COLOMBIA: "Proof-of-Life" Videos Feed
Hostages' Families' Hopes
By Constanza
Vieira
BOGOTÁ (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." |
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