, whom Kouchner had come to fetch. Jean-Pierre Gontard, the Swiss facilitator, apparently left for Geneva the night of Jul. 1.

Their meeting with the FARC was lengthy, “very positive”, and it was agreed that the contacts should continue, a European press source who requested anonymity told IPS.

The facilitators are “waiting for comments and an answer from Cano. With everything that has happened, it will take more time,” said the European source close to the negotiations.

“For the time being, there is no definite agreement,” the source said.

On Thursday Jul. 3, Foreign Minister Kouchner said in Bogotá that “they were two parallel operations, I don’t know whether they were coordinated or not.”

“It’s true” that there were two parallel operations, the source told IPS: “The meeting (of the facilitators with the FARC) and at the same time what they did in Guaviare,” the province where the hostage rescue operation was carried out.

But “they were not coordinated. Absolutely not.” The facilitators had no knowledge of the operation, the source said.

However, they knew some time ago that Bogotá was trying to bribe the guerrillas guarding the hostages to obtain their release. President Uribe announced the creation of a 100-million-dollar fund for that purpose on May 24.

The source said that “the only people” who knew about the rescue operation, and at the same time about the presence of the facilitators, were Colombian government officials.

“But there was no coordination. The Guaviare operation depended on a great many details, even on whether it was cloudy or not. An operation of that kind cannot be coordinated with another mission. That relationship is complex,” he said.

According to a source close to the rebels, located on the border between Colombia and Ecuador, the government operation has cast doubt on the role played by the facilitators from the “friendly countries”, which have been working for years for a humanitarian agreement to exchange FARC hostages for imprisoned guerrillas.

“Every time an agreement has been reached with the French and the Swiss, something has happened,” said the source close to the guerrillas. “Therefore, even though a humanitarian exchange is still being sought, there will be no more conversations. In the Betancourt operation they put the lives of the hostages in danger, so now there must be a change,” he said.

The source was referring to the bombing of Reyes’ camp at a time, as IPS was able to reconstruct, that three European facilitators were preparing to meet with him, and to the capture in 2004 of two other FARC negotiators, Rodrigo Granda in Venezuela and “Simón Trinidad” in Ecuador, as well as to an attempted meeting between the French and the rebels, frustrated by the Colombian government in 2003.

Sáenz and Gontard are officially recognised by Bogotá as facilitators, but they must report their presence in this country to the authorities.

Facilitators have met with Reyes a total of 22 times since 1999. During the failed peace negotiations (January 1999 to February 2002) in the southern Colombian region of Caguán, these meetings were semi-public.

During that period, Reyes and the FARC’s negotiating team made a highly publicised visit to Europe, and held two known meetings with European facilitators, in Norway and Switzerland. The rest of the meetings were held in Colombia, the European source told IPS.

After March 2002, the meetings have all been extremely discreet, with the goodwill of the Colombian government but without its knowledge of where and when they take place, a condition insisted upon by the facilitators, whose mission also has the political support of Spain.

Their last meeting with Reyes was in June 2007 and coincided with the deaths of 11 regional lawmakers held hostage by the FARC.

On that occasion, an official statement from the facilitators recommended that the parties make use of the services of the International Humanitarian Fact-Finding Commission, constituted under Article 90 of Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions, to establish how the 11 lawmakers had been killed.

An angry Uribe rejected the proposal and cancelled further facilitator missions to Colombia. However, he reinstated them this year.

*With additional reporting from Kintto Lucas in Ecuador.

Excerpt:

By IPS Correspondents
MONTEVIDEO, Jul 6 2008 (IPS)

General Mario Montoya Uribe, the national commander of the Colombian army, whom Ingrid Betancourt thanked on Wednesday for rescuing her from captivity, has a controversial service record.

Gen. Mario Montoya Uribe and freed hostage Ingrid Betancourt. Credit: Presidency of Colombia

Throughout his army career he has received more than 20 decorations, including a U.S. Army medal. He has been in command positions in many regions of his country, and holds a postgraduate degree in higher management from the University of the Andes, according to his résumé posted on the army Internet site.

He followed courses of study at the National War College, an advanced course on armoured vehicles at Fort Knox, Kentucky, and was a military attaché at the Colombian embassy in Britain.

A cable despatched in 1979 by the U.S. embassy in Bogotá, declassified at the request of the non-governmental National Security Archive (NSA), a U.S. research institute, “reveals that a Colombian army intelligence battalion linked to Montoya secretly created and staffed a clandestine terror unit in 1978-1979,” researcher Michael Evans said in an article published in July 2007 in the Colombian weekly Semana.

“Under the guise of the American Anti-communist Alliance (AAA or Triple-A), the group was responsible for a number of bombings, kidnappings and assassinations against leftist targets during that period,” he wrote.

Evans, the head of NSA’s Colombia Documentation Project, also referred to a mass grave discovered in the department of Putumayo in March 2007 containing the remains of more than 100 victims “killed over the same two-year period that Montoya led the Joint Task Force South, the U.S.-funded unit charged with coordinating counternarcotics and counterguerrilla operations in that region from 1999-2001.”

“Declassified documents also detail State Department concern that one of the units under Montoya’s command at the Task Force, the 24th Brigade, had ties with paramilitaries based in (the town of) La Hormiga, the location of the gravesite,” he said.

Montoya was the commander of the Fourth Brigade of the army, with jurisdiction over the municipality of Bojayá in the western department of Chocó, when 119 civilians were massacred in the urban centre of Bellavista on May 2, 2002.

In spite of three warnings delivered days in advance about the imminent danger to the civilian population, the army did not enter the area or take action to protect residents.

On Apr. 21, 2002, at least seven motorboats brought some 250 paramilitaries belonging to the ultra-rightwing United Self-Defence Forces of Colombia (AUC) to Bellavista and the nearby town of Vigía del Fuerte, through three separate checkpoints manned by the navy, the police, and the army, the latter in Riosucio, 157 kilometres north of Bellavista.

The paramilitaries took up positions in both towns, observed from the surrounding rural areas by the FARC.

On Apr. 23, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights expressed its “concern” about the paramilitary incursion to the Colombian government and urged it to take action to protect civilians. On Apr. 24 and 26, the Attorney General’s Office and the Ombudsman added their voices to the warning.

On May 1 the battle between the FARC and the AUC started. More than 300 people sought sanctuary in the Bellavista church and the AUC took cover behind and around it. The following day the guerrillas launched gas cylinder bombs at the paramilitary positions, one of which fell through the church roof and exploded, killing 119 people including 44 children, and leaving over 100 injured or mutilated.

The army showed up five days later. Survivors of the tragedy told IPS last year about General Montoya’s arrival on the scene, and how he wept for the dead children in front of television cameras, holding up a little shoe of an expensive brand that local children had never seen before.

In May this year, an administrative tribunal issued two verdicts, blaming the state for not having protected the population, and ordering it to pay an indemnity of 1.5 billion pesos (870,000 dollars) to the victims’ families. Fourteen other civil lawsuits are still pending.

The military justice system and the Attorney General’s Office investigated army officers implicated in the events for dereliction of duty. But Montoya’s career was not interrupted and he was promoted, although soon afterwards, in October 2002, he was involved in another controversial situation.

An intelligence report produced by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was leaked to the Los Angeles Times, which published it in March 2007. It indicated that Montoya and a paramilitary group known as Bloque Cacique Nutibara “jointly planned and conducted a military operation in 2002 to eliminate Marxist guerrillas from poor areas around Medellin, a city in northwestern Colombia that has been a centre of the drug trade.”

What is known as Operation Orion began at 2:00 a.m. on Oct. 15, 2002 in Medellín’s 13th district. At least 14 people were killed, and residents and human rights organisations testified that about 50 more “disappeared” in the following weeks.

On Oct. 21 that year the presidential web site featured a statement by Montoya saying that “we will continue, and what we are doing in the 13th district is a message to the violent, telling them: desist, we will go everywhere in the country because urban guerrilla warfare has no place in Colombia.”

Bloque Cacique Nutibara’s actions in the 13th district went on for two months and, according to demobilised paramilitaries, were coordinated with the authorities.

The CIA intelligence report included information from other Western intelligence services and indicated that U.S. officials have received similar information from a “proven” source, according to journalists Greg Miller and Paul Richter, the authors of the Los Angeles Times article.

The report was leaked to the newspaper by a source who would only identify himself as a U.S. government employee. The CIA would neither deny nor confirm the information, but asked the newspaper not to publish certain details.

In addition to his close collaboration with U.S. officials on Plan Colombia, a strategy financed by Washinton to combat drug trafficking and insurgency, Montoya was an instructor at the former School of the Americas, renamed the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation in 2001.

On Wednesday night, when the government showed on television how the operation to rescue Betancourt and the other 14 hostages was planned and executed, President Álvaro Uribe announced that Montoya had commanded the successful rescue mission, and praised the 2002 Operation Orion in Medellín, without further comment.

Uribe mentioned that the same day he had received messages from members of the military, complaining that they were “unjustly” imprisoned and asking him to “intercede” for them.

In Colombia there is freedom of opinion, Uribe said, and he asked human rights organisations to “believe in Colombia, in this government; the respect shown for human rights in this operation is no accident.”

The president “respectfully” asked judges to review the cases of the imprisoned members of the army and “if an error appears, to correct it”.

Excerpt:

By Constanza Vieira
BOGOTÁ, May 28 2008 (IPS)

“It is painful to die without seeing my son free,” said 62-year-old Pedro Manuel Pérez eight days before he died of leukaemia. His funeral in the northern Colombian city of Riohacha put an end to his 10-year wait for the release of his hostage son by the FARC guerrillas.

Army corporal William Pérez was 23 years old when the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) attacked the El Billar military base in southern Colombia, in March 1998.

In the attack, “62 professional soldiers were killed, 31 managed to escape, and 43 were captured by the guerrillas, including officers and non-commissioned officers like our son,” Pedro Manuel Pérez told journalist Yosmery Magdaniel, who sent IPS the news of his death last week in Riohacha.

The majority of the 43 military personnel captured in El Billar were rank-and-file soldiers, who were released by the insurgent group in 2001 in a unilateral gesture in the framework of peace talks.

Today the group of hostages held by the FARC with the hope of swapping them for imprisoned rebels is made up of 34 members of the armed forces and police, three U.S. military contractors, and three civilians, including French-Colombian former presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt.

Since 2003, 13 civilian and eight military hostages have been shot and killed in failed military rescue attempts and other circumstances, and a military officer died of health problems.

In addition, the FARC’s chief negotiator on the hostage issue, known as “Raúl Reyes”, was killed in a Mar. 1 Colombian military aerial bombing of his camp across the border in Ecuador, which led to a rupture in diplomatic relations between the two countries.

The positive news in the hostage crisis was the release of six former politicians by the FARC, and the escape of two hostages in 2007: a police officer and a politician, Fernando Araújo, who is now foreign minister.

It was the dizzying official negotiations carried out from August to November by Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez and Colombian opposition Senator Piedad Córdoba that secured the unilateral release of the six civilian hostages in January and February.

But that was achieved at the cost of a dangerous confrontation between the leftist Venezuelan leader and his political antithesis in the region, rightwing Colombian President Álvaro Uribe, who abruptly cut short Chávez’s mediation efforts.

Since Reyes’ death, “the big problem is that the FARC has not named a negotiator,” said journalist Carlos Lozano, director of the Communist weekly publication Voz, who was named by Uribe on May 2 as a facilitator of hostage talks, along with conservative former minister Álvaro Leyva.

“There is a great deal of mistrust” in the FARC, which means that negotiating a hostage-prisoner swap “is a risky role to take on,” because the guerrilla leaders’ communications equipment can be used to identify their location, added Lozano in a public dialogue on the hostage crisis with former minister Camilo González Posso, director of the Institute of Studies for Development and Peace (INDEPAZ), held last week in the Bogotá offices of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, a non-profit German organisation.

Lozano and González Posso both stressed that military hostages like Pérez, who have spent the most years in captivity in remote FARC jungle camps, have been basically forgotten.

In 2006, former U.S. ambassador to Colombia, William Wood, compared them to the “terminally ill.” And the army has reported that all of the officers and non-commissioned officers seized by the guerrillas have been replaced.

This year, Colombia, the third-largest recipient of U.S. military aid in the world, after Israel and Egypt, will earmark 6.5 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) to military spending.

Nevertheless, Uribe, an adherent of U.S. President George W. Bush’s “war on terror”, denies that Colombia is in the grip of an internal armed conflict, referring instead to the insurgents as “terrorists.”

If Uribe admitted that the country was involved in a war, said Lozano, he would have to accept that the origins of the civil war date back to the 1940s, and “would have to conclude that no military solution is possible.”

The search for a humanitarian hostage-prisoner swap is just one of many battles waged in Colombia’s armed conflict, the crux of which is the struggle over land and areas rich in natural resources, from which hundreds of thousands of peasant farmers have been forcibly displaced, mainly by the far-right paramilitaries.

The FARC has been dealt “very strong blows” this year, said Lozano. The laptops that the government says were found in Reyes’ camp have revealed FARC military secrets, and have provided thousands of emails and internal memos on the group’s political and diplomatic activities.

And just a few days after Reyes was killed, another FARC leader, known as “Iván Ríos”, was murdered on Mar. 7 by his own men, who were paid a 1.4 million dollar bounty by the government.

Demoralised by the war and besieged by the army, another battle-hardened FARC commander, “Karina”, surrendered earlier this month and urged the FARC leadership to end hostilities and sit down to negotiate.

But the biggest blow was revealed on Saturday: the death of FARC founder and chief “Manuel Marulanda”, who reportedly died of a heart attack on Mar. 26.

In Lozano’s view, “a guerrilla group is prepared to deal with the death of its leaders.” But, he added, “it is obvious” that in the face of the sustained military pressure from the Uribe administration, the territory under FARC control has shrunk “a great deal.” According to a 1996 German intelligence report to the Bundestag (parliament), the rebel group controlled 45 percent of the country at that time – mainly sparsely populated rural areas in the south of the country.

But the FARC, Colombia’s largest insurgency, still has “the capacity to react,” and is not “at the end of the end,” as the military maintains, said Lozano. And “when we do get there, there will still be 10 more years of war,” warned former minister González Posso.

The military bog-down is reflected in conditions set by the government and the FARC in the hostage crisis, on which neither will budge. Meanwhile, the hostages are paying the price.

“I agree that hostage-taking is an error on the part of the guerrillas. We have to draw them into politics. I don’t believe in armed, revolutionary struggle as an option,” said Lozano, who is also a leader of Colombia’s Communist Party.

He said he supports a negotiated exchange of hostages for prisoners because “it is altruistic and humanitarian, which are the fundamental principles of the left.”

Although he said “there are no great reasons” to be optimistic, he added that “neither of the two (government and FARC) are closed” to the possibility of a swap, although “they lack political will.”

France and the families of the hostages, meanwhile, defend Chávez’s involvement in the mediation efforts.

Lozano, who is considered the best-informed Colombian reporter on the hostage crisis, said, without elaborating, that “things are moving,” and “I hope things will continue going this way.”

But for INDEPAZ director González Posso, a humanitarian agreement is like a mirage. “The more we want it, the more remote it becomes.”

“I wouldn’t go so far as to say that a humanitarian agreement is dead, because sometimes you’re wrong, but the chances of achieving one are at a low point. The prisoner-hostage swap chapter is closing, and has been caught in a trap,” he said.

González Posso believes the FARC is not principally seeking the release of imprisoned rebels, but is using the question of a swap to achieve, above all, political returns by demonstrating its strength – a view that Lozano does not share.

“Nor does the government care about securing the release of the hostages, because it puts a military defeat of the FARC ahead of (the possibility of a humanitarian accord). Its main interest is to win the war,” said González Posso.

And even if the two sides did begin to negotiate a swap in a demilitarised zone – the aim of the hostages’ families and the mediators – “they would sit down to argue about the same things they are arguing about today,” he said.

Hostage talks have long been blocked by Uribe’s insistence that the FARC is nothing but a gang of terrorists, and by the insurgent group’s view of the president as a “narco-paramilitary chief” – a reference to the paramilitary groups that are heavily involved in the drug trade, act in collusion with the army and have supported pro-Uribe candidates in elections by threatening and intimidating voters.

It’s almost as difficult to attain a humanitarian agreement for a hostage-prisoner swap as it is to achieve peace negotiations, because the correlation of forces against the FARC is growing stronger, said González Posso.

The so-called “humanitarian cordon” ordered by Uribe in late 2007 “is the forerunner to a military rescue” of the hostages, said the former minister.

The hostages’ families are staunchly opposed to any attempt to rescue their loved ones by force. The FARC guerrillas guarding the hostages have standing orders to kill them if the armed forces close in on them. A number of hostages have already died in failed rescue attempts, including a provincial governor and a former cabinet minister.

In the “humanitarian cordon,” army troops are ordered to track down the hostages, surround the rebel camps where they are being held, and inform Uribe, so that he can call on the international community to send representatives to convince the guerrillas not to shoot the hostages, and to turn them over without offering resistance.

Before engaging in eventual talks with the Uribe administration, the FARC is planning to deal a blow that is “equivalent” to the loss of Raúl Reyes and Iván Ríos, González Posso warned.

According to the former minister, hostage talks are not a real option in today’s Colombia, as long as a growing majority of the population believes it is possible to defeat the FARC on the battlefield.

“Whatever alternative there may be must lie in the international arena,” he said, referring to the support for hostage talks provided by Venezuela, France and other nations.

Excerpt:

By IPS Correspondents
QUITO, Mar 7 2008 (IPS)

Three personal envoys of French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who were in Ecuador since October 2007, were phoned Saturday Mar. 1 by Colombian Peace Commissioner Luis Carlos Restrepo, who warned them not to go to a meeting with guerrilla leader Raúl Reyes because they would be in danger.

Sarkozy’s envoys in Ecuador, who were there with the consent of Colombian President Álvaro Uribe, were negotiating with Reyes the release of former Colombian presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt, who has been held hostage by the guerrillas for six years, said a French diplomatic source who wished not to be named.

The source told IPS that the three French negotiators were in a town near the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) camp that was bombed by the Colombian military in the wee hours of Saturday morning. The raid, carried out three kilometres from the Colombian border, killed Reyes – the rebel group’s international spokesman – and around two dozen other insurgents.

The envoys were on their way to a meeting that morning with Reyes, who was actually already dead, when they received Restrepo’s phone call warning them not to approach the contact point, for their own safety.

When Colombia announced that Reyes had been killed, the French government expressed its displeasure. Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner told the press that “It’s bad news that the man we were talking to is dead.”

The rebel leader was France’s contact in the negotiations for the release of Betancourt, a French-Colombian citizen, which Sarkozy has made a top priority of his government.

Last month, another Sarkozy envoy met with Restrepo, who gave his word that he backed the negotiations for the release of the ailing Betancourt.

On Monday, Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa reported that the aerial bombing raid on the FARC camp had frustrated the unilateral release of 12 hostages, including Betancourt, which was to take place in Ecuador this month. He said “the talks were quite advanced.”

Complaining that the attack had foiled the planned hostage handover, he said “We cannot discount that this was one of the reasons for the incursion and attack by the enemies of peace.”

The list of hostages to be released this month reportedly included Colombian army officers and non-commissioned officers Juan Carlos Bermeo, Raimundo Malagón, Arbey Delgado, and Pablo Moncayo, police officers Luis Mendieta, Edgar Duarte and Julián Guevara, and an Ecuadorian policeman, Marcelino Arreaga.

The Uribe administration admitted that the Colombian military had made an incursion into Ecuadorian territory, but accused Ecuador and Venezuela of illegal ties with the FARC. As proof, it provided documents which, according to Colombian officials, were found on laptops in Reyes’ camp.

Ecuadorian Security Minister Gustavo Larrea acknowledged that he had met in January with Reyes, “outside of Ecuador and Colombia,” and said he spoke with him only about the release of the hostages as part of an effort brokered by several governments.

France, Switzerland and Spain form part of a group of countries attempting to facilitate talks between the Colombian government and the FARC, to negotiate a humanitarian exchange of hostages for imprisoned guerrillas.

Mediation efforts by Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez secured the unilateral release of six hostages by the FARC in January and February.

On Tuesday, the FARC secretariat issued a communiqué stating that Reyes “was killed carrying out a mission to arrange, through President Chávez, an interview with President Sarkozy, aimed at moving forward in the search for solutions to the situation of Ingrid Betancourt and the objective of the humanitarian exchange.”

The FARC also thanked presidents “Hugo Chávez, Nicolás Sarkozy, Rafael Correa, Daniel Ortega (of Nicaragua), Cristina Fernández (of Argentina), Evo Morales (of Bolivia) and all governments that want peace, the families of the prisoners (hostages), and the immense majority who support the exchange.”

Betancourt’s ex-husband, French diplomat Fabrice Delloye, told the press Tuesday that Uribe’s attitude was “disgusting” and “ignoble” and that he had “consistently sabotaged” any chance of securing the hostages’ release.

According to Delloye, when Uribe was in France a month ago, he urged Sarkozy to resume, along with Switzerland and Spain, the talks with Reyes, the only FARC representative authorised to discuss a humanitarian hostages-for-prisoners swap.

He also said that in Panama last week, Peace Commissioner Restrepo once again encouraged the French envoys to meet with Reyes.

“President Uribe had been perfectly aware for a long time of the location of Raúl Reyes, and he also knew that President Correa, through Minister Larrea, had strictly humanitarian relations with Reyes to try to solve the problem of the hostages,” said Delloye.

The negotiations between French envoys and Reyes had been going on for several years, and were aborted more than once due to intervention by the Colombian government, as IPS has reported in the past.

Diplomatic sources with direct knowledge of the negotiations told IPS that in June 2003 two French Foreign Ministry officials were going to meet with Reyes to receive documents proving that Betancourt was still alive, since her family had not received any “proof of life” since May 2002.

France’s interest was to clarify doubts with respect to Betancourt’s health, and the FARC was interested in re-establishing contact with the international community.

A high level French Foreign Ministry official was to take part in the meeting. At the same time, Delloye was to receive a video recording of Betancourt taped in early June 2003.

But through the tapping of telephone lines, the Uribe administration learned about and frustrated the planned meeting, according to several sources who spoke to IPS. The video was finally broadcast in August that year by a local Colombian TV channel.

Although he said he was unaware of the negotiations with Reyes at the time, then French ambassador in Ecuador, Serge Pinot, told IPS that Paris would continue doing everything possible and would make “the necessary contacts at every level” to secure Betancourt’s release.

A diplomatic source in Bogotá, who preferred not to be named, said on that occasion that behind the frustration of the operation were “U.S. special services, working in coordination with Colombian military intelligence and President Uribe.”

The aim, he said, was to block the FARC’s efforts at negotiations.

Another significant incident occurred in January 2004, when FARC negotiator Simón Trinidad was arrested in Ecuador in a joint Colombian-U.S. intelligence operation carried out in cooperation with the Ecuadorian police.

According to a communiqué issued after the arrest by the FARC, Trinidad was carrying out a mission to arrange a suitable venue for a meeting with then United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan and his personal representative in Colombia, James LeMoyne.

The FARC said Trinidad’s arrest also aborted a planned meeting with representatives of the French government, which was to come up with a definitive solution to the hostage problem.

And in December 2004, Rodrigo Granda, known as the FARC’s “foreign minister”, was kidnapped by Colombian security forces, with “the possible participation of high-level Venezuelan government agents and officials,” as the rebel leader himself stated in an interview from prison that was published on the insurgent group’s web site.

Granda’s capture also thwarted local and international efforts for a humanitarian hostage-prisoner swap, as Betancourt’s husband, Juan Carlos Lecompte, said in February.

Lecompte said Uribe knew that Granda, who lived in Venezuela, was the contact for the hostages’ families and for international bodies working for a hostage-prisoner exchange, like the United Nations, the Red Cross, and the French and Swiss governments.

“Granda had contacts with the Swiss and they were arranging or starting a process for a humanitarian accord with the FARC. Uribe found out, and had him arrested,” Lecompte told the Caracol TV news programme in Colombia.

Excerpt:

By Constanza Vieira
BOGOTA, Mar 3 2008 (IPS)

European envoys met over the weekend with members of the FARC rebel group’s central leadership to discuss how to move ahead in the efforts to negotiate a humanitarian exchange aimed at securing the release of Ingrid Betancourt and the rest of the hostages held in the jungle by the guerrillas.

Raúl Reyes, killed Saturday in Ecuador Credit: Latinamericanstudies.org

The European facilitators were summoned by the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) leadership immediately following the news that Colombian troops had killed Raul Reyes, the head of the insurgent group’s international commission, who was in regular contact with the countries – France, Switzerland and Spain – that are facilitating talks on an exchange of hostages for imprisoned guerrillas.

Reyes and a number of other insurgents were killed Saturday when Colombian forces carried out a bombing raid in Ecuadorian territory. In response to the incursion, Ecuador and Venezuela moved troops to their borders with Colombia and expelled Colombian diplomats. Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez also announced that his country’s embassy in Bogotá would be closed.

The European envoys met in an unspecified location with one or several members of the FARC “secretariat”, possibly including Iván Márquez, who was reportedly received by Chávez in Caracas on Nov. 8 in the context of the hostage talks.

“Everything is in tune to achieve an agreement,” said the source. “The negotiations are moving forward, with other actors” in the FARC.

The facilitator countries have been making an effort for years to secure the release of the politicians, police and soldiers held by the FARC, in exchange for the rebels captured in combat by government troops in Colombia’s four-decade civil war.

France and Switzerland have been working with great discretion since 2001, and in 2005 Switzerland invited Spain to take part, although that country’s participation was rejected by the FARC in February, in a statement issued by Reyes.

After 11 hostages held by the FARC, all of them regional lawmakers, were killed in a shootout that took place under unclarified circumstances in June, Uribe agreed in mid-August for Chávez and Colombian opposition Senator Piedad Córdoba to facilitate hostage talks.

But on Nov. 21, the rightwing president abruptly put an end to their efforts, triggering the worst crisis between Venezuela and Colombia in 200 years, which culminated Sunday in the rupture of diplomatic relations by Venezuela.

As a goodwill gesture to Chávez and Córdoba and to prove their willingness to negotiate, the FARC has unilaterally handed over six civilian hostages this year, in two separate operations.

The former hostages’ personal accounts and their call for a humanitarian agreement to secure the release of the rest of the captives have increased the international pressure on Uribe to negotiate.

On Sunday, the magazine Resistencia Nacional, the FARC mouthpiece, urged that the efforts for a humanitarian swap not be brought to an end. It also called for continuing work “towards our aim of peace and for building an effective democracy with social justice.”

The publication asked for “patience” until the group’s secretariat issues a statement “in the next few days” on Reyes’ death.

The families of several of the hostages expressed fear that the FARC would close the door to talks on a humanitarian agreement after the death of one of its top leaders.

In any case, Uribe could become even more adamant in his refusal to negotiate with the FARC, encouraged by the biggest military blow dealt to the guerrillas in the six years that his administration has been attempting to defeat the rebel group, which controls an estimated 40 percent of the national territory, mainly in rural, sparsely populated areas in the south of the country.

On Friday, the president reiterated that he would not demilitarise any portion of the national territory. The FARC are demanding that government troops be withdrawn from two southern municipalities for 45 days in order to negotiate the swap of around 40 hostages for some 400 or 500 guerrillas currently in Colombian prisons.

On Friday night, Uribe announced to his closest associates that “in the next few hours, there will be very good news for peace in Colombia.”

According to the Colombian TV newscast Noticias Uno, Reyes had already been designated as the target of a military operation back in December.

His satellite phone was located “in late 2007.” Although he almost always kept it turned off, every time he switched it on, even briefly, its coordinates were detected via satellite.

On Feb. 21, Colombian Defence Minister Juan Manuel Santos and armed forces chief General Freddy Padilla reported that the government had located the site where the four hostages to be released were being held.

Both Santos and Padilla said one of the hostages, Jorge Eduardo Gechem, was seriously ill and offered safety guarantees for the FARC to hand him over immediately.

According to Noticias Uno, which based its report on official sources, the report was a ploy to force Reyes to use his satellite phone again, which he did, enabling the Colombian military to pinpoint his location.

Another phone call made by Reyes indicated that he would be at a specific spot on Feb. 29, Noticias Uno reported. The government added that it also obtained information from two individuals, in exchange for large rewards.

The operation against Reyes was organised from the Defence Ministry’s situation room, and President Uribe stayed up all night following the progress of the bombing raid, according to the official report.

Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa confirmed that the attack took place in the early hours of Saturday morning, but said it occurred three km from the border, and not “less than 1,800 metres” from the frontier, as Colombian officials claimed.

Colombian troops went more than 10 km into Ecuador to attack Reyes’ camp from the south, Correa added.

The Ecuadorian leader also said the number of guerrillas killed was 20, not 17 as reported by Colombia, and that they were not engaged in combat but were in “their sleeping clothes.”

In addition, some of the bodies “had bullet holes in their back,” said Correa, who maintained that “this was a massacre, not a hot pursuit.”

Noticias Uno is the Colombian media outlet that was in closest contact with Reyes, considered the FARC’s “foreign minister.” His last email message to the station was received on Wednesday, Feb. 27.

“We are not accepting any interviews with representatives of the current government,” Reyes wrote in his message. He also mentioned serious security problems that were slowing down communications, and said that “by the time I can respond to your questions, they are already outdated,” according to brief parts of the email that were reported by the news programme Saturday.

INGRID – NO TIME TO LOSE

“All signs indicate that Ingrid is in extremely poor health, and that there is no time to lose; we are in a state of emergency,” Juan Carlos Lecompte told IPS, referring to his wife, former presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt, who holds dual French-Colombian citizenship. She has been held hostage by the FARC for 2,199 days.

Lecompte added that “I am very happy that the FARC have maintained the same position with respect to the release of the hostages, and that they have not taken reprisals against them” because of Reyes’ death.

When former police officer John Frank Pinchao, who was held by the FARC with Betancourt, escaped his captors in May 2007, the world learned about the harsh conditions in which the hostages are being held in the insurgents’ remote jungle camps.

Now it is known that “the guerrillas are being particularly hard on Ingrid Betancourt and that she is being held in subhuman conditions, surrounded by people who have not made her life easy at all,” former Colombian senator Luis Eladio Pérez, one of the hostages released last week after nearly seven years in captivity, told the Caracol radio station from Caracas.

Excerpt:

By Constanza Vieira
BOGOTA, Feb 27 2008 (IPS)

Wednesday marked the start of a new chapter in the life of Ángela Rodríguez. Her husband, Luis Eladio Pérez, who was taken hostage in June 2001 by Colombia’s FARC guerrillas, returned home after being held captive in the jungle for nearly seven years.

Credit: Telesur

The other hostages freed along with Pérez were Gloria Polanco, Orlando Beltrán and Jorge Eduardo Gechem, who were kidnapped in separate incidents in 2001 and 2002.

Despite Uribe’s decision to cancel Chávez’s role as a mediator, the FARC unilaterally released former politicians Consuelo González and Clara Rojas on Jan. 10, handing them over to a humanitarian mission led by the Venezuelan government and the Red Cross.

Rodríguez and her two children had reached the point where they talked about their husband and father in the past tense – not because they thought he would not return, but “because we knew very little about the Luis Eladio of today.”

“I have always been optimistic,” she told IPS at midnight on Feb. 2, after hearing on the news that the FARC had announced that they would release her husband. “I have always thought they would come back. I believe the FARC are playing a political card.”

“I definitely think that the Luis Eladio taken away by the FARC will not be the Luis Eladio who returns. And the family that he left will not be the same family that he will find on his return. First of all, he will find that his children are very mature, that they have already decided on the direction their lives are taking,” she said.

Sergio, 30, is married and holds a professional job.

Carolina, four years younger, has already set the date for her wedding, in April. A prediction made by Democratic U.S. Representative William Delahunt on a visit to Bogotá in January is about to come true: “Your father will give you away at your wedding, you’ll see.”

It was Carolina who brought Delahunt and a group of other U.S. Democratic legislators, who have been closely following the hostage talks, to Colombia.

The FARC are holding around 40 hostages, including former legislators, soldiers, three U.S. military contractors, and former presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt, in jungle camps with the aim of negotiating a humanitarian swap of hostages for some 400-500 imprisoned insurgents.

Sergio was studying in the United States and Carolina in Canada, and both were close to graduating from university when their father was taken hostage.

“They immediately returned to Colombia, and when they tried to gain credit for their studies, none of their courses were recognised. They had to start from scratch. These kids have really shown a great deal of strength. Because starting your university studies over in the middle of such a crisis…,” said Rodríguez.

Right after Pérez was kidnapped, his alternate claimed his seat in the Senate.

Rodríguez had abandoned her work as an antique dealer just before the regional economic crisis broke out in the late 1990s, which in Colombia hit this luxury sector particularly hard.

All of a sudden, the family found itself without an income, and Rodríguez had to pay off the debts incurred by her husband in the recent election campaign.

“I have dedicated the past six years and seven months entirely to fighting for the release of Luis and the rest of the hostages. I was very committed to the search for a humanitarian accord,” said Rodríguez.

“I worked hard for a humanitarian exchange, along with my great friend, (former) president López,” she said, looking at a black and white photo of former Liberal Party president Alfonso López Michelsen (1974-1978), which sits in a frame on an upright piano in the living room of her home – she moved into a smaller apartment, that her husband has never seen.

As president, López did not sign Protocols I and II to the Geneva Convention in 1977, pertaining to civil wars, and even tried to block their approval, in alliance with Chile and Cambodia.

But before Colombia’s new constitution was approved in 1991, he admitted his error, and soon become a leading defender of international humanitarian law (IHL).

He also argued that states have the obligation to actively protect their citizens, including those held by the enemy – a position that is backed by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.

“He forged the way for a humanitarian agreement,” said Rodríguez. “It was he who began to talk about IHL, about the ‘humanisation’ of the conflict, and who began to recognise the conflict itself, in order to start seeking negotiations towards an accord.”

López did not believe that respect for IHL would lead to a peaceful outcome in Colombia’s decades-long armed conflict. But he did see it as an instrument that would help alleviate the pain caused by the war.

Colombia adhered to the two Geneva Convention protocols in 1992 and 1994, although none of the armed groups involved in the conflict have fully respected them.

After a reform of the penal code that stiffened sentences for convicted guerrillas, the FARC began to seize and hold members of the military and police captured in combat.

President Uribe has not acknowledged that there is a civil war in Colombia.

But the FARC considers both the hostages and the imprisoned guerrillas as prisoners of war.

For the hostages’ families, “that has been one of the fiercest battles,” said Rodríguez, because if the civilians held by the rebels are not “hostages seized by a party in an armed conflict, then where does that leave them?”

“I have the impression that the FARC are recognising and complying with IHL with regard to (civilian) hostages,” she said, adding that she believes that the rebels “are going to continue handing them over to President Hugo Chávez.”

“There is no doubt that negotiations of a humanitarian accord will be between combatants, as IHL states,” she said.

“I believe it is very important that we continue to support the rest of the families. It is a moral duty on our part to continue backing efforts to achieve a humanitarian accord and the release of all of the hostages. I feel very committed to all of those who are still in captivity,” she said.

At the same time as the hostages were released on Wednesday, the FARC leadership issued a statement saying their unilateral release is an achievement of Chávez and Córdoba’s “humanitarian persistence and sincere concern for peace in Colombia.”

The next step should be “the withdrawal of the military from (the municipalities of) Pradera and Florida for 45 days, in the presence of the guerrillas, and with the international community as observers,” in order to free the rest of the hostages.

In Colombia, the rebel group’s message was interpreted as an end to the unilateral release of civilian hostages.

The FARC communiqué warned of a “huge war operation” in the region – involving 18,000 troops, according to Venezuelan Interior Minister Ramón Rodríguez Chapín – which could still lead to a “fatal outcome,” attributable to the government, if it attempts a military rescue, according to the insurgents.

EXCHANGES AND RELEASES

In May 1997, the government of Ernesto Samper (1994-1998) negotiated an agreement with the FARC for a 30-day demilitarisation of a 13,000 sq km area in the municipality of Cartagena del Chairá in the southern province of Caquetá, which led to the unilateral release of 70 members of the military by the guerrillas.

The first swap of hostages for imprisoned rebels took place in June 2001, during the government of Andrés Pastrana (1998-2002), in the context of peace talks with the FARC in a 42,000 sq km zone in the southern municipality of Caguán. On that occasion, 55 members of the military and police were exchanged for 14 imprisoned guerrillas.

After the swap, the insurgents unilaterally freed another 304 soldiers, only holding in captivity officers and non-commissioned officers, several of whom have now spent over 10 years in captivity.

And in March 2006, the FARC unilaterally released two police officers.

For his part, Uribe released from prison a senior FARC member, Rodrigo Granda, known as the group’s “foreign minister”, at the urging of French President Nicolas Sarkozy last June.

Under the argument that it was drawing attention to the question of the civil war, in August 2000 the FARC began taking civilian hostages, which is prohibited by IHL. The first was then congressman Óscar Tulio Lizcano, who is still being held by the guerrillas.

The FARC have seized a total of 24 civilian hostages, 13 of whom have died (at least two were killed by their captors, who have standing orders to kill them if the military closes in on their position), one – Fernando Araújo – who escaped and is now foreign minister, and the six released this year.

Excerpt:

By Constanza Vieira
BOGOTA, Feb 22 2008 (IPS)

The sensation on the sixth anniversary of the kidnapping of former Colombian presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt by the FARC guerrillas differs significantly from the utter pessimism of previous years. “Today there is hope,” her husband Juan Carlos Lecompte told IPS.

Betancourt, who holds dual French-Colombian nationality, was taken captive on Feb. 23, 2002 by the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) rebels, who control an estimated 40 percent of the national territory, mainly in rural, sparsely populated areas.

“In past years, nothing was happening. There was total uncertainty,” said Lecompte. “But the situation is no longer frozen, because the problem has been internationalised.”

This anniversary is marked by a tense sense of expectation because the government announced that it had determined the location of four hostages about to be released by the FARC.

The insurgent group promised to release the four former lawmakers within the next few days or weeks as a result of Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez’s efforts to broker an exchange of hostages for imprisoned FARC guerrillas.

Lecompte and his mother-in-law, Yolanda Pulecio, as well as the families of 15 of the other hostages held by the FARC, met Thursday with French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, who visited Venezuela and Colombia this week.

The FARC are holding roughly 45 hostages, including legislators, police officers, soldiers and three U.S. military contractors who were working for Plan Colombia, a U.S.-financed counterinsurgency and anti-drug strategy. The rebel group’s aim is to swap them for around 400 or 500 guerrillas who are in prison.

“I am grateful to the French government for staying by our side and supporting us,” said Lecompte. “Without them, we would truly be on our own.”

France and Switzerland head a group of countries that are backing the search for an agreement on a hostages-for-prisoners exchange.

After meeting with rightwing Colombian President Álvaro Uribe, Kouchner said they discussed the question of a possible attempted rescue by force and other military pressure tactics, to which Uribe has given higher priority than to negotiations.

The French minister said he recommended that Uribe “hold himself back, and he understood it very well.”

In previous incidents, the FARC has fulfilled its standing orders to kill the hostages if the military start to close in.

Kouchner told the press that “humanitarian agreements are possible, and we are working hard to achieve that. We are working with the Colombian government” to secure continued releases.

“There is great urgency,” said Kouchner, due to the state of health of several of the hostages, including Betancourt herself, who was seen to be extremely gaunt and dejected-looking in a photo provided by the FARC in November.

The photo was one of the documents proving that a number of hostages were still alive, which were to be handed over to Chávez but were intercepted by the government instead.

Uribe rejected Kouchner’s suggestion that Venezuela form part of the new group of observer countries that Brazil and France are setting up.

In mid-August, the Colombian president had accepted a proposal for Chávez to help broker hostage talks with the rebels. However, he abruptly put an end to the Venezuelan leader’s efforts on Nov. 21, triggering a serious diplomatic crisis between the two neighbouring countries.

Nevertheless, Chávez achieved the unilateral release of former politicians Consuelo González and Clara Rojas on Jan. 10, as well as a promise by the FARC to free former lawmakers Gloria Polanco, Luis Eladio Pérez and Orlando Beltrán, and possibly Jorge Eduardo Gechem.

However, that operation may now be at risk, since the military located the hostages.

“The efforts of (Colombian) Senator Piedad Córdoba and President Hugo Chávez have been fundamental,” said Lecompte, expressing a sentiment that is shared by the rest of the hostages’ families, despite the heavily polarised views in Colombia towards the two former mediators.

Also essential is “the dedication and commitment that France has shown us from the very start. And now, (President Nicolas) Sarkozy has given an extra boost. Our main allies are France and Venezuela,” said Betancourt’s husband.

“All of the families, without exception, including the mothers of the soldiers and police officers, have been working hard to bring visibility to this dramatic situation, and obtain help and solidarity around the world. That is what our lives are now dedicated to,” said Lecompte, who flew in to Colombia from Spain on Tuesday and will visit Chile in March.

When he took office in May 2007, the French president said that securing Betancourt’s release was one of his top priorities.

The tragic death of 11 hostages was reported in late June. They were regional lawmakers who were shot to death in as yet unclarified circumstances.

According to the FARC, the hostages were killed in “crossfire” with a military force that the guerrillas did not identify.

The tragedy shook public opinion around the world, and in Colombia as well, where the public had appeared to become largely immune to the plight of the hostages after decades of civil war. The new level of concern was demonstrated on Jul. 5 and Feb. 4, when Colombians held massive street marches against kidnapping and against the FARC.

“There are many people who have heeded our call, including the president of Argentina (Cristina Fernández) and former (Argentine president) Néstor Kirchner. That has been the result of the efforts of all of the families,” said Lecompte.

On the other hand, “I don’t see any great changes in the Colombian government. They have dug in their heels and refuse to yield an inch. That is what has made this drama drag on and on,” with some soldier hostages spending 10 years in captivity in FARC jungle camps.

“We are in favour of a humanitarian agreement, to which France is also committed,” he said, adding that French officials had come to Colombia to make it clear that the hostage negotiations are a priority for the Sarkozy administration.

“If Ingrid is freed in the next few months, they (the French government) will continue working for a humanitarian accord, because that is the best way to secure the release of all of the captives.”

He also said that he hoped Uribe will not even think about attempting a military rescue of the hostages who are already in the process of being released.

Excerpt:

By IPS Correspondents
BOGOTA, Feb 4 2008 (IPS)

Hundreds of thousands of people demonstrated Monday in 131 cities on five continents, including more than 50 Colombian cities, to demand peace and protest against the FARC guerrillas and kidnapping.

Credit: Gloria Helena Rey/IPS

“No more FARC!” they chanted in the biggest demonstration against the armed conflict held in recent Colombian history.

The call for peace was heard from Malaysia to France, and from New York to Madrid, Rome and Berlin. Colombians and Spaniards took to the streets in 14 cities in Spain alone, according to the Colombian embassy in Madrid.

Marches were held in Bogotá and in dozens of smaller Colombian cities and towns, where streets and shopfronts became a sea of white flags calling for peace.

“No more kidnappings, no more violence, and ‘yes’ to the humanitarian agreement, the only solution we have,” said Ivan Cepeda, whose father was murdered by the far-right paramilitaries several years ago. Cepeda was referring to negotiations of a humanitarian agreement for an exchange of hostages held by the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia – the main rebel group) for imprisoned insurgents.

Rivers of people flowed down boulevards in a peaceful, orderly manner to the central Plaza de Bolivar.

By early afternoon, no violent incidents had been reported. And although all of the political parties in Colombia took part, none sought to exert influence or control over the demonstration, which was basically an apolitical citizen initiative that emerged on the Facebook social networking web site.

Carlos Gaviria, president of the leftist Alternative Democratic Pole (PDA) party, which had convened its own demonstration in the Plaza de Bolívar one hour earlier than the start of the main march, told IPS that “we are marching with independence and with the slogans that we believe in.”

“I find the demonstration to be moving and exciting, and we are not surprised by the criticism,” said Gaviria, alluding to the threats received by the PDA because of the party’s aim to protest not only the FARC but also the right-wing paramilitaries.

“We are calling for a humanitarian accord, life, peace and the release of the hostages, while saying ‘no’ to war,” added Gaviria, who took the second-largest number of votes in the 2006 elections in which President Álvaro Uribe was reelected to a second term.

At noon, the PDA launched yellow, blue and red fireworks – the colours of the Colombian flag.

The Plaza de Bolívar, where the city government building, presidential palace, main cathedral and palace of justice are located, was packed with demonstrators hours before the march started at noon.

The festive day offered the world an unusual image of a Colombia united around a common goal: peace.

Women’s group representative Rosa Emilia Salamanca told IPS that their slogan was “No war in my name. We women are saying a round ‘no’ to war and issuing a call for a humanitarian agreement.”

The crowd repeatedly sang the national anthem, while waving white and Colombian flags.

The demonstration lasted longer than scheduled. People began to gather early in the morning and hundreds of thousands of people were still chanting and protesting by mid-afternoon.

“No more war or kidnappings! We are opposed to that and have come together to shout it to the FARC, so that our clamour is heard in the middle of the jungle and our solidarity is felt by those who have been kidnapped by the guerrillas. No more FARC!” local shopkeeper José Carlos Quintero, sporting a white t-shirt that read “I Am Colombia”, told IPS.

A religious ceremony held in the Basílica del Voto, a church in central Bogotá, was attended by the families of some of the hostages.

“They are the ones who deserve the greatest solidarity,” PDA Congressman Wilson Borja told IPS. “We have come to back them up and give them our support for a humanitarian swap.”

“Kidnapped friend, brother or son: your families here have never forgotten you,” Marleny Orjuela, a spokewoman for ASFAMIPAZ, an association of hostages’ families, said over a loudspeaker.

Relatives of the hostages also gathered in other churches, although the Basílica was their main meeting point. A 50-metre banner calling for peace and a prisoner-hostage swap was strung up outside the entrance to the church

Many of the families were afraid that the conditions of their loved ones could worsen as a result of the anti-FARC demonstrations, and thus refused to take part.

The family of former presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt, the highest-profile hostage, who has been held captive in the jungle for six years, issued a statement explaining why they were not participating. The decision, Betancourt’s husband Juan Carlos Lacompte told IPS, was based on their belief that “the only solution to the conflict and for the release of the hostages is a humanitarian accord.”

Other families argued that it would have been much more effective to march for “the release of the hostages” rather than against the FARC.

“A chorus of hundreds of thousands of voices shouting that the FARC are terrorists might be useful as a war strategy, but could be counterproductive in terms of the effort to achieve a humanitarian accord,” by limiting the possibility of talks between the FARC and the government, according to an analysis published by the Semana magazine.

The march also gave further arguments to right-wing President Álvaro Uribe for his continued refusal to create a demilitarised zone for holding negotiations, a key FARC demand, the article stated.

But opposition Senator Cecilia López Montaño said an international demonstration like Monday’s was effective for several reasons: “because it reflects the awakening of a country united against violence, and is the beginning of a peace process demanded by all Colombians, especially young people, who organised the march.”

“I Am Colombia” and “No More Kidnappings, No More Deaths, No More FARC” read white t-shirts worn by dozens of demonstrators called together over the Internet by 33-year-old engineer Oscar Morales, who formed an on-line group in Facebook calling itself “a million voices against FARC” to convene Monday’s march.

More than 300,000 people had confirmed on-line that they would take part in the march, and tens of thousands were already pouring into the Plaza de Bolivar hours before it started.

According to unofficial sources, between 1.5 and two million people took to the streets in Bogotá.

From a historical point of view, mass demonstrations in Colombia that have had a clear objective have been effective.

One example was the silent march held to protest the 1989 assassination of former Liberal Party presidential candidate Luis Carlos Galán.

Analysts say that protest gave rise to the movement that culminated in the 1991 reform of the Colombian constitution.

The local media said Monday that the FARC cannot turn a deaf ear to the massive protest by the Colombian people, and that as a result the demonstration should help pave the way to negotiations of a prisoner-hostage swap and to eventual peace talks that could put an end to the country’s four-decade bloody civil war.

* With additional reporting by Constanza Vieira and Helda Martínez.

Excerpt:

By Constanza Vieira
BOGOTA, Jan 11 2008 (IPS)

While the international spotlight was shined on two women hostages released by Colombia’s FARC guerrillas, IPS interviewed by telephone a woman who reflects the other side of the hostage crisis.

These are the invisible women thrown into prison on charges of “rebellion”, many of them merely because they live in rebel-controlled areas. A significant proportion of them are civilians who are eventually acquitted and released – but not before they spend up to four years in jail.

Unlike the cases of former politicians Clara Rojas and Consuelo González, who were freed Thursday by the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) amid great fanfare, these women’s stories are seldom if ever told.

In the El Buen Pastor women’s prison in Bogotá there are 63 prisoners serving time for “rebellion”, but only 25 or 30 of them actually belong to the FARC, a peasant insurgency that rose up in arms in 1964.

“There are many people who are arrested for ‘rebellion’, but who have no real ties to the movement. They are treated as criminals because they live in an area under guerrilla influence, and everyone there is seen as a FARC collaborator,” said E., a woman under 30 who is doing time in El Buen Pastor.

(The FARC control an estimated 40 percent of the national territory, mainly in rural, sparsely populated areas.)

E. asked IPS not to publish her personal details, because she preferred to speak “in the name of several of us.” The interview took place simultaneously with the release of Rojas and González.

“There are thousands of ‘Emmanuels’ in Colombia,” said E, referring to the son Rojas gave birth to in captivity in the jungle, who was separated from his mother when he was around eight months old.

The children of the inmates of El Buen Pastor can live with their mothers until they turn three, when they are turned over to other family members or to the Colombian Family Welfare Institute (ICBF) – the institution that took Emmanuel into custody when he was found to have serious health problems.

IPS: How do you see this hostage release, from prison? E: Obviously what is happening makes us really happy, because these two women are returning to their families. But they are only two people in a conflict in which many people are suffering.

People’s hearts need to open up, so that the two sides sit down, in whatever conditions are established, to reach the goal of a humanitarian exchange (of FARC hostages for imprisoned guerrillas).

And also, what is really being sought is to reach the possibility of a solution to Colombia’s social and armed conflict. Many of us are here because we believe in a different country, and that certain sacrifices have to be made. We are convinced that there will be a new Colombia, and that we will be able to live in a country with social justice.

IPS: The hostage release was a unilateral gesture by the FARC. Is it a step forward, towards negotiations? E: It’s a window of opportunity for a humanitarian swap to begin to be arranged, a gesture that shows that it is possible to reach an agreement between the two sides. As political prisoners, what we hope for is that humanitarian considerations take precedence in the conflict.

It is also a sign that there is willingness and interest on the part of the FARC. But it is the conditions in the armed conflict that are keeping things from being done the way they should be.

What we in prison are saying is the same thing expressed by the FARC leadership: a (demilitarised) safe haven is needed, both for the safety of the hostages to be released and of the people who will be negotiating.

IPS: Do the FARC inmates in your prison have children? E: They are all mothers, except for three or four. In total, they number around 30.

IPS: How many are living with their mothers in the prison? E: There are about 30 or 40 kids in this prison. In this wing (of women imprisoned for war-related crimes), there are six. Most of them are the children of women serving time for “rebellion”. They are babies and toddlers up to the age of three. When they turn three, they are separated from their mothers. And if there is no one to take them in, they go to the ICBF.

IPS: Can they still see their mothers? E: The ICBF has an agreement with the prison, so that the kids can be brought once a month to visit their mothers. There are thousands of “Emmanuels” in Colombia. One of them, fortunately, will see his mother again. There are thousands of others who can’t.

IPS: International humanitarian law (IHL) distinguishes between civilians and combatants. Hostage-taking is prohibited by IHL, while exchanges of combatants have occurred since war was first invented. A civilian is not the same thing as someone who has actively committed themself to war. E: That’s true. But look: here in El Buen Pastor, most of the women are civilians who live in guerrilla-controlled areas, and who after spending two years in jail are simply told: “go home.”

Of 100 women, at least 50 have nothing to do with (the war). Last week, three women were released after spending a year and a half in jail. They were told “go home, what a pity, we made a mistake.” Others are sentenced for 40 to 60 years. There are people here who have accumulated sentences in several cases.

The rest are teachers, trade unionists, “community mothers” (women who run government child care centres in their homes), or small farmers, who have to spend at least a year and a half here, no matter how well things go for them in court. Very few actually end up being convicted. The prosecutions drag on for up to four years. Last year, two women who were released had spent four years behind bars, and were acquitted in the end.

Excerpt:

By Constanza Vieira
CARACAS, Jan 2 2008 (IPS)

– “Uribe, reflect, my brother, let’s work for peace,” said Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez when the release of three hostages by Colombia’s FARC guerrillas was postponed over the New Year’s holidays.

In a chaotic New Year’s Eve press conference at the presidential palace in Caracas, under a starry sky filled with fireworks, the Venezuelan leader appealed to what speaks loudest to his Colombian counterpart, Álvaro Uribe: business.

Chávez listed a number of major economic and integration projects that cannot fully go ahead as long as Colombia remains in the grip of an armed conflict: the Bank of the South, Petrosur (a regional South American oil company), the South American mega-gas pipeline, and Unasur (Union of South American Nations).

“That is why peace is important,” he said, addressing Uribe, a large landowner who, with heavy U.S. support, has been waging an all-out offensive for the past five years against the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia), a rural guerrilla army that emerged in 1964.

“It was Colombia’s turn to host the Unasur summit this year. It didn’t happen,” complained Chávez, while talking to reporters about the postponement of the release of Colombian hostages Consuelo González and Clara Rojas and the latter’s young son Emmanuel, born in 2004. His father is a guerrilla fighter.

González, a former congresswoman, has been held by the FARC since 2001. Rojas was seized in February 2002 along with then presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt, who holds dual Colombian-French citizenship. Rojas was her running-mate at the time.

“Emmanuel, I want to have some ice cream with you,” Chávez said recently.

Uribe had approved the Venezuelan leader’s role as a mediator in negotiations for a humanitarian swap of the hostages held by the guerrillas for imprisoned insurgents. Chávez’s help was enlisted in mid-August by opposition Senator Piedad Córdoba, who was designated to broker the negotiations, and by the families of the 45 hostages.

But Chávez and Córdoba’s mediation was abruptly and inexplicably cut off by Uribe in late November, triggering a diplomatic crisis between the two countries, with Venezuela recalling its ambassador for consultations and threatening to freeze economic relations, which are vital to Colombia.

The FARC responded by announcing that they would unilaterally release the three hostages, to compensate Chávez and Córdoba for their efforts. The Uribe administration authorised the use of Colombian airspace for the operation.

However, “Operation Emmanuel”, led by Chávez, was postponed on New Year’s Eve by the FARC, which said in a statement that continued military operations by the Colombian government in the area would endanger the lives of the hostages.

Chávez had reserved certain details of the operation for the Colombian government, the Red Cross, and the delegates of Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Cuba, Ecuador, France and Switzerland, who are acting as international observers.

Under Operation Emmanuel, the Venezuelan government sent aircraft with the Red Cross symbol to the airport in Villavicencio, capital of the central Colombian department (province) of Meta, 90 km south of Bogota.

The team of international observers, including former Argentine president Néstor Kirchner, was also flown in to Villavicencio, where they waited until New Year’s Eve.

The only thing expected of the Colombian government was a suspension of military activity in the area.

In the third phase of Operation Emmanuel, two helicopters were to fly towards an unknown destination in the jungle to pick up the three hostages. The pilots were to receive directions in mid-flight from the FARC.

But “the third phase began to run into difficulties,” said Chávez, who added that he had heard from different sources, not only the guerrillas, that Colombian military activity continued in the area – not combat actions, but military pressure, he clarified. No further details have been made available.

The international observers flew home from Villavicencio, but are prepared to return when the conditions are in place to allow the release to go ahead safely. However, Red Cross representatives stayed behind in the town.

When Uribe authorised the use of Colombian airspace by Venezuelan aircraft, he apparently did not agree to a ceasefire in the area in question, but only to the creation of a “humanitarian corridor” for flying the hostages out.

But, said Chávez, “he knows it’s impossible” to create such a corridor, because that would “require two points,” and only one will be known ahead of time.

The reason for this is that the FARC will only provide the coordinates for the spot chosen for the hostage handover once the helicopter pilots are in flight, through means that cannot be intercepted electronically, since the Colombian counterinsurgency forces, using cutting-edge technology provided as part of the U.S. military aid to the country, are more than keen on learning the location of the rebel unit escorting the hostages.

Now Chávez has two Emmanuels to choose from to eat an ice cream cone with: the one to be handed over by the FARC, and a boy that Uribe said was discovered a few days ago in an orphanage in Colombia.

In a speech given on Dec. 31 at an air base near Villavicencio, Uribe speculated that the FARC were delaying the release because they were no longer holding Emmanuel. He also announced that DNA tests were being carried out to determine whether the little boy in the orphanage, who shows signs of physical abuse, was Emmanuel.

Chávez said Uribe presented that version “to blast the third phase of the operation.”

In theory, Uribe cannot produce the second Emmanuel because Colombian laws protect the identity of minors. DNA taken from Clara Rojas’s family members will be checked against the samples provided by the Colombian government.

IPS found out that voices within the Democratic Party in the United States and in Europe have called for a European commission to carry out independent DNA tests on “Emmanuel II” and the Rojas family.

Besides South American integration and business activities, there is something else at stake here.

Chávez has stated that if he can speak face to face with FARC leader Manuel Marulanda for 20 hours, he can convince him that today it is possible for the left in Latin America to make it to power through elections.

Or, in the words of Senator Córdoba, “we, who have the chance of creating a better world, have to fight in another way: at the polls.”

“Uribe believes they can defeat the FARC, that they can wipe them out…but they can’t,” said Chávez in Monday’s news briefing. He added that he said the same thing to Iván Márquez, a FARC leader who visited him in November in the presidential palace in Caracas.

“Neither side is going to be able to put an end to the other side’s determination to fight,” he said.

“This is a struggle that is wearing out and breaking down Colombia, and that is wearing out Venezuela as well,” said the president, who will continue to push for the hostages’ release.

But apparently not everyone concerned is interested in seeing a hostage release go through.

Interestingly, just before Uribe called off Chávez’s mediation efforts, and just before he announced the appearance of “Emmanuel II”, he received phone calls from the same source: U.S. President George W. Bush.

Excerpt:

By Helda Martínez
BOGOTÁ, Dec 28 2007 (IPS)

While the eyes of the world are on the imminent release of three hostages held by Colombia’s FARC guerrillas, hundreds of other kidnapping victims in this South American country are living their own personal nightmares, but outside the glare of the spotlight.

“A kidnapping doesn’t end with the release. Victims who have been freed or rescued say recovery is a long and painful process, and may be as difficult as the time spent in captivity,” clinical psychologist Dary Nieto of the non-governmental Fundación País Libre told IPS.

“Therefore society has an obligation to respect the privacy and dignity of freed kidnap victims, and the media play a fundamental part in this,” she added.

For political purposes or for ransom, 22,256 people have been kidnapped in Colombia over the last decade, according to official statistics.

The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) are thought to have kidnapped 6,778 people; over the same period, 5,138 kidnappings occurred for which the captors are unknown.

The second-largest leftwing rebel group, the National Liberation Army (ELN), was apparently responsible for 5,387 cases, while 3,790 are attributed to common criminals, and 1,163 to far-right paramilitaries.

“If we consider their relatives and friends, the figure is multiplied considerably, to the point where it is not an exaggeration to say that the majority of Colombians have been affected by kidnappings, one way or another,” Nieto added.

Nevertheless, she said, social indifference is one reason why kidnapping has continued, augmented by the absence of state authority and the impunity that prevails in this country still in the grip of a nearly five-decade civil war.

“A level of 92 percent impunity sends a clear message: commit a crime and you won’t be punished,” said Olga Lucía Gómez, the head of País Libre.

In her view, “problems like social exclusion and the lack of job opportunities contribute, by facilitating the organisation of criminal gangs who find kidnapping a ready source of income,” while other groups are more interested in power and domination.

“In any event, one feels great pain for this country. In the case of political kidnappings, the soldiers of Cerro Patascoy (in the southern department of Nariño) have been held captive for 10 years without any progress towards a social and political strategy to achieve their release,” Nieto said.

The FARC are holding some 45 hostages, including politicians, soldiers and police officers, as well as three U.S. military contractors, who they want to trade for around 500 imprisoned insurgents.

This month the rebels announced that they would unilaterally release several hostages – two women politicians, Consuelo González and Clara Rojas, as well as the latter’s young son Emmanuel, who was born in the jungle as the result of a relationship with a guerrilla fighter – and are expected to do so this weekend.

Nieto’s first involvement in kidnapping issues was through the presidential programme for the defence of personal liberty initiated by President Ernesto Samper (1994-1998) at a time when kidnapping was on the rise.

According to historian Juan Romero, precedents for kidnapping in Colombia go back to the Spanish conquest, when Gonzalo Jiménez de Quesada kidnapped the Zaque (Sun-King of the Muisca people) Quemuenchatocha in 1537, to demand a ransom of gold and emeralds from his subjects.

In the 1970s, the insurgent April 19 Movement (M-19), now a legal political party, carried out high-profile urban kidnappings. And in the early 1980s, “extraditable” offenders, mainly drug mafia bosses, started a wave of kidnappings to pressure the government to cancel extradition to the United States.

In 1996 there were 1,038 documented cases, while in 1998 the number climbed to 2,860, for both political purposes and ransom.

“It was a time when entire municipalities were taken over by outlawed groups, and negotiations between kidnappers and relatives of victims were even held in public places. Everyone knew what was going on, but people were impotent against the kidnappers, largely because of the absence of the state,” Nieto said.

The kidnappings peaked during the government of President Andrés Pastrana (1998-2002). In 1999 there were 3,205 cases, and the highest number was reached in 2000, with 3,572 kidnappings.

According to the Defence Ministry, 1,073 kidnappings could not be attributed to a particular group in 2000, while 916 were blamed on the ELN, 849 on the FARC, 314 on common criminals, 190 on paramilitaries, and 230 on other groups.

The government and the FARC were holding peace talks in a demilitarized zone centred on the town of San Vicente del Caguán, in the southeastern department (province) of Meta, but days after the talks broke down in 2002, the FARC seized then presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt and her running-mate Clara Rojas.

“At that moment, in spite of the criticism, Pastrana recognised the armed rebels as interlocutors, and accorded them a political status that contributed to curbing the kidnappings,” Nieto said.

“But there was also a remarkable general indifference towards kidnappings. Many were not reported by the press, and when they were, no one took any notice. This attitude helped it become a commonplace, everyday practice,” she said.

People reckoned that if they did not belong to powerful economic or social élites, and did not live or travel in remote regions of the country, they were not in any personal danger.

“We’re an individualistic society with a low sense of commitment to others. In the best of cases we look out for our own nuclear family. Yet the statistics show that the middle classes are frequent victims,” she said. “We believe that bad things happen to those who make mistakes, and therefore that it’s their fault.”

The statistics indicate a gradual fall in the number of kidnappings since 2002. In March 2003 the government of Álvaro Uribe announced a public policy against kidnapping and extortion. In 2006 the official figure for kidnappings was 687.

In Nieto’s view as a psychologist, kidnapping is a crime with consequences that depend on the victim’s specific experiences, the time he or she has spent in captivity, and how he or she has been treated.

“A kidnap victim faces constant intimidation and subjugation, the loss of willpower and freedom, the loss of their life project and the ability to make their own decisions, and this has an undeniable effect on the person,” she said.

The differences depend on the nature of the kidnapping. In the case of political hostages, they suffer from a sense of complete impotence because their fate depends on agreements negotiated by others.

The families of political hostages take every possible action to obtain a humanitarian accord for their release.

For example, Gustavo Moncayo, a geography teacher dubbed the “peace walker”, hiked 1,000 kilometres to Bogotá to talk to President Uribe, sleep on the paving stones in central Bolívar Square, raise funds to visit Europe, return to Colombia and carry on walking to Venezuela.

His aim is to promote a humanitarian agreement, and in so doing secure the release of the political hostages, including his son Pablo, now 29, who was captured 10 years ago in Cerro Patascoy. Pablo Moncayo and Libio Martínez are the FARC’s longest-held hostages.

Kidnap victims held for ransom also face difficult situations, as the sums of money demanded for their safe return are usually beyond their families’ means, but in general they are held for shorter periods of time, experts say.

All of them are victims. “These are complex situations that we have to examine in detail so as not to confuse them. It’s not about good guys and bad guys, but as a society we are all implicated and we all bear a fraction of the responsibility,” said Nieto.

“There is no room here for morbid curiosity, or the speculations that have arisen over Clara Rojas and her son Emmanuel. People’s dignity and private lives must be respected if we want a better country.”

“The little boy will also go through a grieving process, he will experience loss, he will miss his environment, and eventually he will adapt to his new family, surrounded by love and truth. We called for his release, and the least we can offer him is a normal life.”

“The media must handle this intelligently, and avoid raising sensational expectations that may create more frustrations,” Nieto concluded.

Excerpt:

By Constanza Vieira
BOGOTA, Dec 21 2007 (IPS)

After walking 800 km from Bogota, Colombian teacher Gustavo Moncayo, known as the “peace walker”, crossed into Venezuela on his way to Caracas. Escorted by hundreds of supporters, the 55-year-old Moncayo was handed a torch, and a Venezuelan flag was draped around his shoulders.

“We will be walking nearly 700 km across the ‘llanos’ (plains) and will possibly be knocking on the doors of Caracas, and the government Palace of Miraflores, in mid-January,” he told IPS by telephone late Thursday from the outskirts of San Antonio del Táchira, the first city on the Venezuelan side of the border.

Ten years ago, on Dec. 21, 1997, his son, army corporal Pablo Emilio Moncayo, who is now 29 years old, and corporal José Libio Martínez, 30, were captured by the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) guerrillas during an assault on the Patascoy military base in southwestern Colombia.

They are among the longest-held of the FARC hostages, who include 31 other members of the security forces, three U.S. military contractors, and 10 civilians. The highest profile captive is former Colombian presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt, a dual Colombian-French citizen, who will have spent six years in captivity as of February.

Never before has the plight of the FARC hostages drawn so much international attention.

“Mr. President, with all due respect, I ask you, just as you are able to embrace your children, to allow us through a humanitarian accord to come out alive and embrace our parents,” says a message from Pablo Emilio delivered by the guerrillas on Jul. 3.

The FARC are holding the hostages with the aim of exchanging them for around 500 imprisoned guerrillas, who are serving sentences of up to 80 years in prison even though life imprisonment does not exist in the Colombian justice system.

Through a communiqué sent to the Cuban news agency Prensa Latina, the FARC leadership announced Tuesday that they would release Betancourt’s former running-mate, lawyer Clara Rojas, her four-year-old son Emmanuel, who was born in captivity, and Consuelo González, a former legislator who has been held captive since September 2001.

“I receive this announcement with all the joy that can fit in my heart, a heart that has been aggrieved for so long,” said Clara de Rojas, Emmanuel’s grandmother.

The rebels said the release of the three hostages was an act of “compensation” for the frustrated efforts by Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez and Colombian Senator Piedad Córdoba, whose role as official facilitators of a prisoner-hostage exchange was abruptly cut short by Colombian President Álvaro Uribe on Nov. 21, triggering a diplomatic crisis between the two governments.

“This gesture of willingness by the FARC awakens in us a ray of hope that the release of the rest of the hostages can be achieved,” said Moncayo.

He said he has no doubts that the FARC reached its decision “thanks to the huge efforts and the combined work” of Chávez and Córdoba.

Córdoba said Wednesday during a visit to Washington that she and Chávez had actually secured a commitment from the FARC to unilaterally release 25, not just three, hostages, before the negotiations were cut off.

The group could have included Moncayo’s son, because Chávez specifically asked for the inclusion of Emmanuel, any hostages who are sick, and the hostages who have spent the longest time in captivity.

For Moncayo and the rest of his family, the unexpected news that Chávez’s role as facilitator had been cut short “was enormously frustrating. Everything that was happening, that we had been working so hard for, was brought to an end because of the arrogance of people who, in one way or another, are determining the fate of our loved ones,” he said.

When Uribe’s sudden decision was announced, Moncayo was on the second day of his peace trek towards Caracas, from Bogota.

From mid-June to Aug. 1, he walked 1,308 km from his town, Sandoná, at the southwestern tip of Colombia, to the capital. Wherever he went, thousands of people came out to greet him and cheer him on.

He then headed to Europe, visiting 15 French cities, as well as Italy and Spain, in a mobile home as part of his campaign for a prisoner-hostage swap.

Moncayo said he was making this effort “with great love, patience and perseverance, from the grassroots, touching the hearts of Colombians, seeking to sensitise governments and the people of other countries, of Europeans, of people around the world.”

But for Carlos Lozano, director of the Communist weekly publication Voz and a close follower of the hostage negotiations, the imminent release of the two women and young boy is “a gesture of goodwill” that “will not affect the rest of the hostages.”

“This will not speed up the negotiations, nor will it generate a favourable atmosphere for continued talks,” said Lozano.

“That’s the negative aspect. This move does not mean that either side is budging” in its position, he added.

The FARC have rejected the creation of a 150 square km demilitarised “meeting zone” for a hostage-prisoner exchange, as suggested by the Catholic Church and accepted by Uribe on Dec. 7, in the midst of heavy international pressure.

Instead, they are standing firm by their demand – which Uribe refuses – for the withdrawal of security forces from two southern Colombian municipalities, Pradera and Florida, which have a total combined territory of 760 square km.

Thus, “the only way for this to move forward is for the FARC to give up their demand for the demilitarisation of those areas or for Uribe to approve it,” which is not “a possible scenario,” said Lozano.

Representatives of the Church “have not even been able to make contact with the FARC to give them a letter asking to meet with them,” he said.

The guerrillas “are full of mistrust after the capture of the three messengers,” he added, referring to the Nov. 29 arrest of two women and a man carrying documents showing that at least 17 of the hostages are still alive. The videos and letters gathered by the FARC at the request of the facilitators were to be delivered to Chávez.

“No one wants to be the messenger who carries that letter, to be arrested and then sent to the United States,” said Lozano. The two women who were captured are facing the risk of extradition to the United States.

“Nobody dares to do it,” Bishop Luis Augusto Castro, president of the Colombian bishops’ conference, told Lozano.

Nevertheless, in Moncayo’s view, “we have to continue forward, continue providing our support, with a lot of trust, patience and passion.”

“The important thing is to gain the support of the public,” he stressed.

The main thing is “not for us – because we are buried in tears, entreaties and suffering – but for the people, the entire world, to demand that the president and the FARC negotiate a solution to this. We are tired of the violence,” said Moncayo.

Excerpt:

By Constanza Vieira
BOGOTÁ, Dec 19 2007 (IPS)

The leaders of Colombia’s FARC guerrillas ordered the release of two women hostages and the young son of one of them as a gesture of “compensation” for the frustrated facilitation efforts made by Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez and Colombian Senator Piedad Córdoba, and of goodwill towards the hostages’ families.

Clara Rojas Credit:

The hostages, politicians Consuelo González and Clara Rojas, and the son of the latter, who was born in captivity, must be received by “President Chávez or someone designated by him,” says the statement.

The FARC said the gesture is “an unquestionable show of the hope that we had deposited in the facilitator role” of Córdoba and Chávez, whose mission was to negotiate an exchange of hostages held by the rebels for imprisoned insurgents.

But their efforts, which began in mid-August when Córdoba was appointed facilitator by Colombian President Álvaro Uribe and enlisted Chávez’s support, was abruptly brought to an end by him on Nov. 21, causing severe tension between Venezuela and Colombia.

After Chávez said the FARC statement was authentic, government Peace Commissioner Luis Carlos Restrepo announced that “the Colombian government welcomes” the unilateral release of the hostages.

The communiqué is dated two days after Uribe’s Dec. 7 proposal to establish a 150 square km demilitarised zone for 30 days to negotiate a hostage-prisoner swap – a proposition that the FARC reject in the statement.

For that reason, journalist Carlos Lozano, director of the Communist weekly Voz, also had doubts about the authenticity of the message.

He told IPS that when he had contact with the guerrillas on Dec. 13, they did not mention the communiqué.

If the statement is authentic, the FARC are standing by their demand for the creation of a demilitarised zone in the southern municipalities of Florida and Pradera in order to negotiate an exchange of around 45 hostages – mainly members of the security forces captured in combat – for 500 guerrillas currently in prison.

The facilitators and the hostages’ families had asked the FARC to unilaterally hand over a group of women hostages and hostages who are ill. Chávez reached an agreement with the rebels for the release of a small group before Dec. 31.

“We accept their request,” says the FARC statement.

Chávez, who is in Uruguay to attend the summit of the Mercosur (Southern Common Market) trade bloc, confirmed that “a few days ago I received the response from (FARC commander Manuel) Marulanda anticipating that he would order the release of a group (of hostages) as a gesture of goodwill and compensation.”

With respect to the difficult process of handing over the two women and the boy, he said that “we will evaluate things as we go; we have several alternatives, none of which are easy. They are in the middle of the jungle; I can’t go and personally receive them as I would like.”

“I hope the Colombian government will collaborate. It is possible that international bodies will also cooperate to achieve their prompt release,” he added.

Clara Rojas was the running-mate of former Colombian presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt, the highest-profile hostage, who holds dual French-Colombian nationality. The two women were seized in February 2002, after peace talks broke off between the government and the FARC in the southern region of Caguán.

Rojas’s son Emmanuel, whose father is a guerrilla fighter as revealed by Colombian journalist Jorge Enrique Botero in April 2006, was reportedly born in December 2004.

Consuelo González was taken hostage in September 2001 when her car was intercepted on a highway in southern Colombia. At the time, she was a member of the lower house of Congress representing the Liberal Party. Her husband, Jairo Perdomo, died in 2005 and she has a granddaughter she has never met.

In a video recording obtained by Botero in 2003 to prove that she was still alive, a dejected-looking González appears, crying. Her family also received a letter from her in 2002.

The handover of the two women and the boy should take place “in circumstances that prevent base deeds” by the government “like what occurred with the ‘proof of life’” documents, says the FARC statement.

The guerrillas were referring to two messengers who were carrying video recordings and letters showing that Betancourt and 16 other hostages are still alive, provided by the rebels as part of the negotiations for a hostage-prisoner swap. The two women were arrested by the Colombian authorities on Nov. 29 in Bogotá, even though the “proof of life” documents had been specifically requested by Chávez.

“The outrageous cancellation of (Chávez’s) facilitator role was an act of diplomatic barbarity against the legitimate head of state of a sister country and against the Venezuelan people,” adds the statement.

The all-out effort by Chávez and Córdoba had won broad international support. After Uribe unexpectedly cut off their mission, they were asked by the hostages’ families to continue their successful work towards a hostage-prisoner swap, based on international humanitarian principles.

Córdoba is currently in Washington to meet with Democratic Rep. Jim McGovern and members of the Congressional Black Caucus, an aide to the senator told IPS.

Since 2003, the FARC have held three U.S. military contractors who were seized while working within the context of the Washington-financed Plan Colombia counterinsurgency and anti-drug strategy.

French analyst Pascal Drouhaud, who until recently was head of foreign affairs in the governing party, the Union for a Popular Movement, told IPS from Paris that the release of the three hostages would be “a humanitarian gesture of great significance.”

“We are all congratulating ourselves on this, because we all feel solidarity towards the hostages and their families. But at the same time, it is a very well thought out, astute political gesture, which shows that the FARC and the group’s leadership have a strong sense of strategy,” he said.

“We are entering a very complex political negotiation,” he warned. “This gesture shows that the FARC have their ears open to national and international demands, and that they are not isolated.”

Drouhaud believes the FARC are sending the following message: “We are willing to carry out in-depth negotiations. You, the European Union and France, want Ingrid’s release. We have dozens of ‘exchangeable’ hostages. Let’s sit down and really negotiate.”

“They are thinking, analysing, interpreting, to defend their interests of course. They are studying how to move within the strong international pressure that has been so clearly revealed over the past few weeks,” he added.

However, Drouhaud does not believe that these humanitarian advances are sufficient reason for the FARC to be removed from the EU list of terrorist organisations.

“Today that is the position of the EU, adopted in May 2002. And there is no reason to believe that there will be any change for now in the bloc’s stance. As the FARC’s humanitarian gesture shows, everything is in flux, but I don’t think that at this point there are any signs” that the rebel group, which is seeking international recognition as a “belligerent force”, will be taken off the list of terrorist organisations.

Excerpt:

By Constanza Vieira
BOGOTA, Dec 7 2007 (IPS)

The treatment given to messengers has sparked wars or has been seen as a sign of political will and mutual trust and confidence.

Credit:

After the messengers were arrested, FARC commander Manuel “Marulanda himself said no more proof of life would be provided,” Carlos Lozano, director of the Communist Party weekly publication Voz, told IPS. Lozano is closely familiar with the talks on a possible swap of 45 hostages for 400 or 500 jailed insurgents.

But IPS found out that the French government, which has played a very active role in pushing for a hostage-prisoner exchange and is in direct contact with the FARC, is expecting to receive evidence showing that the rest of the hostages are also alive.

The two women, who were arrested Nov. 29 in the Colombian capital, were threatened with extradition to the United States by three agents of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), who visited the prison to talk to them Tuesday, one of the women’s lawyers told IPS exclusively.

Cindy Tumay, 21, and Adriana Vega, 29, were forced by the director of the El Buen Pastor women’s prison in Bogotá, Jenny Morantes, to meet three foreigners, who identified themselves as FBI agents, in her office after hours. There was no legal basis for the meeting.

Only one of the three men spoke Spanish to the women, while he spoke English with his companions, Vega’s lawyer, Geminiano Méndez, told IPS.

The agents told the two women that they were interested in the release of the three U.S. citizens, Keith Stansell, Thomas Howes and Marc Gonsalves, who were captured by the leftist FARC in February 2003 while working as military contractors for the Washington-financed counterinsurgency Plan Colombia.

They first said they wanted to ask the two women “a few questions” about how they were captured, to which Vega responded that she would not answer any questions unless her lawyer was present.

“After that, the decent treatment ended,” said the attorney, whose law practice had employed Vega in the past as a secretary.

The agents told Vega and Tumay not to forget that two FARC members – “Simón Trinidad” and “Sonia” – had already been extradited to the United States, and that “with the approval” of Colombian President Álvaro Uribe, they could both find themselves in a U.S. prison “in eight months.”

According to Méndez, the FBI agent added that the women might as well start saying good-bye to their friends, while remarking that “the prisons there are very cold, as ‘Sonia’ will tell you soon enough.”

Sonia is serving a 16-year sentence in a prison in the state of Texas on drug trafficking charges.

The FBI agents said Vega and Tumay were in a very complicated position, and told them that if they decided to talk, they should let the U.S. Embassy know through their attorneys or the prison directors.

The talk lasted no more than 20 minutes, and took place in the presence of the director of the prison, said the lawyer, who announced that he would ask Morantes, through the right to petition, “who authorised the visit” and “based on what legal provision” was it held.

The day after their arrest, the two women were submitted to a judicial hearing that was held in secret for “national security reasons,” as the authorities reported.

A man who was arrested along with the two women apparently was serving as a guide in Bogotá for Tumay, who carried the package containing solid evidence that 17 hostages are alive from the southern department (province) of Guaviare.

The two women, who are in preventive detention and have declared themselves innocent of the charges of kidnapping and “rebellion”, are being investigated by the Attorney-General’s Office.

Vega said humanitarian concerns led her to take part in the chain set up to deliver the videos and letters to Venezuelan President Chávez, who had been officially accepted by Uribe as a mediator of a hostage-prisoner swap.

Lozano said the incident involving FBI agents is a “serious and flagrant violation of our national sovereignty, which shows the fragility of our territory and our dignity. I believe that these gentlemen are doing whatever they please in Colombia because the national government allows them to do so.”

In the journalist’s view, “they did the same thing with guerrilla fighter ‘Simón Trinidad’. He agreed to talk to them under the condition that no notes would be taken and that the off-the-record conversation would not be taped. But many of the things that were discussed ended up being used in the trial against him.”

“Simón Trinidad”, whose real name is Ricardo Palmera, was arrested in Quito, Ecuador in January 2004 while representing the FARC in negotiations on a hostage-prisoner swap. He was later extradited to the United States.

President Chávez agreed to take part in the talks at the request of the hostages’ families, which was officially relayed by Colombian opposition Senator Piedad Córdoba after Uribe appointed her as “facilitator” of an agreement on Aug. 15.

But Uribe unexpectedly put an end to Córdoba and Chávez’s efforts on Nov. 21, without prior warning to the Venezuelan leader, even though the two presidents had agreed that they would talk before any such decision was made.

In response, Chávez angrily “froze” relations between the two countries and recalled Venezuela’s ambassador to Caracas for consultations.

On Dec. 1, Chávez confirmed in a press conference that at least one of the two women who were arrested formed part of the humanitarian mission to deliver the videos and letters proving that the hostages were still alive.

“The ‘proof of life’ was on its way to Caracas and I was going to send it to (French President) Sarkozy and make it public as part of what I had required of the FARC, in the name of the families and the governments of Colombia and France,” said Chávez.

“But they intercepted it; they captured the messengers,” he added.

For that reason, Chávez showed up empty-handed at his Nov. 20 meeting with Sarkozy in France.

The evidence that the hostages are alive was also demanded by an influential group of Democratic lawmakers in the U.S.

The confiscation of the videos and letters showing proof of life was not reported to the hostages’ families, who learned about them from the media.

At Chávez’s urging, FARC chief Marulanda had ordered the gathering of such evidence. The documents seized along with Vega and Tumay had been collected on Oct. 23-25.

The images of the hostages and the letters to their families have moved the entire world, said Sarkozy Thursday in a televised message to Marulanda, who he called on to release, before Christmas, French-Colombian citizen Ingrid Betancourt, the highest-profile hostage held by the FARC.

The former Colombian presidential candidate, who has been held captive in the jungle for nearly six years, is seen in one of the videos, looking gaunt and gazing listlessly down at the ground.

This week, Uribe offered lighter charges and cash rewards to the hostages’ guards, if they would turn over the captives and abandon the armed struggle. He presented a common kidnapping case, involving a four-year-old child, as the new policy’s first success story.

Uribe also announced Friday that he would accept the FARC’s demand to create a demilitarised zone for hostage talks, under the condition that it be 150 square km in size, that it be located in a rural area, and that it contain no military or police posts that would have to be withdrawn, and preferably no civilian population, or very few inhabitants at the most.

The talks would take place in the presence of international observers, and the negotiators would not be armed, he added.

But shortly after the president’s announcement, Defence Minister Juan Manuel Santos said the area would only be cleared of government security forces for 30 days.

While analysts are now saying that the ball is in the FARC’s court, the fate of the two messengers would appear to be a detail that should not simply be forgotten.

Excerpt:

By Constanza Vieira
CARACAS, Nov 20 2007 (IPS)

“Impatience is not a good thing,” Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez responded to the Colombian government’s announcement of a December deadline for his efforts to broker an agreement for an exchange of imprisoned guerrillas for hostages held by the rebels.

The Venezuelan leader made his remarks in France, where he met Tuesday with French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

Shortly after Chávez arrived in Paris late Monday, the Colombian government said it was setting a 40-day deadline for reaching a deal on a prisoner-hostage swap – an agreement that has not been reached in the five years since rightwing President Álvaro Uribe took office.

On Monday, the Council of the European Union expressed in Brussels its support for the efforts to negotiate a humanitarian prisoner-hostage exchange.

After he reached France, Chávez said he was not carrying any proof that French-Colombian citizen Ingrid Betancourt, seized by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) in February 2002 while campaigning for president, was still alive.

“But I am absolutely certain that Ingrid is alive,” said the Venezuelan leader.

A huge poster of Betancourt, the highest-profile hostage, hangs from the façade of the town hall in Paris, and she has been declared an honorary citizen of over 1,000 cities around the world.

Chávez’s certainty is based on the word of the world’s oldest guerrilla fighter, FARC commander Manuel Marulanda, who gave orders to collect proof that all of the hostages held by the FARC are still alive.

Colombian Senator Piedad Córdoba, who was appointed by Uribe to facilitate an agreement, also said in the French capital that a “surprise” could be forthcoming, and added that evidence that the hostages are alive would be handed over “tomorrow, in two days, or in a week.”

The press in the Venezuelan capital was certain that Chávez did not go to his meeting with Sarkozy on Tuesday with empty hands.

According to two sources who talked to IPS, Chávez already has solid evidence that some of the hostages are still alive, possibly including the three U.S. citizens – Marc Gonsalves, Thomas Howes and Keith Stansell – who were seized by the FARC in 2003 while carrying out intelligence work as part of Washington’s military assistance to Colombia.

In Colombia, where the government staunchly refuses to even recognise the existence of an armed conflict, both the FARC and independent experts say the security forces are bombing every area where guerrilla camps are suspected to be located – a move that would clearly stand in the way of collecting and handing over proof of life.

There is no precise figure on how many hostages the FARC is holding. The longest-held are two soldiers, Libio Martínez and Pablo Moncayo, who will have been living in captivity in the jungle for 10 years as of December.

“Between 45 and 50” soldiers and civilian hostages will be swapped for “between 400 and 500” jailed insurgents, according to a recent statement by the FARC.

But when he reached Paris, Chávez wasted no time in diverting attention from the “proof of life” question.

He said that in a 50-minute private meeting with his Colombian counterpart during the 17th Ibero-American Summit earlier this month in Chile, he and Uribe “talked about the possibility of a meeting somewhere between Marulanda and Chávez,” and Uribe said “I could even go.”

The Uribe administration immediately put out a statement clarifying that a meeting between the Colombian president and the FARC would only be possible once the rebels released all of the hostages, and within the context of formal peace talks. It also announced the year-end deadline for the current negotiations.

The government also said that Uribe’s hypothetical willingness to eventually meet with Marulanda was a secret, to which Chávez responded in a press conference in Paris that he had not been asked for discretion on that point, which at any rate, he said, showed that Uribe was interested in peace.

The Venezuelan leader gave indications in France that he is not only seeking a hostage-prisoner swap, but is interested in brokering a full-fledged peace process in Colombia, said analysts.

Not long ago, on Nov. 6, it was Uribe himself who called for “patience” to allow Chávez and Senator Córdoba to facilitate the talks and carry out their work in a “prudent, and hopefully effective, manner.”

But the race against time is not only a question of whether or not Uribe is running out of patience. Another key aspect is how long the hostages can hold out, living in harsh conditions in the jungle. For example, Senator Luis Eladio Pérez, who was kidnapped by the guerrillas in June 2001, has diabetes.

Equally important is that four military operations aimed at wiping out FARC camps or units have been reported this year.

The first apparently took place in June, when 11 provincial legislators held hostage by the FARC for five years were killed in the midst of an armed confrontation between their captors and an unidentified adversary.

Since early August, Córdoba and Chávez have been working hard to bring about a hostage-prisoner exchange. One of the seven members of the FARC Secretariat even met with the Venezuelan leader in the presidential palace in Caracas this month.

In the meantime, even rightwing voices in Colombia have agreed that Venezuela’s leftist leader is “the last card” in the effort to achieve a humanitarian exchange of prisoners for hostages.

The hostages’ families also fully back the current negotiations. “If Chávez does not negotiate quickly in Venezuela with the FARC, I believe the group (of hostages) will not come back whole,” Ángela de Pérez, Luis Eladio Pérez’s wife, told IPS.

“That is because they are just barely surviving; they are exhausted after so many years” of hardships, she added.

She urged the FARC “at least to produce a list of names, and proof of life” for all of the hostages.

And she asked “the government to facilitate things, for the love of God, to not torpedo the efforts anymore, because it is very clear that the government has been throwing up obstacles to and opposing the release of Colombians in Colombian territory.”

“Other countries, (and other leaders) like President Chávez, have had to assume the task of solving a problem that is the responsibility of the Colombian president, but which he has not assumed,” she complained.

De Pérez urged those personalities around the world who are helping to broker a humanitarian accord “to support the effort more emphatically,” because otherwise, “many of the hostages, due to health problems, are not going to be reunited with their families.”

She also called on “the world to help us,” and said “it seems atrocious to me that the president will not even recognise the existence of the war and will not acknowledge the victims of that war.”

Gustavo Moncayo, whose son, army corporal Pablo Moncayo, is one of the hostages held by FARC, set out Monday on a march from Bogotá to Caracas to mobilise support for a prisoner-hostage exchange.

From Jun. 17 to Aug. 1, the teacher, who has been dubbed the “peace walker”, received shows of support from millions of people along the 1,000-km trek from his hometown in southwestern Colombia to the capital.

Excerpt:

By IPS Correspondents
LONDON, Nov 2 2007 (IPS)

“Mr. President, we who are going to die send you our greetings.” The Sept. 26, 2006 message, addressed to Colombian President Álvaro Uribe, came from a hostage held by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), along with eleven other provincial legislators, since April 2002.

As of September 2006, the lawmakers had been held in a guerrilla camp in the Amazon jungle for four and a half years, waiting, with diminishing hopes, for the government and the FARC to begin negotiating a hostage-prisoner swap.

Nine months later, 11 of the 12 legislators were dead – among them the young man who had predicted their fate.

They died in circumstances that remain murky. But one thing is clear: unable to end over four decades of civil war, Colombians are increasingly turning for help, not to the United States, but to Europe and the rest of Latin America, a dynamic that has been fuelled since August by Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez’s attempts to broker a solution to the hostage crisis.

Occasionally, the outside world hears from the hostages via videos released by the FARC to prove that they are still alive. Since Uribe rejected negotiations, every video carries urgent pleas not to try to rescue them by force. Recently, a police officer held hostage sent word that “a military rescue is the equivalent of a death sentence.”

Among the hostages held by the FARC (a rural insurgent group that rose up in arms in 1964) are former presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt and her running-mate Clara Rojas – who now has a little boy, the product of a relationship with a guerrilla fighter – as well as eight other politicians.

The hostages also include 14 army officers and non-commissioned officers, 20 policemen, and three U.S. military contractors.

The rebels want to exchange the hostages for some 400 imprisoned guerrillas, as well as two who were extradited to the United States, alias “Sonia” and “Simón Trinidad”.

Like the endless armed conflict, the fate of the hostages is mired in a legacy of mutual hatred. In 1983, the FARC killed Uribe’s father in a botched kidnapping attempt.

Over the past year, Supreme Court investigations and trials of so-called “para-politicians” have uncovered secret ties between allies of Uribe, including members of his family, and paramilitaries guilty of committing atrocities against the rural civilian population accused of supporting the insurgents. The FARC has refused to talk to the government until it withdraws the security forces from a given area, in order to create a demilitarised zone. Uribe, meanwhile, refuses to withdraw troops from “one single millimetre” of Colombian territory. In spite of discreet efforts by the governments of France, Spain and Switzerland to facilitate a hostage-prisoner exchange, the war has repeatedly stymied their hard work.

In the meantime, the rightwing Uribe denies that Colombia is in the grip of a civil war, and insists that there is merely “a terrorist threat to a democratic state” from a group of “bandits.”

To fight these “bandits” – the leftwing rebels – his government receives around 630 million dollars in military aid a year from the United States, hires mercenaries, and finances British, American, French and Israeli experts to train mobile commandos who infiltrate FARC territory, identify targets, and call up air strikes on anything that moves.

The Colombian rainforest is a war zone where the hostages are trapped, like ducks in a shooting gallery. The 11 hostages were killed somewhere inside the estimated 40 percent of the national territory controlled by the FARC (basically rural, sparsely populated areas).

The rebel group announced the deaths on the Internet on Jun. 28, saying they had been killed in crossfire on Jun.18, when “an as-yet unidentified military group” attacked the camp where they were being held.

In a televised address, Uribe accused the FARC of killing the hostages in cold-blooded, premeditated murder. He said the army could not have attacked the camp since they did not know where the hostages were located, and Defence Ministry dispatches claimed that no operations were carried out in that part of FARC territory on Jun. 18.

When the news reached Geneva on Jun. 28, the French, Swiss and Spanish delegates were busy assessing the results of a 24-hour Jun. 16 meeting with the FARC.

Sources in the Colombian capital reported that the visit by the mediators, their seventh to the jungle this year, had made substantial progress. An agenda for talks towards a prisoner-hostage swap was agreed, and the FARC had started to follow through on a schedule of steps aimed at building a climate of mutual trust and confidence.

When the delegates learned the hostages were dead, they contacted the FARC in the jungle to demand an explanation, according to reports from sources in Paris.

But the FARC leadership knew nothing about it; they could not understand how the camp’s security had been breached, and they had no notion as to where, when, how or why the hostages had been killed. They reportedly kept repeating over and over: “This is a catastrophe! A total catastrophe!”

They immediately grasped the implications and understood that the tragedy could destroy any possibility of an eventual prisoner-hostage exchange.

This year saw increased international backing for a swap. Seven Democratic lawmakers from the U.S. came out in support of a proposal set forth in December 2005 by France, Spain and Switzerland for a “meeting zone” where negotiations to secure the hostages’ release could take place with security provided by the three European countries and the International Red Cross.

Then on May 17, Uribe spoke to his generals, urging them to launch rescue missions and release Betancourt and the other hostages by force. This prompted action by newly inaugurated President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, for whom the liberation of Betancourt, who holds dual Colombian and French citizenship, is “a matter of utmost priority.”

Incensed by Uribe’s speech, Sarkozy called Bogotá.

Uribe rescinded his orders for a military rescue, and also released Rodrigo Granda, Colombia’s highest-ranking FARC prisoner.

By August, there was still no information as to how the hostages had been killed. But there were suspicions that the “unidentified” military group which the FARC said attacked the camp had done so with the knowledge of the army.

Clues about a military operation that wiped out a guerrilla camp began to circulate on the Internet, and a plausible reconstruction of the event was published by IPS journalist Constanza Vieira.

According to Vieira’s account, several members of the FARC unit guarding the hostages had deserted on the eve of the killings. Suspicions of infiltration spurred the removal of the hostages by motorboat at dawn. Allegedly, they died on the river when their boat was ambushed by a Colombian military commando backed up by army helicopters.

In August, under heavy pressure to resume contacts with the FARC, Uribe appointed opposition Senator Piedad Córdoba, who had enlisted the support of President Chávez, as facilitator. When the Venezuelan and Colombian presidents met in Bogotá, they agreed that Chávez would help broker a prisoner-hostage exchange.

The Chávez-Córdoba team moved swiftly to break the deadlock. In response to the Venezuelan leader’s offer of a neutral territory for talks, FARC leaders agreed to travel to Caracas, and even to hold negotiations in any neutral area. That means their demand for a demilitarised zone in Colombia would apply only to the actual exchange of hostages for prisoners – a major concession.

International support for Chávez’s efforts grew. Most importantly, the George W. Bush administration sent out clear signals that it was waiting for a concrete proposal from the FARC to begin negotiating the release of the three U.S. military contractors.

Sarkozy remains strongly engaged. Spain, Switzerland, Bolivia, Brazil, Cuba, Ecuador, Nicaragua and the ruling coalition in Uruguay have also offered support. Senator Córdoba is currently in Washington. So why the delay? What is holding up the promised meeting between Chávez and the FARC?

A meeting with the FARC scheduled for Oct. 8, to which U.S. legislators, Venezuelan officials, and relatives of the hostages were also invited, was postponed when Colombian Defence Minister Juan Manuel Santos refused to provide guarantees that the FARC delegates would not be arrested when they tried to cross the border into Venezuela.

What is Uribe up to? Does he really want to negotiate the release of the hostages? Some in Caracas say he is himself a hostage to hard-line sectors of the Colombian right who are opposed to peace and intend to block any agreement for a prisoner-hostage swap.

Whatever the answers, several things are clear: the hostage crisis has taken on an international dimension and Uribe has lost control of Chávez’s initiative.

The ball is now in the FARC’s court. Offered this opportunity by Chávez to escape the “terrorist” label, will they use it wisely? Do they recognise the urgency of the situation? Do they see that their own future is now irrevocably linked to that of the hostages?

And when they meet with Chávez, will they bring proof that the remaining hostages are still alive? Will they reciprocate the release of Granda, and free one or two hostages? Will they put forth concrete proposals?

The questions abound, but so far the answers are slow to come.

Excerpt:

By Helda Martínez
BOGOTA, Sep 17 2007 (IPS)

“We didn’t need an International Forensic Commission to tell us this was homicide. The Organisation of American States (OAS) report about the deaths of the legislators from Valle del Cauca (in Colombia) saddens and disappoints us,” lawyer Faisury Perdomo told IPS.

“We will take the case to however many national and international courts are necessary, because we need to know the truth,” said Diego Quintero, brother of Alberto Quintero, who was one of the 11 deputies killed in June. Their bodies were handed over to their families last week.

The lawmakers, together with their colleague Sigifredo López, were kidnapped by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) from the provincial legislature in the western Valle del Cauca in 2002.

On Jun. 28, the leftwing guerrillas said that the 11 politicians had been killed in the crossfire during an armed clash on Jun. 18. The FARC also said that López had survived because at that moment he wasn’t with the other hostages.

But the Colombian government of rightwing President Álvaro Uribe said that the 11 were murdered in cold blood. In addition to Quintero, the deceased were Carlos Barragán, Carlos Charry, Jairo Hoyos, Héctor Arismendy, Nacianceno Orozco, Rufino Varela, Francisco Giraldo, Ramiro Echeverry, Edinson Pérez and Juan Narváez.

In order to clarify how the hostages were shot to death, Bogotá asked the Organisation of American States (OAS) to investigate.

The OAS International Forensic Commission’s report, which was released Sept. 14, concluded that the hostages died from multiple gunshot wounds, with bullets coming from different directions.

Therefore, “to conclude that this was an execution would be speculative,” said the Commission’s coordinator, Canadian forensic doctor James Young, in the report given to OAS Secretary General José Miguel Insulza at a closed door meeting in Cali, the capital of Valle del Cauca.

Young added that the commission was able to conclude that the deputies were victims of homicide, but could not identify the authors of the crime.

“The report does not diminish our suffering during the five years they were kidnapped, plus the four months we’ve waited for their bodies, with our sorrow measured out in minutes and hours, first imagining how they must be suffering while they were hostages, and now still in doubt as to how they died,” said lawyer Perdomo, Narváez’s sister-in-law.

“My sister Fabiola (Narváez’s wife, and spokeswoman for the victims’ families) says that what you don’t know, you can’t forgive. I agree with her. And as we’re not people who hate compulsively, we will continue to seek the truth,” she said.

The International Forensic Commission’s report was published, in English only, on the web site of the Colombian president’s office late on Sept. 14.

“As relatives of the victims, we hope that a copy of the report in Spanish will be given to us personally,” Quintero told IPS.

“The information we have received is that the gunshots followed different trajectories and two different kinds of ammunition were used,” Quintero continued. “That makes me think, speaking personally, that it’s possible that the deputies were used as human shields.”

“This is why we are going to persevere all the way to the end. I have asked Faisury Perdomo, who is well acquainted with the case, to represent us at the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, and before the relevant national courts,” he said.

“Six of the families are prepared to empower her and however many other lawyers are necessary to act for us,” he said.

According to the forensic report, several bodies showed signs of more than 10 bullet wounds, and the shots came from every direction.

But Perdomo said that “Eighty percent were shot in one direction, from back to front, which suggests that they were taken by surprise. However, speculation only does more harm, which is why the report disappointed us so deeply.”

Added to the grief of the relatives of the deceased deputies is the continuing uncertainty of relatives of hostages still held by the guerrillas, like Ingrid Betancourt and Clara Rojas.

“Yolanda Pulecio and Clara González (the mothers of Betancourt and Rojas) came to the funerals of our relatives, as did the wives of six other hostages. They told us they feared that one day it might be we who would be joining them in a similar situation. Let’s hope that never happens,” said Perdomo.

One way of avoiding such an outcome is to reach a humanitarian agreement to exchange the FARC’s remaining hostages for imprisoned guerrillas. Valle del Cauca Peace Commissioner Ángela Giraldo pressed Interior Minister Carlos Holguín to accept a negotiated agreement, in a television interview broadcast on Friday by the private channel RCN.

Giraldo, sister of Francisco, another of the murdered deputies, told Holguín that the crimes against humanity committed by the FARC might have been curbed if negotiations to free the hostages had been undertaken. “But this has not been done in the last five years,” she said.

The Colombian government insists that the guerrilla movement bears full responsibility.

“It is clear to us that the FARC has direct responsibility for this crime,” said government Peace Commissioner Luis Carlos Restrepo.

“The Forensic Commission was able to fully identify the bodies, as the Attorney-General’s Office had also done, and has clearly found that the manner of death was homicide, in the context of a violent action. However, they were not able to give any details about the circumstances of the deaths, basically because the commission did not have access to the site where the events took place,” Restrepo said in a public statement.

“The government is convinced, based on the intelligence that it has received since the events occurred, that the FARC was directly responsible, and obviously it is the FARC that will have to answer to the country for these terrible acts,” the commissioner added.

Colombia’s ambassador to the OAS, Camilo Ospina, said that in his view there was no doubt that the FARC committed the murders, adding that it was a premeditated execution, according to a statement published on the web site of the president’s office.

For his part, Insulza remarked that in the wake of the forensic report, securing the freedom of the kidnapped persons is even more urgent, “because their lives are at increasing risk with every day that passes.”

Excerpt:

By Constanza Vieira
BOGOTA, Aug 21 2007 (IPS)

The deaths of 11 of the 12 regional lawmakers being held hostage by Colombia’s FARC rebels may have occurred in the midst of fighting between the insurgents guarding the hostages and the “Junglas”, an elite military unit, according to a reconstruction of events based on interviews by IPS.

In the wee hours one night in June a motorboat carrying some 30 guerrilla fighters and 11 of the legislators, who have been held hostage for more than five years, ran into a Jungla commando in the headwaters of the Cajambre river in western Colombia.

The boat was escorted, on land, by another rebel unit commanded by Milton Sierra, who Colombian authorities have given the alias “J. J.”.

The group of hostages had reportedly been handed over to J.J. the day before by another FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) unit because some of the insurgents guarding them had suspiciously deserted, and the decision was taken to immediately move the lawmakers.

The 12th legislator, Deputy Sigifredo López, survived because “he was not at that moment with the rest of the hostages,” according to the FARC.

Perhaps the Jungla commando launched a failed attempt to rescue the hostages, or else the guerrillas spotted the military unit and opened fire. In any case, “everyone started shooting,” a source close to the FARC told IPS on condition of anonymity.

The source said the FARC’s Secretariado del Estado Mayor, the insurgent group’s leadership, gave its members and supporters instructions not to comment on the events, but to wait instead for an official statement from that body.

The motorboat pulled up to the bank to join the FARC land unit, and “two or three” military helicopters immediately brought in troops who joined the fighting.

“The shooting went on for three days, and the bodies were left on the boat,” said the source.

IPS will refrain from reporting the source’s description of the origin of the shots that killed the hostages, which is to be determined by a humanitarian mission of forensic experts.

After three days, the Jungla commando and the guerrillas both took shelter on the steep hills of the Andean valley that the river runs through.

“The bodies were left there for another three days” before the guerrillas “returned to see what was left.” They were incommunicado, having lost their radio telephones, the source added.

“The army was still there. They thought there were more guerrillas” than were actually in the area, and they ambushed the insurgents. “The guerrillas responded. But the military had strong backup,” he said. Then for the second time, “the army and guerrillas each went their own way.”

The insurgents finally returned again and were able to recover the bodies of the hostages and their own dead.

It was at that point that J.J. was killed, according to the source, whose account helps make sense of fragments of information from various sources gathered by IPS in the course of investigating the circumstances surrounding the deaths of the11 lawmakers from the western department (province) of Valle del Cauca, where the fighting took place.

The legislators formed part of a much larger group of hostages held by the FARC with the aim of exchanging them for imprisoned guerrillas in an eventual humanitarian swap. The group includes former presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt and other civilians, as well as members of the armed forces and police, and three U.S. military contractors.

The various sources concur on the place where the fighting broke out, but differ with respect to the number of guerrilla casualties and on the alleged participation of foreign troops, as claimed by one of the sources.

A report on the Colombian navy’s web site dated Jun. 15 states that “in a joint operation between the army, the navy and the air force, the guerrilla leader….alias ‘J.J.’ was killed in combat while riding in a vessel on the Cajambre river, upriver from the town of Barco, in the department of Valle del Cauca.”

JUNGLA COMMANDOS

The Junglas are trained in reconnaissance, infiltration and the taking of objectives.

To carry out infiltration operations, a few members of the Junglas pose as ordinary campesinos (small farmers) or indigenous people. They also infiltrate the FARC itself, as occurred in this case according to the anonymous source.

The commandos are equipped with night vision goggles and other hi-tech devices and are trained in survival techniques. They are capable of living for weeks in the jungle, often travelling quietly by kayak along rivers. Once they have located a target, they are backed up in the assault by troops brought in by helicopter.

The elite unit was set up in 1989, and at least at the start, in the early 1990s, was trained by the Special Air Service (SAS) regiment, the British Army’s special forces unit, which also trained native instructors.

Earlier this year, the British BBC Mundo’s Spanish language correspondent in Colombia, Hernando Salazar, reported that Afghan police were being trained here by the Junglas in anti-narcotics techniques.

In addition to allowing infiltration of the guerrilla group, the anonymous source acknowledged another “mistake”: the FARC, which has been in arms since 1964, “has not adapted to dealing with the Jungle Commandos.”

This explains the wording of the communiqués from the FARC’s Western Joint Command (CCO), which announced the legislators’ deaths on Jun. 28, and on Jul. 10 said that “We failed in our mission to guard the prisoners and deliver them to the exchange…”

WHEN DID IT HAPPEN?

In its Jun. 28 message, the CCO said that on the 18th of June, “a still unidentified military group attacked the camp where (the hostages) were held.”

IPS received another report through a Germany-based network that monitors events in Colombia, signed by the Community Council of Río Cajambre (the authority for the black community in that area), and dated simply “July 2007.” The people living in the area along the Cajambre river are black.

The Community Council reported the displacement of 50 families living in the headwaters of the river “because of the risk of dying in the crossfire in clashes in the collective territory of Río Cajambre.”

“In the month of June, aerial bombardment, overflying and machinegun strafing have intensified, especially in the Agua Sucia valley high up the (Cajambre) river, which is also an area where men and women from the river go to practice their traditional productive activities,” the Community Council wrote.

“These events have caused the internal displacement of 50 families from the Barco community to the communities of San Isidro and Aragón,” the Council said. The displaced families keep on the move while the battles are ongoing, and “when the situation calms down, they return to their community.”

“The most critical events happened between the 10th and 18th of June, 2007, when the fighting intensified,” the Council said.

The Community Council asked “the armed combatants, both legal and illegal, to respect the rights of the civilian population and to practice the principle of distinguishing” between combatants and non-combatants, as established by international humanitarian law.

According to Colombia’s intelligence chief, Andres Peñate, the hostages’ deaths were the result of an accidental clash between rebel units.

President Álvaro Uribe himself denied any attempt to rescue the hostages by force. He also denied that there had been any fighting in the departments of Valle del Cauca and Cauca, further south, on Jun. 18.

The death of J.J. was reported by Vice Admiral Edgar Celi Núñez, head of naval operations, on Jun. 15. The guerrilla leader’s body was not shown to the press.

In the entry for the week of Jun. 13-19 in the military actions logbook of the Observatory of the Presidential Programme for Human Rights and International Humanitarian Rights, maintained by the vice president’s office, fighting is reported to have taken place on Jun. 15 in Barco, although a footnote is added that changes the place and date.

“In Barco, in the district of Cajambre and the jurisdiction of Buenaventura (Valle), fighting broke out between the navy and subversives of the Manuel Cepeda Vargas Front of the FARC, in which Milton Sierra Gómez, alias ‘J.J.’, the leader of this Front, was killed. In the same action, two of the guerrilla camps were dismantled. Source: El País,” the main regional newspaper.

The following note appears next, in blue typeface: “However, according to information from the navy, this event happened in the same way and place described, on Wednesday Jun. 6, 2007.”

Although there is no reference to fighting in Barco or Río Cajambre in the logbook entry for the week of Jun. 6-12, this can be explained by the fact that the logbook is based on “a daily review of national and regional newspapers and radio stations consulted on the Internet,” according to its methodology section.

Uribe said that “during the third week of June” a meeting was held between “delegates of the three European countries, France, Spain and Switzerland, who are authorised by the national government to seek a humanitarian agreement,” and the FARC spokesman, Raúl Reyes, who works in the department of Putumayo, in the south of the country, bordering Ecuador.

So far, the government and the FARC have differences, which IPS learned are being overcome, about the make-up of the neutral forensic commission that will examine the bodies of the legislators and determine whether they were executed by their captors, or died in the crossfire, as the guerrillas claim.

The Cajambre river rises 4,500 metres above sea level. It is located around 50 km southwest of the strategic port of Buenaventura, in Valle del Cauca, Colombia’s only Pacific ocean port, which is intensely disputed in the armed conflict.

* ATT EDS: This item corrects paragraphs 34, 36 and 37.

Excerpt:

By Constanza Vieira
BOGOTA, Feb 20 2004 (IPS)

An exclusive journalistic investigation by IPS sought to get at the truth behind a supposed attempt by France to rescue former Colombian presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt, who was kidnapped by the FARC guerrillas two years ago as of next Monday.

An exclusive journalistic investigation by IPS sought to get at the truth behind a supposed attempt by France to rescue former Colombian presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt, who was kidnapped by the FARC guerrillas two years ago as of next Monday.

In July 2003, the French government sent a C-130 Hercules military transport plane into the Amazon jungle in northern Brazil, on a secret mission to rescue Betancourt, who holds dual Colombian-French citizenship.

The incident prompted an apology to Brazil from the French government, and the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) denied that it had ever intended to release Betancourt, the group’s highest-profile hostage.

Seven well-placed sources who spoke on condition of anonymity helped IPS piece together the story of what really happened.

According to the sources, in June 2003, the French government and FARC agreed on an ”unofficial” humanitarian operation: a meeting between a senior French Foreign Ministry official and rebel commander Raúl Reyes, the insurgent group’s spokesman in contacts with the United Nations and the international community.

Pierre-Henri Guignard, one of the French Foreign Ministry’s highest-ranking officials, was to take part in the meeting, accompanied by two other diplomats: a French embassy official and Fabrice Delloye, Betancourt’s ex-husband.

France’s objective was to verify that Betancourt was still alive, after months of silence from FARC, the main rebel group involved in Colombia’s four-decade civil war.

The evidence consisted of a video filmed in early June, in which Betancourt appeared. Reyes was to hand the video over to the French diplomats, and it was to be made public in France.

FARC was interested in the meeting because it wanted to be heard directly by delegates of a European Union (EU) nation, in order to express ”the truth” about what is occurring in Colombia – a vision that differs radically from the version set forth by the right-wing government of President Alvaro Uribe.

The insurgent group also wanted to complain that the EU had placed it on its international list of ”terrorist organisations” in 2002, in the wake of the Sep. 11, 2001 terror attacks on New York and Washington, D.C.

FARC is keen on meeting with delegates of the U.N., the Rio Group – the highest-level Latin American political forum – and the EU, one of the sources told IPS.

In statements to the press, Delloye – who was not interviewed by IPS for this story – insinuated that proof that Betancourt was still alive was a condition for any negotiations with FARC.

But at no point was the possible release of Betancourt agreed as part of the operation, in which the French diplomats travelled from Quito, the capital of Ecuador, to Esmeraldas on that country’s Pacific coast.

From there they went to an Ecuadorian village on the border with Colombia, where a messenger sent by FARC told them they had to cross the border and travel several hours into Colombian territory to meet with Reyes at his camp in the southern province of Putumayo.

But the French diplomats did not believe that entering Colombian territory was included in the initial agreement.

Instead of continuing into Colombia, they wrote Reyes a letter, and returned to Quito to consult with the Foreign Ministry on the possibility of entering Colombian territory.

Three days later they received instructions from the French Foreign Ministry to cross the border.

”If they hadn’t turned back to Quito, the meeting would have taken place, in Putumayo,” a source close to the families of the hostages held by FARC remarked to IPS.

But ”a mistake” by the French ambassador in Bogota, Daniel Parfait, ruined the mission, according to a diplomatic source, who said the plan was discovered through the tapping of the embassy’s telephone lines, by either the Uribe administration or the U.S. secret services.

Uribe was informed, and had the operation, that was to involve a meeting between the French diplomats and Reyes in southern Colombia, aborted.

He did so by alerting Betancourt’s family on Jul. 3 that the former presidential candidate was to be released.

According to the sources, Uribe himself told Yolanda Pulecio and Astrid Betancourt – Ingrid’s mother and sister – that a campesino (peasant farmer) had been contacted by FARC to say that the hostage was seriously ill and that they would hand her over.

The president also added that Catholic Church leaders had put the campesino in contact with him.

On her own initiative, Betancourt’s sister, who works at the French Embassy in Bogota, then requested humanitarian assistance from the French government.

Taken by surprise, Paris sent a C-130 Hercules transporter with medical and rescue personnel and equipment on Jul. 9 to Manaus in the Amazon jungle, the large Brazilian city closest to the Colombian border.

But the ”unofficial” presence of the Hercules sparked a diplomatic row between Brazil and France.

Brazil ordered the plane out, complaining that it had not been informed of any rescue mission, and the French government was forced to make a formal apology. The confusing incident was widely covered by the international press.

FARC, in the meantime, denied any intention to free Betancourt.

In the end, the French diplomats who were to meet with Reyes lost contact with the rebel leader’s emissary, and the mission fell through.

Betancourt’s husband Juan Carlos Lecompte, who has taken over the leadership of the former presidential candidate’s Green Oxygen Party since her capture, admitted that he was familiar with the events described to IPS.

However, he said he did not know whether the plan was discovered through the tapping of telephones in the French Embassy in Bogota.

He also told IPS that he was not sure it was Guignard who was to take part in the meeting with Reyes, although other sources confirmed that it was.

But Lecompte did say that Guignard was present in Manaus a few days after the failed contact between the French diplomats and Reyes was to take place.

Last week, Delloye, Betancourt’s ex-husband, did not attempt to conceal the family’s bitterness in an interview with the French daily Le Monde. ”We have been manipulated by Uribe,” he complained.

”I wonder,” Delloye told the newspaper, ”if Uribe and his (intelligence) services did not manipulate this whole thing to sabotage the contact planned between the FARC and the U.N. in Brazilian territory” – a meeting suggested in mid-2003 by U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan in response to a letter from FARC.

In a statement released in late July, FARC said its ultimate goal in contacting the French government was to reach an agreement on a humanitarian swap of captives held by the guerrillas ”for purely political reasons” in exchange for imprisoned rebels.

Last November, IPS attempted to find out from Reyes whether he had really planned to meet with a group of French diplomats, and received the response: ”Ask the French about that.”

Two months later, guerrilla commander Simón Trinidad, one of the rebels in charge of seeking negotiations for a humanitarian swap, was arrested in Quito.

On Jan. 13, FARC stated that Trinidad’s ”clandestine mission” in Quito was to find a ”suitable venue” for a meeting with Annan’s personal representative in Colombia, James LeMoyne.

But Trinidad’s arrest, according to FARC, frustrated ”the meeting planned with representatives of the French government, which was aimed at coming up with a definitive solution to the captivity of Ingrid Betancourt and of the rest of the prisoners of war, through a humanitarian swap.”

The French government and the U.N. spokesperson in Bogota, Volker Petzoldt, denied that any meetings had been planned.

The video in which Betancourt appeared was broadcast on Aug. 30 by a Colombian TV newscast.

Betancourt, 42, a former senator who ran for president in the May 2003 elections even though she was already a FARC hostage at the time, has been declared an honorary citizen of 1,000 cities around the world, most of them in France.

On Saturday, Rome Mayor Walter Veltroni will name Betancourt honorary citizen of the Italian capital, while Bogota, where she was born, will name her a citizen of honour, as part of a ”day of solidarity for the life and freedom of kidnapping victims in Colombia”.

Paris has offered refuge to FARC guerrillas who would be released from prison if the Colombian government were to agree to negotiate a swap of perhaps 300 to 400 imprisoned insurgents for 21 civilian hostages – mainly politicians – and 37 members of the military and police held captive by the rebels.

FARC says the politicians and soldiers and police are ”being held for exclusively political reasons,” thus differentiating them from the roughly 800 private citizens – according to official estimates – that the group is holding for ransom, one of its key sources of financing.

The captives that FARC has offered to swap include three U.S. citizens who were on an intelligence mission as part of Plan Colombia, the country’s largely U.S.-financed anti-drug and counterinsurgency strategy, when they were captured.

But Washington refuses to negotiate an exchange for the three U.S. captives, while Uribe demands a halt to all kidnappings and a guarantee that any imprisoned rebels who might be released would not take up arms again, as a condition to negotiating a humanitarian swap.

Excerpt: