Colombian Nightmare Continues as Kisnappers seek new victims
international |
anti-war / imperialism |
news report
Sunday June 22, 2003 17:48
by joe ranii - Defend Colombia
Those people in Ireland who think that Colombia's FARC aaare the local equivalent of the Red Cross might do well do to try to learn more about the reality of the FARC murder/kidnap campaign.
From AP:
MEDELLIN, Colombia - Karina Ruiz was resting in bed after church on Good Friday when armed kidnappers burst into her home and hustled her off to the mountains, ignoring her family's pleas to leave her be.
Colombia suffers 3,000 kidnappings a year, the world's highest rate. But Ruiz's case highlights an even more disturbing trend - she is 81 years old.
With Colombians in growing numbers fleeing the country or being bankrupted by ransom payments, the kidnapping industry is running out of victims, and for at least the past two years even the elderly haven't been safe. At least 55 people older than age 65 are being held. The oldest known victim in captivity is an 84-year-old man.
They are among those least able to cope with the rigors of being held in the jungles and freezing mountains of Colombia.
One senior citizen, recently released by rebels after a ransom was paid, said she spent 47 days slogging across the rugged terrain of Antioquia state in western Colombia. The woman, afraid of retribution by her former captors, spoke in an interview on condition she not be identified by name or age.
She said it was not uncommon to spend 10 hours a day walking through the mountains, often in driving rain. She was often hungry, had to bathe in icy rivers and suffered sleepless nights squeezed in among the rebels and fending off insects.
Her captors threatened to shoot and kill her if the ransom payment didn't come through, she said.
Ruiz has not been seen during the two months since she was seized at her home in the western Colombian town of Angostura. She has diabetes and high blood pressure, and her relatives worry about how she is managing without her medication.
The family says the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, has made contact four times, threatening to kill Ruiz if no ransom is paid. The FARC, which has been fighting the government for 39 years, is behind most kidnappings in Colombia. It professes to be ideologically leftist but is regarded by many Colombians as a large criminal gang.
The Ruiz family says the FARC wants a ransom of $425,000. Ruiz's 13 children range from a teacher to a successful businessman, but they say that even their combined resources can't amass that amount.
As the rebels took Ruiz - allowing only brief hugs and kisses with her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren - she grabbed a crucifix and told her family not to pay any ransom. Nonetheless they have tried to negotiate payment, but with no success.
The last evidence they received that Ruiz is alive was a letter in her handwriting delivered early last month.
Parra, 58, has gone on national television to urge the rebels to take her in exchange for Ruiz.
"It just seems too difficult, such an old person suffering in the wilderness," she said during an interview in her brother's modest apartment in Medellin. "She can't walk. She's probably starving and sleeping in some hole somewhere. Thoughts of my mother don't leave me for a second."
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Comments (14 of 14)
Jump To Comment: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14More than likely she's been seized by right wing junta militia, or her caring capitalist relatives have done away with aunty to get their hands on the inheritance and blamed FARC guerillas as usual.
Why would FARC need to kidnap decrepit junta oul dolls. Looks like Colombian Junta government propaganda again, with mysterious victims/junta actors that can't be identified dronning on about those bad bad FARC guerillas.
I am a well paid Colombian junta militaman and I am sick and tired of Irish people supporting troublemaking FARC guerillas. FARC guerillas are very bad, because they encourage ignorant dirty filthy poor peasant villagers to rebel and form unions to protect their human rights and working conditions. This is very bad news for multinational companies like Coca cola who are in Colombia taking advantage of cheap labour and lax health and safety/union laws. How can we expect Coca Cola to make profits, keep overheads down and pay our junta wages if they must pay their rebelling peasant workforce proper wages, and listen to trade unionists concerns about working conditions in factories/sweat shops. It's time you Irish people opened your eyes to see the damage trade unions and FARC guerillas cause multinational companies.
The reactions to the original posting are really weird. We have people idly speculating from the safety of Ireland, that these kidnaps are not happening in Colombia, and coming up with stupid justifications or explanations. I suppose ignorance is no obstacle to these people talking through their posteriors, but for their benefit I will remind them that the whole world knows that there are thousands of kidnaps in Colombia every year.
There are thousands of people disappeared each year by the army , police and right wing death sqyads. To be a union activist, a community worker, a peasant organier, that is a capital crime in "Democratic" Colombia.
Nine human rights activists/lawyers murdered by right-wingers in the last two months.
I have no problem with people condemning FARC or the actions they do. I would make the case that for numbers of people murdered, for violence, misery, death and pain inflicted, the Government and the right-wingers leave FARC in the ha'penny place.
George why on earth are you suprised, take a look at indymedia, facts never get in the way of ignorant political agendas. These tosser spend their lives giving out about the hidden agenda of the mainstream media when all they do is manipulate the news to suit their own dogmas!!
George, The problem is not that really no one believes that FARC is involved in
kidnapping and murder. It's just hard to take you seriously when the story and others
like it are not placed in context.
We hear many stories in the press about FARC, but yet very little mention is made of
right wing death squads and the military, nor of the phoney drug war.
The State Department in the USA, even admitted a number of years ago that about 90% of
the deaths in Colombia are attributable to the right wing death squads. It is clear that
they work as a proxy for the Colombia military and government.
People often say that body counts don't matter, but they do to a certain extent. Having
said that nobody likes to hear of the death or injury of anyway, but I think it is fair
to say that the whole episode comes across as dishonest when the net effect is to serve
the propaganda needs of just one side.
I see you have posted your story from AP -the corporate press. Why don't you spend a bit
of time researching manipulation of the media by the corporate press and powers that be,
before you start getting upset. Don't assume because you read the papers and watch the
news, that you have the full picture. And as to your political beliefs, put them on hold,
when you go researching, otherwise you will just end up selectively reading things that
support your existing world view.
Start with some articles by Noam Chomsky. There are many other writers too. They are not
hard to find, if you look.
George, I attributed the posting of the original story to you in
my comment above. This of course is incorrect. Nevertheless the
general points I make still apply.
I'm probably wasting my time trying to get some basic facts about Colombia into the skulls of those who think they know it all even though they have never been nearer Latin America than Dingle and have about as much Spanish as they have Sanskrit. However, once more class of slow learners, let's review a few basic points:
1/ Colombia is a democracy. Both the legislature and the President are freely elected.
That's not my opinion--it was the judgment of the international obseervers who monitored last year's elections.
2/ FARC are murderers and kidnappers. I truly don't have time to detail their disgusting track record. All indications are that they have no popular support (definitely less than 5%) in Colombia. They have little presence in the cities, and don't control any town of any size. This is hardly surprising. Why would people want their country to be taken over by necklace bombers and mass murderers ? (Not much chance that the ignorant posters here would want to live in an Ireland controlled by a FARC-type Murder Incorporated !)
3/ The paramilitaries are bad news also, with their own record of murder, though rarely kidnap.
That's why the Colombian government has taken them on. Just two weeks ago the National Army killed 12 paras--no sign that any of the Colomnia "experts" are aware of day-to-day reality in Colombnbia, however!
My advice to the Colombia "experts" here is put up and shut up unless they are willing to go to Colombia and see the situation for themselves. I will be willing to exchange ideas with any poster who has, like myself, been to Colombia. The others are just empty spoofers and responding to their ignorance is just a waste of my time.
i suggest reading http://www.narconews.org
or
http://www.colombia.indymedia.org
or
finding a Colombian and marrying them, as they and most other South Americans need "papers" to live here, they are lovely people, make good neighbours and look good on the beach.
=Marry a South American today.
So by Joe's standard, I am ineligible for conversation on the issue. I would not admit to being ignorant on it either. A friend of mine is in prison there, other friends of mine have just returned from a one week visit to the country to observe the trial of three Irishmen and I have been active in the Bring Them Home Campaign since it began. So while I have never been, I have read a great deal about it.
I have no love for FARC. I have no love for the ELN. But from everything I have read, from Amnesty reports to Colombian Government papers, more people are killed and are disappeared by the Government and their right-wing paramilitaries than by the guerillas. Does this mean I support the FARC? No more than Amnesty International does.
A glance at Amnesty's http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/ENGAMR230412003?open&of=ENG-COL newswire on Colombia shows a lot of people disappearing, most of them at the hands of the Government or their surrogates. More than 170 Colombian Trade Unionists were killed last year and as a Trade Union member myself I can't read that statistic without shuddering. And it wasn't only those who killed who suffered. During 2002, 26 were abducted, and 17 suffered an abduction attempt. A further 164 received death threats and 132 were arbitrarily detained by the authorities.
Many trade unionists have been forced to leave their homes: seven were forcibly displaced in 2002, and around 80 went into exile.
I accept to a certain degree what you are saying Joe in that you think people here are outright FARC supporters. Most of them aren't I would think. I support the struggle for a Palestinian homeland but I condemn absolutely Hamas suicide attacks against civilians. Often though, people try to say that because I support a Palestinian state I must support suicide attacks against civilian targets.
Similarly, when I raise the question of human rights abuses, murders, rapes, village clearance operations etc. in Colombia people accuse me of supporting FARC and thus, every action FARC undertakes. That's not true either.
The last thing, is that reading your post, and others you have made, I can't help but be reminded of similar posts made by people against republicans throughout the years. 'The IRA are mass murderers. They have no popular support. All decent people turn from them. Loyalists aren't quite as bad. Northern Ireland is a democratic state with little or no abuse of human rights.'
I didn't believe those people. I don't believe you. I can't afford a trip to Colombia on my wage, I have to rely on documentation and eye-witness accounts from internationally respected groups and from friends and comrades, within and without republicanism, who have gone there. If you want to pay for me to travel there, happy to oblige, until then, if you restrict this debate merely to people who have been to Colombia, you won't be able to have a debate. Possibly, the aim all along.
Joe Ranting looks like the ignoramuos where Colombia's concerned, he's not from colombia and he's never been there, so he's certainly not qualified in anyway to pass generalised ignorant judgment upon FARC guerillas. Joe Ranting comes across as a bitter sore loser, maybe he's just jealous of gorgeous olive skinned FARC guerillas, who seem to be very popular with Northern Irish housewives.
By the way for £5, you can have my autograph, and a signed photo of myself Joe Ranting, just to give you something else to fume over.
"gorgeous olive skinned FARC guerillas"
The government soldiers are just as "gorgeous" and "olive-skinned", I assume. So your posting makes absolutely no sense. Was it supposed to be funny ?