France delegation attempting to send medical aid to hostage Ingrid Betancourt
April 4, 2008
French hostage Ingrid Betancourt, held by FARC rebels in Colombia, is subject of new humanitarian effort by French envoys.
According to Colombian Peace Commissioner Luis Carlos Restrepo, a French-led mission to get medical aid to hostage and former Colombian presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt is awaiting the approval of her FARC captors. The other countries trying to help in the effort are Spain and Switzerland, who are playing the role of neutral intermediaries.
President of France Nicolas Sarkozy called for this emergency mission because of news that Ingrid Betancourt is in danger of “imminent death.” She is reported to be suffering from Hepatitis B and other ailments. The plan is to get a medical plane to a place where Betancourt can be transported, but the exact location being considered is still secret. Two men already known to FARC are being cast as the “point men” in the mission.
Restrepo wouldn’t say whether the French, who are working with the International Committee of the Red Cross, had made contact with the FARC. “The mission is underway and the government is providing all the necessary guarantees,” said Restrepo. “All we need is to know where the mission will be launched so we can suspend military operations in the area.”
Sarkozy proposed the mission in a phone conversation with Columbian President Uribe yesterday after making a direct appeal to the FARC to release Betancourt. “Don’t lose this opportunity, or you’ll be committing a grave political mistake,” Sarkozy said in a televised speech, addressing 77-year-old FARC leader Manuel Marulanda. “You would be responsible for the death of this woman.”
Sarkozy has been lobbying for Betancourt’s freedom since his campaign for the presidency of France. This mission only proposes medical assistance, not release, but all of France is hoping that the rebels will relent and let Betancourt go, as they have recently released other hostages. The seriousness of Betancourt’s condition may also be a factor, as the FARC rebels may want to avoid having the blood of such a high-profile hostage–and a woman– on their hands. In recent months, the President of France has also engaged Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and the presidents of Brazil and other south American countries to intervene for Betancourt’s release.
Ingrid Betancourt’s ordeal began in 2002. While campaigning for the Columbian presidential elections that year, dual French-Columbian citizen Ingrid Betancourt attempted to enter the demilitarized zone bordering on the territory of Columbian leftist militant group FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia). She traveled through the jungle without escort, and was kidnapped at a FARC roadblock. A captive ever since, Betancourt is often referred to in the French press as the Colombian Joan of Arc.
Betancourt is among some 40 high-profile hostages whom the Farc rebels have offered to free if the government releases around 500 jailed rebels and sets up a demilitarized zone for the exchanges. But Colombian President Alvaro Uribe has maintained a tough line, insisting that any freed rebels must give guarantees that they will not pick up arms again. Uribe also doesn’t want to demilitarize the border, as FARC has called for, to help free hostages because he doesn’t want to give in to any of their demands or legitimize what he characterizes as a terrorist organization. Uribe came to power promising a tough stance against the FARC.
A video of a gaunt and dispirited Betancourt surfaced in November, the first proof in many months that the French activist was still alive. Recently released fellow hostages have reported that Betancourt is “very sick,” however. In a letter addressed to her mother released in France soon after the video, Betancourt says her strength has diminished, her appetite has gone, and her hair is falling out. “Here, we are living like the dead,” Betancourt wrote. But she also said she has been able to hear messages from her family and other supporters on Colombian radio and asked her two children in France to send three messages a week, even though she is not able to respond.
FARC began as a peasant army for socialism in the 1960’s. They hold about 1000 hostages, of whom Betancourt is probably the highest-profile. FARC has been called a terrorist organization by the European Union, Columbia and its ally the US, and is accused of drug trafficking and other criminal activities to fund their cause. The group says it only wants to give the poor of Columbia a voice and representation among the wealthy elite classes.
Six hostages have been freed since the start of the year near where Betancourt is believed to be held. Forty more, including three American defense contractors kidnapped when their plane crashed in the jungle in 2003, remain held hostage.
Ingrid Betancourt was born in Colombia on Christmas Day, 196. Her mother was a former Miss Colombia, her father a French diplomat. Ingrid grew up in Paris’ swanky 6th arrondissement and attended the prestigious Institut d’études politiques de Paris (known as Sciences Po), one of the Grandes Ecoles that has spawned much of the political elite in France.
Betancourt married another French diplomat, receiving French citizenship, and bore him two children. (The couple later divorced.) She returned to her native Colombia in 1989, motivated by the assassination of Luis Carlos Galan, a presidential candidate running on an anti-drug trafficking platform. She was elected to the Chamber of Representatives in 1994 then formed her own party, the Green Oxygen Party, and became a senator in 1998. She wrote book criticizing then-Colombian president Ernesto Samper, published in France as Le rage au coeur (An Angry Heart) and later in Columbia. She has been known for years as a fire-brand in Columbian politics.
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