MEDIA-COLOMBIA:
Unraveling the "New"
FARC Announcement
Analysis by Diana
Cariboni
MONTEVIDEO (IPS) -
Colombian and
international media
outlets reported
Thursday and Friday that
the FARC guerrillas had
"ruled out" the release
of Colombian hostage
Ingrid Betancourt in an
article issued after a
French emergency medical
mission to save the
gravely ill hostage got
underway. The problem is
that the FARC statement
is actually more than
two weeks old.
It was the Caracas-based
Telesur network that
first reported the
article by the FARC.
"The FARC consider the
request for the release
of Ingrid Betancourt
unacceptable" was the
headline of an on-line
report posted by Telesur
at 2:02 PM Thursday.
The Telesur report
stated that one of the
signatories of the FARC
article "published
Thursday by the Agencia
de Noticias Nueva
Colombia (Anncol), the
so-called foreign
minister of the
Revolutionary Armed
Forces of Colombia (FARC),
Rodrigo Granda,
described as
‘unacceptable’ the
request for the release
of former presidential
candidate Ingrid
Betancourt as a new
unilateral gesture that
the Colombian government
has set as a condition
for freeing imprisoned
guerrillas and moving
towards an eventual
humanitarian swap" of
hostages for prisoners.
But the Stockholm-based
Anncol, which is
sympathetic to the FARC,
had published the
guerrilla group’s
article in Spanish on
Mar. 20, under the
headline "Raúl Reyes,
the path of life in
spite of death". It was
signed by Granda and
Jesús Santrich and was
dated Mar. 19.
And what Granda and
Santrich were actually
describing as
"unacceptable" was "that
they are asking us for
further gestures of
peace, when after so
many reliable
demonstrations of our
political will to find
solutions to the
conflict, we are
maligned and slandered
in response."
With a little
fact-checking, IPS found
the Mar. 19 FARC article
Thursday on the Anncol
web site, which was down
on Friday. But the
cached Google version of
the article can still be
seen at: http://ipsnoticias.net/fotos/ANNCOL.htm.
Shortly after Telesur
reported on the Mar. 19
article as if it were
new, Colombia’s Caracol
Radio station and El
Tiempo newspaper placed
the news on their web
sites, error and all.
The "news" continued to
spread, as it was picked
up by international
agencies and published
in turn by the press in
the region and around
the world, with a few
exceptions, like IPS,
the French daily Le
Monde and the Bogotá
weekly El Espectador.
Why did so few reporters
and editors take a
moment to check the
content of the FARC
article? Perhaps because
everyone was waiting for
a FARC response to the
desperate humanitarian
mission sent out from
Paris?
The French government of
Nicolas Sarkozy
dispatched its
delegation to Colombia,
including two doctors
and two diplomats, on
Wednesday with the
difficult mission of
finding Betancourt in
the jungle and providing
her with medical
assistance, and if
possible, rescuing her.
The backdrop to this
situation includes a
week of rumours on
Betancourt’s critical
state of health, with
contradictory versions
of her supposed heavily
guarded visit to a
health post in a remote
jungle village and
alleged witnesses who
claimed that she was
dying.
Betancourt, a
French-Colombian
citizen, has been held
captive by the FARC
since 2002 and is
reportedly suffering
from hepatitis B,
leishmaniasis (a
tropical skin disease),
malaria and severe
depression.
But there is no
certainty that the
French humanitarian
mission will be
successful, due to the
lack of public signs
that the FARC have
agreed to release the
most valuable of the 37
or so hostages they are
still holding with the
aim of trading them for
some 500 imprisoned
rebels.
Another aspect ignored
by the media was the
fact that the FARC
article was not signed
by the insurgent group’s
leadership, the
secretariat of the "Estado
Mayor Central" -- an
important detail when it
comes to verifying
whether a message from
the rural guerrilla
group is official or
not.
But while the article
thus cannot be taken as
an official FARC
response to the French
medical mission or to
President Sarkozy’s
urgent calls this week
for Betancourt’s
release, the 2,644 word
message does contain
newsworthy aspects.
It is the first time
that members of the
insurgent group say
there will be no more
unilateral gestures on
their part, after the
release of six hostages
in January and February
-- which the FARC
described as a show of
goodwill for the
mediating efforts of
Venezuelan President
Hugo Chávez and
Colombian opposition
Senator Piedad Córdoba
-- and Colombia’s Mar. 1
bombing raid on the camp
of FARC international
negotiator "Raúl Reyes"
in Ecuadorean territory.
That places the FARC in
a difficult position: if
they are indeed
determined to hold on to
their strongest
bargaining chip,
Betancourt, to the very
end, they stand to lose
much more as a result of
her death than a chance
to negotiate a
hostage-prisoner swap
with the government.
Given that Reyes, and
shortly afterwards
another member of the
FARC secretariat, Iván
Ríos, were killed while
the rebel group was
holding talks on the
hostage issue with
emissaries from several
European and Latin
American countries, it
is clear that "we are
right to demand
increasing safeguards
and guarantees when any
kind of meeting is
involved," says the
article by Granda and
Santrich.
"We will undoubtedly
become more exacting,
and we will only trust
our own guarantees.
There will be no
government-guerrilla
meeting, for example,
without the existence of
a demilitarised zone,"
they add, referring to
one of the FARC’s key
demands for talks: the
withdrawal of the army
from a large area in
southwestern Colombia.
The article also
includes a paragraph
that takes an unusually
harsh tone towards the
hostages: "All of the
captives are responsible
for fuelling the war,
from Ingrid on. And we
should clarify that none
of them are in worse
conditions than Simón
Trinidad or Sonia (FARC
guerrillas who were
extradited to the United
States, where they are
in prison), or than many
of the political
activists and community
leaders who have been
imprisoned even though
they are not
guerrillas."
But this is not the
first instance of sloppy
or careless journalism
committed in the last
few months in coverage
of the Colombian armed
conflict.
For instance, the press
in the region invented a
series of relationships
in the FARC, taking the
alias of Reyes’
girlfriend, "Olga Marín",
as her real name, and
concluding that she was
the daughter of FARC
chief "Manuel Marulanda",
whose real name is Pedro
Antonio Marín.
According to that
creative FARC family
tree, "Olga Marín" was
the sister of Luciano
Marín, the real name of
another member of the
FARC secretariat, "Iván
Márquez".
And during the tense
episode when the
region’s foreign
ministers were meeting
at Organisation of
American States (OAS)
headquarters in
Washington to attempt to
repair the unprecedented
rupture of relations
between Bogotá and Quito
over Colombia’s
incursion into
Ecuadorean territory,
the El Tiempo newspaper
published a photo of the
recently murdered Reyes
alongside a man who was
identified by the paper
as Ecuadorean Interior
Minister Gustavo Larrea.
A few hours after the
Colombian government
distributed copies of
the photo among the
delegations attending
the OAS meeting, the
secretary general of
Argentina’s Communist
Party, Patricio
Echegaray, publicly
stated that he was the
man in the photo, which
was taken while he
conducted an interview
with Reyes that had been
published in several
media outlets.
All of these blunders
were easily avoidable
with just a tiny bit of
fact checking.
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